Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
DAX
Dax didn’t need his medical background knowledge to know the sound he’d heard when Owen fell wasn’t a good one. He was admittedly a little lax in his human anatomy, having not needed it in most of his projects, but the blood was a very obvious indication that something was very wrong.
“Shit, shit, are you okay?” Mateo rushed out, getting close to the injured man before freezing when he noticed the blood himself. “Oh fuck, do we need to call an ambulance?”
“No,” Owen croaked, groaning as he tried to sit up. Dax moved to help him, wrapping a few tentacles around him for support as Owen cupped a hand over his nose and looked around blearily. “Can I hab a towel?” he asked in a muffled voice.
Mateo looked around wildly for a second before darting to one of the drawers in the kitchen. When he ripped it open, he let out a noise of despair, squawking, “Why is it empty?”
“Why is what empty?” Kaz asked as he came back out of his room, his clothes still damp and a towel rubbing at his hair.
He froze when he saw Owen on the floor and when he noticed the blood, his normally green skin went almost grey.
He stumbled back, knocking into Nylian who grunted from the weight of the orc knocking into him.
He happened to have been carrying a plate and mug he must’ve been using earlier because the shock of being knocked into sent both to the floor, shattering on the granite tiles and sending shards of ceramic in every direction.
“Everyone freeze!”
They all did, turning to stare in shock at Mateo, who looked a little wild-eyed at the pure chaos happening right now. Dax wanted to step in and help him, but for once Mateo didn’t panic. His eyes flicked around, taking in everything wrong with the situation, and he jumped into action.
“Nobody move. The floors are soaked and we don’t need more people getting hurt. Kaz, shut your eyes. If you get sick, it’ll make this ten times worse.”
Kaz did as asked, slamming his eyes closed and freezing in place, actually covering his face with his hands just as an extra precaution.
“Dax, I’ve got clean towels in my closet.
Take off the shirt you’re wearing while you’re in there, it’s still dripping and that’s not helping.
Be careful that you don't get cut on any broken dishes. Nylian, can you help Kaz back to his room. He needs to change too but he can’t open his eyes right now. Watch your step, the floor is wet.”
Carefully, so he didn’t jostle the poor human, Dax moved Owen so he was leaning propped against the wall before hurrying to do as Mateo asked.
He stripped off his shirt, grabbed a hoodie from Mateo’s closet since it was a little chilly and he had a hard time regulating his temperature outside the water, and found several towels in the closet where Mateo kept them in a drawer.
All very white and fluffy. Dax winced. He’d have to replace them if they got soaked with blood, but they didn’t have any other options.
He hurried back in time to find Mateo helping Owen out of his pants. He balked, instincts screaming at him to force them apart, but Mateo’s attention was all clinical as he waved a hand at Dax.
“Good, you brought more than one. His pants are soaked and I want him to be able to sit down on the couch. He’s still refusing to let me call an ambulance, but sitting in a puddle of blood on the floor isn’t helping.”
“I’m fibe,” Owen tried, the words still off and the blood still escaping through his fingers. “It’s happened before.”
“That’s not reassuring,” Dax commented, handing Owen the smaller towel so he could press it to his nose.
Owen whimpered from the pain but didn’t cry or panic.
He stepped out of his jeans when Mateo tapped each leg and allowed Dax to wrap the second towel around his waist. Once he was drier and the blood staunched, Mateo went after him with a wet washcloth, wiping the blood off his arms and hands before finally allowing Dax to move him to one of the chairs in the living room to rest.
While Dax was getting Owen comfortable, hovering and trying to convince him to go see a healer, Mateo moved like a whirling dirvish, picking up and disposing of the broken pieces of dishes, mopping up water and blood, setting a towel on the floor by the door in case anyone else showed up, and ushering their other two roommates to the couch when they finally came back out of their rooms so they’d be out of his way.
Dax was actually impressed. The last time there was a mess in the apartment, Mateo looked close to a meltdown.
This time, he didn't hesitate. It wasn’t until things were clean that he finally stopped long enough to realize everyone was staring at him.
He looked decidedly uncomfortable with the attention, so Dax drew the focus back where it belonged.
“Have you ever gotten tested for a curse?” he asked Owen. “You fall a lot.”
Around the towel, Owen explained, “As a kid, yeah. The kid who cursed me was only a year older than I was, and didn't think it’d go the way it did.” He shrugged. “They couldn’t fully remove it.”
“You have PCR?” Dax asked, stunned.
“What’s PCR?” Mateo queried, pausing in wiping down the walls to look at him. Did Dax point out there wasn’t likely a mess on the walls from Owen slipping face first?
Nope. He was going to leave that alone for now.
“Post-curse reverb,” he explained, and Owen nodded in agreement. “It means parts of the curse couldn’t be removed. But that’s really rare these days. Almost any witch can remove a curse, especially one created by a little kid.”
Owen gave him a look Dax didn’t understand. Like he was missing something important.
The researcher in him really didn’t like that look.
“Your parents didn’t bring you to a witch?” Mateo asked, filling in the blank Dax had missed. He’d forgotten for a second the human aspect of it all. Humans notoriously hated magic. But he didn’t think they’d hate it so much that they’d leave a curse to fester…
Lifting a shoulder, Owen explained, “They thought it would go away on its own. Didn’t get treated for a few years.”
