hear. “You wanted to step up.” It wasn’t said with any censure, but Carter groaned.
“I was just trying to handle the situation.”
“I know, which is stepping up. You’ve not had a lot of practice flying solo, QB, and that’s on us, we shoulda been giving you more to handle here and there. Tonight was like jumping in the deep end first time out, and that’s not really fair.”
“You act like you guys told me to do this.” He made a useless flapping gesture toward the clubhouse. “Shit happened, I was here, so I handled it. Or, I tried to.” He sighed. “It would have been okay if Tenny wasn’t here.”
Mercy chuckled. “I feel like that’s what most people think about him. Poor shithead.”
~*~
“Go clean up,” Walsh told him the second he entered the clubhouse, and Reese didn’t argue; went back to his dorm, and got out his med kit, frowning at the way he smeared blood all over the clasps and lid. His hands were slippery with it, the cuts on his palms trailing crimson trickles down each finger; they dripped onto the bedspread, and into the tidy interior of the kit. He pressed squares of gauze into each palm, the blood gluing it to his skin immediately.
The laceration on his arm was still weeping, though the flow had slowed, and, under the lamplight, he could see that it was deeper than he’d initial thought. When he wiped the blood away with a bit of cotton batting, he glimpsed the yellow shine of fat beneath the top layers of skin; pressed the batting tight when fresh blood welled, applying hard pressure with one bloody palm that had already soaked through the gauze. Laceration to laceration, both stinging sharply.
When his door opened, he lifted his head expecting to find Mercy.
Tenny filled the threshold, hesitating a moment, his expression, before he dragged his mask into place, one of quiet horror as his gaze went to Reese’s bloodied hands and arm.
Reese felt blood slide between his fingers; it was dripping down onto the carpet, now.
Tenny took a short, sharp breath, and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. “Here.” He crouched down in front of Reese and reached out with both hands.
Even though he’d just attached Reese a few minutes before, had been the one to cause this damage, wild-eyed and vicious, Reese immediately submitted his injuries to him; lad the backs of his hands in Tenny’s open palms.
They both seemed to realize it at once. He sucked in a breath, and heard Tenny do the same.
Reese stared down at his own hands, the red-soaked gauze, the pearls of blood sliding out from the edges, rolling off his palms – and down into Tenny’s palms. Tenny’s thumb stroked over the pads of his fingers, smearing the blood there, a slow, back-and-forth sweep. His breath shivered on the exhale, cool across Tenny’s wet skin.
Then Tenny reached for the kit and set to work. He taped wadded cotton batting over the lacerations to stop the bleeding, then used alcohol wipes to clean off the rest of Reese’s skin. By the time he peeled the tape back, the cuts were ready to be flushed; he did so with saline, catching the drip in the little dish Reese kept for just such a purpose.
Tenny worked in silence, and Reese glanced up once, searchingly, to find him intent on his task, brows drawn together, his frown deep.
When the wounds were clean, Tenny paused a moment. Traced the very edge of the one on Reese’s arm with a careful fingertip. He exhaled long and slow through his nostrils, shoulders slumping; but still, he didn’t speak.
Ointment was applied, and then bandages.
Reese flexed his hands afterward, the tape tight and binding against the movement. “Thank you.”
Tenny met his gaze, then, finally. His eyes were very wide, and very blue, and full of an emotion that Tenny couldn’t name, but whose enormity hit him like a shove in the chest, regardless. It stunned him – and by the time he’d scraped together a question, Tenny was standing, and tidying the kit.
Reese sat upright, bandaged hands resting on his thighs. He studied Tenny’s profile as he ordered everything with military efficiency, and snapped the lid shut. The mask was firmly in place again, an expressionless front that revealed nothing, and invited nothing.
“Tenny.”
He gathered up the dirty gauze, wipes, and batting and went to throw them in the bathroom wastebasket.