TWENTY-FOUR #3
I hate that he’s bleeding and calm and looking at me like this was the simplest and easiest choice to make.
Like stepping between me and death was an obvious thing that didn’t need thinking about.
Like the cost was just a cost and not a debt I will now carry around with me in my ribs until it turns into something with claws and a hunger for flesh.
“You don’t get to decide that for me,” I whisper.
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“No,” he says. “I chose where I stood.”
The air changes at that. Not much, but enough to note the difference. Cedar and leather bleed through the rot and blood, solid, warm, and too close. My body notices before I can tell it not to, because apparently my body is a traitorous little bitch with terrible priorities.
Fletcher’s gaze drops only once, to where my hands are still hovering near his wound. Then he looks back to my face and says, “You can be angry.”
“Thanks for the permission I didn’t ask for,” I blurt.
His mouth almost twitches.
Almost.
“Patch me up angry, then,” he commands, this time with less bark so my hackles don’t rise.
“I should leave you to leak until you run dry,” I threaten.
“You won’t,” he says, sounding real sure of himself.
I lean closer, and that turns out to be a colossal mistake.
His scent hits much harder the closer I am.
Cedar, leather, smoke from the gunfire, and blood that underlines it all.
His shoulders are much too broad in the cramped space.
His jaw tightens from pain, but he doesn't flinch away. Doesn’t soften his voice.
And he doesn’t treat me like I’m glass that is one inconvenience away from shattering.
That should help, but it doesn’t.
“You don’t know me,” I remind him.
“No,” he says quietly. “But I know you don’t leave wounds unattended.”
My pulse trips over itself, and I hate that he somehow learned that. I hate that all of them seem to be learning me in small but clear pieces. Hat. Nails. Exits. Limp. Scent. Silence. Bleeding. How long until there’s nothing left to hide? How long before hidden stops feeling safe?
“Dakota,” Xeon says softly from across the room, careful but urgent. “We need to move soon.”
Right.
Right.
The room. The dead. Vector. The pilot. The shutter still jammed. The supply room that smells like blood and rot and too many things I can’t handle right now.
I yank my backpack open with a little more force than necessary, pulling out the gauze a moment later. Then I snap at Fletcher, “Stay still.”
He obeys, and it absolutely shouldn’t satisfy me in any kind of way. It does, though.
I cut away the torn edge of his shirt with a smidge more aggression than the task actually needs. The wound is ugly, but not deep enough to kill him. Claw marks are lines across the top of his chest and shoulder, each wound bleeding freely and already swelling red around the edges.
There’s no bite, though.
Thank God. Not that I even believe in him. But still, no bite.
“You’re lucky,” I mutter.
“Been called worse,” he murmurs back.
“It wasn’t a compliment,” I inform him.
“I know.”
“You’re beyond the scope of annoying, you know that?” I point out.
“So I’ve heard,” he says, as if that’s not news to him.
I sigh. “Stop talking.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replies.
My hand freezes and his eyes meet mine. The room around us vanishes for one ridiculous second.
Yes, ma’am.
It should annoy me. It does. It pisses me off. But it also sends heat flushing through my body so fast I almost drop the antiseptic wipe.
Nope.
Absolutely not.
I tear open the packet with my teeth and press it to his wound. I’m not exactly gentle about it, either, and Fletcher’s jaw clenches before he grits out, “Careful.”
“Thought you were all tough and shit,” I snark.
“I am,” he says sternly.
“Then suffer in silence,” I mutter.
From somewhere behind me, Ewan whispers, “I reckon you could find a romantic greeting card in there somewhere.”
“Ewan,” four voices blurt at once, mine included.
He raises both of his hands and croons, “Oh, now that was a beautiful harmony. We could build a choir out of that. Us Welsh are really good at choirs. This means we’re healing as a group, team.”
I glare at him.
He points at Fletcher. “Well, he is.”