He didn’t look upset about it, like he’d long since accepted the problem. Mateo looked a little green though.
“That’s why you trip a lot and make messes all the time then? You were cursed?”
Before Owen could answer, the door opened and Arthur and Louis came in together, both just as soaked as Dax and the others had been when they first arrived.
Mateo was immediately distracted and stopped them before they could step past his towel rug by the door, forcing them to strip and handing them both towels to keep the floor dry.
While they got dried off, Dax poked around on his phone, trying to look up information on human anatomy.
Surely a crunch sound meant the nose was broken, right?
But he hadn’t thought there was actual bone in a human’s nose.
At least, that’s what he’d been told when learning about skeletal anatomy of different species.
He nudged Owen’s arm, peeking at the injury when he moved the towel for a moment, then winced and made him put it back.
“Louis?” he queried, looking across the room at his fellow researcher. “Can you look at his nose? You’re familiar with human anatomy, aren’t you? I’ve tried looking it up, but I can’t tell if it's just swollen or if there’s potentially an issue that needs a druid.”
Louis, who had been busy following Mateo’s strict instructions, made a face, coming closer to look for himself. “I guess, but I’m not that kind of doctor.”
Owen tried to say he was fine again, but Dax interrupted him, ushering Louis to have a better look. “Let him look anyway,” he chastised. “I swear I heard a crunch.”
It took less than a second for Louis to make a diagnosis.
He actually winced when seeing the damage on Owen’s face.
“That’s broken. Start with ice for the swelling.
It’s not life threatening, but unless he wants to return to work with two black eyes and forever have a slightly crooked nose, he needs to see a healer. ”
Dax looked up to see Mateo already on his phone, his fingers flying across the screen as he likely alerted someone to the incident.
He trusted his mate to handle the problem and stuck close to Owen, who looked downright dejected.
Poor guy. Living with PCR was no joke. It was no wonder he was such a mess all the time.
The rest of the roommates split off after Taron arrived, but for some reason Mateo refused to walk away.
He disappeared into Owen’s room long enough to find him a change of clothes, helping him to get dressed and hovering when he stood to follow Taron out the door.
It almost looked like he wanted to go with him.
“Mateo?”
Shaking his head, Mateo pulled his gaze away from the door as it clicked shut, scooping up the towels from the floor and the dirty clothes he’d helped Owen change out of.
“I should do a load of laundry. If it's broken, it’ll hurt him to bend to pick things up, right? Maybe I should clean his room, too. It’s a mess.
That’s mean to say, though, isn’t it? I didn’t even know PCR was a thing, I just thought he didn’t care and–”
His poor mate was spiraling, and Dax had to catch him with a tentacle around his waist to stop him from scurrying off before he decided to deep clean the entire apartment. He hugged him tightly, waiting for him to let out a shaky breath like he always did when he started to relax.
“Tidying up his space is a nice gesture when someone gets hurt, but I think doing a full deep clean without permission would be a little invasive. Why don’t we do some laundry, make sure he’s got a clean space to come back to, and then you can tell me about what just happened.
I’ve never seen you jump into action like that. You’re usually more reserved.”
Letting out a heavy sigh, Mateo nodded, ducking into the laundry room just off the kitchen to toss in the towels before leading the way to Owen’s room.
He wasn’t wrong, the place was a mess, but now that Dax knew the guy had PCR, it was hard to judge him for it.
It didn’t look like any of it was intentional.
His clothes were in a pile on the floor because several of the rods to hang things in the closet had broken, and there was more than one stain on his blanket on the unmade bed.
Mateo moved methodically around the room, taking all the laundry to the laundry room since he wasn’t sure what was clean and what wasn’t before gathering the take out containers that had been left on the nightstand.
Basically confirming his mate’s earlier suspicion that Owen had been avoiding the kitchen because Mateo had snapped at him.
He knew Mateo hadn’t meant it, he did the same thing to Kaz and felt awful about it after, but maybe Mateo needed an outlet when he started getting stressed out at the condo. “Does the condo have a pool?”
Mateo looked up from where he’d been cleaning up a trashcan that had gotten knocked over with a frown. “What?”
“A pool. A place as fancy as this has to have a gym attached, right? Does it have a pool?”
“I don’t think so,” Mateo shrugged. “At least, it’s never been mentioned to me. Why?”
“Just trying to think of outlets for you when you get stressed out. You look really upset every time you snap at people, and I know you don’t mean it.”
Mateo huffed a pained laugh, leading the way out of Owen’s room with the trash can tucked under one arm and a few bags of old takeout in the other.
“My usual coping mechanism when I’m stressed is cleaning.
My sister said she was doing me a favor by leaving messes around so I’d have something to do with my hands when I needed to think. ”
That sounded like sibling logic, and it made Dax smirk. “Uh huh. Sure. We’ll pretend we believe that.”
For the first time since he showed up at the condo, Mateo smiled at him, shaking his head in fond exasperation.
“She was always messy, we were total opposites in that regard, but I did notice when her room, which had looked decent when we left that morning for school, looked like a complete disaster less than an hour after we got home. She only did that on days when I’d had a hard time.
I’d yell about it, she’d say if it bothered me so bad then I could clean it, and an hour later, I’d feel better. It helped me think.”