Chapter 14
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Shannon wasn’t sure if he was enjoying the slower pace or if it was driving him up the wall. The truth was probably both. With the nicer weather and the substantially less traffic, he’d taken his bike to work a few times and enjoyed meandering back to Dante’s place on the bike in the evenings.
Even though he looked forward to returning, he was aware that he should be looking for his own place.
They’d been sharing a bed most nights, when he was on days anyway.
When he was on nights, Dante slept in his own room, but instead of avoiding each other, Dante would join him for a coffee in the afternoon before he left for work.
He rode up the driveway and parked, before throwing the cover over the bike. He pulled off his helmet and gloves, tucking them under his arm as he reached for the door. He paused, hand hovering over the handle. That was blood.
He took a moment to listen. He hadn’t been silent on the bike.
Behind him, the workshop was still open, but if Dante was in there, he’d have called out.
Not only that, there was no banging. He shoved his gloves into his pocket and gripped the helmet ready to swing it if needed, then cautiously opened the door to the mudroom.
A drop of blood on the white tiles.
As silently as he could in boots that he didn’t bother taking off, he crept toward the kitchen.
No sign of a fight and no more blood.
“Dante!” He didn’t set the helmet down.
“Bathroom,” Dante called back from his end of the house.
Shannon exhaled, knowing he was not going to find Dante getting railed by the neighbor, and if that’s what was happening, Dante wasn’t his boyfriend, so it didn’t matter.
He strode through the kitchen and down the corridor.
It was only then that he hesitated. Dante had sounded calm.
It was only him who was worried about the blood.
He knocked on the open bedroom door. “I saw the blood. Are you okay? Do you want me to come in?”
“Um…”
That was never a good answer.
“Mostly,” Dante said. “You don’t need to do anything. I have the first-aid kit.”
Shannon rolled his eyes. “I’m coming in.”
Dante was sitting on the edge of the bath. The reason Shannon had seen no more blood was that Dante had taken the hand towel out of the mudroom and it was now lying bloody on the bathroom floor. He was holding another towel to his forearm, and the first-aid kit was sitting on the vanity.
“This is your definition of mostly fine?” He washed his hands, opened the first aid kit, and pulled on a set of gloves. “If you move that towel, is it going to gush or is it just a trickle?”
“It’s a slice about three inches long that lifted a flap of skin and is bleeding but not gushing.”
“And you did it in the workshop?”
“Blade snapped. A one in a million accident.”
Shannon lifted an eyebrow. “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that, I would be a millionaire. Guess I should be glad you didn’t slip and land on something unfortunate.”
“I thought that was just an Internet joke.”
“I wish.” He shook his head. “It would be better if they just admitted to feeling horny and wanting something up their ass, but no, they tell the most unoriginal lie about how they ended up with a candle or a bottle or something worse…I’m going to take a look, and you are not going to argue with me if I say you need to get stitches. Agreed?”
“I have duct tape and superglue…they use superglue to close wounds all the time.”
Shannon glared at him. “You may not have noticed, but we’re not in a war zone, so there will be no temporary patches to get you back out and fighting.” He put his hands on the towel, and Dante released his grip on it. “So is this the worst injury you’ve gotten knife making?”
It was so easy to slip into fact-finding conversation while keeping somebody calm and distracted. It’s what he was good at.
“I think it’s the worst cut. But I’ve had some nasty burns, including flicking hot metal on myself. But on the scale of a cut to needing pins and metal in my femur and hip, they’re pretty low on the list.”
“You must have some very interesting X-rays.” The cut was about three inches and had indeed lifted a flap of skin. Dante had given him a good assessment, and he had been very lucky it hadn’t gone deep.
“I do. Do you want to see them?”
Shannon smiled. “You know I do. Okay…the bleeding is a lot less as it’s not soaking through the towel. I’m assuming you’ve already cleaned it out?”
“Yes, that stung pretty bad.”
“So if you get stitches, it’s going to heal up a lot faster, and you’ll probably keep the flap of skin.
If you don’t, and you just cover it, it’ll take longer to heal, which is a risk for infection, and that flap of skin might dry up and peel off so you end up with a bigger scar.
If it was me, I would get it stitched.” He could tell from Dante’s face that he did not want to go and get it stitched.