There’s a laugh that almost bubbles out of me and it’s completely unacceptable.
I bury it by pressing fresh gauze to Fletcher’s shoulder, wrapping tape around the wound with hurried but efficient urgency.
Fletcher watches my hands, but I watch the blood, because that shit is safer than anything else.
“You took a hit you didn’t need to take,” I mutter quietly.
His voice is even lower when he answers. “I took a hit I chose to take.”
“That isn’t any better,” I tell him, glaring a hole into his shoulder.
“To me, it is,” he answers.
I look at him then. Like, really look at him.
My eyes trace the scar on his cheek, analyze the depth of blue of his eyes, and scan the line of his mouth.
I look at the pain he’s swallowing back instead of showing.
The steadiness that once felt like a wall closing in and now feels like something so much worse.
A shield.
Chosen. Not mine. Not yet. Maybe never, but there all the same.
My chest feels too tight as I tie off the bandage with a small amount of unnecessary force. “There. Try not to go bleeding all heroically through that in the next five minutes.”
“I’ll try my best,” he answers calmly.
“Your best seems to be incredibly questionable,” I point out to him, as if he wasn’t already fully aware.
“Fair ’nough,” he says.
I lean back, but not far enough. For one heavy second, we stay a little too close.
His breath brushes the edges of my bandana, and my hand still rests against his chest. It’s pressed over the bandage, feeling the solid thumping of his heartbeat under layers of blood and muscle and all the control he wears like armor.
He looks at my hand, and so do I. Then I snatch it back like he’s burned my palm. With a very clear warning, I say, “Don’t make it a thing.”
“Wasn’t going to,” he swears.
“You were thinking about it.”
“I think about a lot of things,” he says, blue eyes boring into me.
I raise an eyebrow. “Well, think quieter.”
That almost gets the better of him. A real almost-smile pulls at his mouth, brief and sharp and too good on him. My stomach flips, and I immediately decide my stomach is a bitch.
Across the room, the shutter crank finally gives under Kaito and Xeon’s combined efforts, groaning upward inch by inch. Ewan keeps watch at the broken service door, pipe in hand and humming under his breath like an idiot who’s decided fear is actually something optional.
The loading access opens into a darker passage, and air moves through it.
It’s stale, but it’s open. An exit we didn’t have before.
This is good, because we need an exit. I need distance.
From Fletcher. From the blood staining my hands.
From that damned sentence still sitting between my ribs like a bomb waiting to explode.
You don’t get to be the only one who keeps people alive.
I stand too fast and my knee protests the movement. Fletcher’s hands twitch as if he wants to reach out and steady me, but he doesn’t, which is good. That tells me he’s learning, at least.
I sling my backpack over my shoulder the moment I’m standing, ignoring the pain in my arm, and step back. Fletcher heaves himself up off the floor right after me, slower than usual but still solid enough that I find it irritating.
“Can you move?” I ask shortly.
“Yes,” he answers.
“Be honest. Can you truthfully tell me you can move?” I push.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says again, holding my gaze intently, causing my brain to hiccup right along with my stupid, betraying heart.
I narrow my eyes on him. “If you bleed through that, I’m making you carry the ruined gauze around with you.”
“Understood.”
“Good,” I murmur, turning before he can see anything else on my face that might reveal the pure chaos that is currently wracking my body.
Before he can see that anger is actually easier to handle than fear is.
Before he can see that I’m not only angry that he got hurt.
I’m angry because, for one awful second, when that Runner hit him instead of me, the world made a shape I finally recognized.
Someone leaving.
Someone bleeding.
Someone choosing danger so I wouldn’t have to.
And honestly? I don’t survive that kind of shape very well.
I head for the loading access and Fletcher falls into step just behind me. Not ahead of me, not beside me, and not ordering me around. He walks only two steps behind, close enough to guard and far enough to let me pretend he’s not.
I hate that.
I hate him.
I hate that I don’t even tell him to move.