me upright again. I roll my eyes at the worried look in his gaze. I obviously would’ve stopped myself from falling...or the floor would have caught me. Either way, it would’ve been fine. He’s overreacting.
When he watches me for several seconds and I don’t tip over again, Rook disappears into a stall and turns on the water. He’s back in a flash, kneeling in front of me, and I wonder if I just blacked out again or if he really moved that quickly. He carefully unties the knots in the makeshift bandages around my leg and unwraps the torn pieces of the dirty blanket of assholish origin. The fabric sticks to the cut like it tried to meld together and become one. He pulls the strips of fabric away, making me hiss in pain, and the edges of my cut come up too, like they’re trying to keep the fabric from leaving. It’s like watching two lovers being torn apart; hurts like it too.
As soon as he gets the bandages off, my leg immediately starts to bleed again. I watch the tracks of blood slip down my thigh, and I can’t help but feel like it’s mourning the loss of the bandages. I stare at it for another beat before fingers snap in my line of sight, and I’m pulled from my weird ass thoughts.
The snapping fingers lead back to Rook, and I focus on him. “I need to go get some things for your leg. That iron must’ve been laced with something. It’s fucking up your healing. I think you’re hypothermic too, Sun—I mean, Sinclair, so I’m going to sit you in the hot water, and you should start to feel better in just a couple minutes. Our cockatrices bounce back pretty quickly, but I don’t know how long you’ve been like this…” Rook trails off, and I can see anger and frustration etched in his expression as he speaks.
“Just sit and get warmed up, okay? I’ll be right back,” he stares at me for a moment, but I don’t react. My thoughts are muddy and thick.
With a troubled exhale, he pulls my oversized gray shirt over my head and picks me up before carrying me into the steam soaked stall. The hot water hits my bare skin, and I hiss and shy away from the heat.
Rook tenderly shushes me as I whimper. “You need this, Sinclair. I know it feels too hot right now, but just give it a couple minutes, and then it won’t feel hot enough, I promise.”
He sets me down on the warm tiles, and a waterfall of heat envelops me. I rest my head back against the tile, and Rook watches me to make sure I’m okay for a minute before running out. I can hear his boots squeaking against the pristine white tile, and then all I hear is the water falling from the showerhead to patter against the floor and flow down the drain.
After a couple minutes of the scorching water raining down on me, I realize that my body stops trembling. I didn’t even know I’d been shaking. Slowly, the hot deluge brings me back to life like some magical potion. My brain slowly feels like it’s clearing up, and the scorching water rinses out the gash in my leg, helping to clean out whatever iron-rusted muck was in there. A steady stream of red swirls down the drain, but it’s no longer dirty, and it already looks and feels better. Things around me start to seem more in focus.
Just like Rook said, the hot water soon doesn’t feel like it’s burning me alive anymore. As my temperature regulates, I find that I need it to be even hotter. I look down at my cut and the water flushing it out. I reach up and turn the dial all the way to red. The water instantly gets hotter, and I sigh at how good it feels.
Cockatrices can have trouble regulating their temperatures sometimes. It’s not an issue really when it comes to the heat, but when it comes to the cold, we can catch hypothermia very quickly. I can’t believe I didn’t notice the signs. Stupid, cold-ass, lizard-killing solitary confinement cell.
I scoot more directly under the shower spray and moan.
Fuck, that feels good.
The sound of my satisfaction echoes around the tiled bathroom, and I feel wrapped up and cocooned by it. I feel like me again, washed clear of my injury and sex session.