“It’s not that big.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“There should be a bunch of those butterfly strips in there.” Dante nodded in the direction of the first aid kit.
Shannon glanced up at him. “You said you wouldn’t argue.”
Dante held his gaze. “I didn’t think you’d say it needed stitches.”
“I can drive you.” Shannon sat back on his heels. Was Dante afraid of hospitals after everything that had happened?
“I was hoping to have it bandaged up before you got home.”
“Were you going to clean the blood off the door handle and the mudroom floor as well?”
“Yes.”
“And somehow I wouldn’t notice the bandage when we’re in bed?”
“By then it wouldn’t matter because it would be dealt with.” Dante sighed. “I didn’t want to ask you for help, because then you’d feel obligated.”
“I saw the blood and was worried. I expected to find…” He closed his eyes and shook his head. He’d clearly seen far too many soon-to-be crime scenes. “I’m glad it’s just a cut, and you’re lucky it didn’t flick off and cut somewhere more important.”
“I wear safety gear, but when you play with knives, you’re going to get cut at some point.”
“Trust me, I know.” Foggy Basin did not have a lot of knife-related crimes.
“Okay, I’m going to use those butterfly strips, but if I don’t like the look of it at any point in the next forty-eight hours, I’m taking you to urgent care, and you can tell them that you’re a dumb ass who refused to come in when you were told to. ”
“That sounds reasonable.”
Shannon fixed him with another glare. “No, reasonable is going. ‘I’ve got a three-inch flap of skin on my forearm; it would be best to get stitched up.’ Looking at that injury and thinking you’re going to do an arts and craft project on yourself is how people end up calling an ambulance because two weeks later, they happen to notice that their limb is rotting. ”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it was a dog bite. By the time they decided it was bad, they had sepsis, and around the bite was black. I don’t know if the leg was saved.”
“I would definitely see a doctor before my skin turned black.”
“Puffy edges, redness that spreads out from the wound, puss, fever, vomiting… It’s not just about the cut.”
Dante put his hand over Shannon’s where he was still applying pressure through the towel.
“I know. I spent years carrying a trauma kit in my pocket, which was very reassuring until the day I needed it. And then it wasn’t enough.
Let’s close this up, leave it for the night, and you can check before you go to work in the morning. ”
“Fine.” He stood up and went back to the first aid kit. It was very well stocked, as well as very well organized. He located what he needed and then a bigger wound dressing to cover it up. “I’m going to clean it again.”
Dante swore. “You’re doing that to punish me.”
“Definitely, not because I want to make sure it’s done properly. Come over to the sink, and I’ll tell you about the guy who was pinned to his car seat by a tree branch.”
“Is this your go-to story for distraction?”
“It’s one with a happy ending. The tree branch didn’t puncture anything important, but the fire crew had to get out the chainsaw and cut the branch off because we didn’t know at the time. You might be wondering how he ended up with a tree branch through his shoulder?”
Dante drew a breath and went rigid as Shannon flushed out the wound.
“He had swerved to avoid a dog on the road, but because it was raining, he skidded, and next thing he knows, he’s getting intimate with the tree.”
“He didn’t lie and tell you he slipped on it?”
Shannon laughed. “Well, he kind of did slip and land on it, or at least his car did. Anyway, once he was cut out, we took him to the hospital. I was driving that day, so my coworker was in the back with him. They ended up getting married two years later.”
“That really is a happy ending.”
“I think so.” Shannon’s lips curved in a soft smile. “They also have a great first meet story.” Shannon carefully brought the edges of the wound together and taped it closed.
“That is hard to top.”
He covered the whole thing with a clear bandage that would go a long way to keeping it clean, as well as stopping it from drying out. “I’m going to wrap it, so it has a bit more protection from being bumped.”
He didn’t wait for Dante to disagree; he just did it, and Dante didn’t argue.
“I’m sorry I made you worry, and I will clean up the blood.”
“It’s okay. You should probably take it easy. I’ll only take me five minutes to wipe up.”
“Shannon, I mean it. I didn’t expect you to take care of me.”
He nodded and stripped off the gloves. “Maybe I wanted to.”
And the only reason he wanted to was because he was a fucking idiot. He needed to get back on the website and seriously look for another place. Before he knew, it the three months would be up, and he didn’t want to be begging to stay.