log: eddie/steph - patching up (1/2) WHO The Nashtons. (1/2) WHAT Eddie comes back all bloodied and bruised from a mission. WHEN Recently. WHERE Their apartment in the Citadel. WARNING treating wounds, shirtless Eddie and Steph, lots of talking~
Eddie got back from his mission around noon, expecting Stephanie to be either out on the Citadel or doing something in Gotham in his absence. He had been gone all night, something he wasn’t really keen about, but they got their guy and maybe that was all that mattered. Of course, Eddie didn’t stop there, did he? No, the cuts all over his body, the burns he got from electronic blasts and his dislocated shoulder said differently. On Earth-3, Eddie did plenty of fighting close up. It accounted for him actually getting in shape and learning how to use more than one weapon. Here, he wasn’t supposed to be doing any of that. He was an engineer, a good one and all of those skills could fight from a distance. The bruises, cuts and wounds he was suffering from? Looked as up close and personal as anything Stephanie had seen on Earth-3.
There was a time when getting hurt like this gave him a high he couldn’t explain. To have a foe try to beat the life out of him made him feel right, made him feel smart and capable of getting under the skin of whoever crossed him. It made him feel Arkham and he used to love finding secret ways to get that, too. Like sneaking a cookie out of the jar, there was something magical about that kind of madness.
Except Eddie didn’t feel it anymore. When a turian yanked him off that Cerberus scientist before putting a hole through his head? Eddie only felt cold anger. A bubbling rage that frosted the edges of his younger years. Anger without the high wasn’t really worth it, was it?
When Stephanie came home, she could hear a slam followed by a string of cuss words and then another SLAM. Behind their fireplace, near the bar, Eddie was up against the corner of the wall, beer in one hand as he forced his shoulder back into place. He was shirtless, wearing his combat pants and boots, blood mixing with his tattoos and scars to make them seem more vibrant and alive. Another slam and a pop and Eddie turned to look at her. He had a giant black eye and his lip was cut, blood still messed in his 5 o’clock shadow. “I didn’t think you’d be home yet.” Was an apology, sort of. He knew this was trouble.
When Eddie hadn’t returned from his mission, Steph tried her hardest not to worry or fret. They’d gone longer than about twelve hours apart, but that didn’t assuage the niggling feeling that something was wrong or would be eventually. Of course, she knew there was something wrong. Eddie still saw the ghosts of their dead loved ones. He was barely sleeping. He was running himself ragged in space. It all pointed to a problem, and she knew, oh did she know, that he was probably going to get hurt before he got better. They were both so alike sometimes.
When the morning dragged on, and Eddie still wasn’t home, and her worry turned into anxiety that even a Xanax didn’t calm down, she door jumped from the Citadel to Gotham, a therapy session with her doctor on her schedule and desperately needed. She spoke to Dr. Coleman vaguely about her worries for her husband, and he encouraged her to speak to him about it. To voice her concerns and perhaps encourage him to seek his own brand of help that wasn’t something utterly destructive. Steph knew he was right, but Eddie had let her come to the conclusion first, right? He’d let her run her crazy ass ragged until she finally broke. Was that what he wanted?
She still wasn’t sure, even when she left her appointment that day, and there was a little knot in her stomach when she came back to the Citadel. Worried, beyond anything, that something had happened to him on that mission, and she would blame herself for the rest of her life if that were true. But, she assured herself. She told herself that he would just be passed out on their bed when she got home, and she could talk to him when he woke up. It was fine, it was going to be fine.
So, maybe she hadn’t prepared herself for the sight she saw when she came home. The slam drew her towards the bar, and maybe she dropped her bag on the floor in shock in a totally cliche moment. With wide eyes, she stared at him bloodied and bruised and beat up. She didn’t know whether to be angry or scared or hurt for him. Her brain decided anger came first, as it almost always did. “What the fuck happened?” she asked, actually sounding more even than she should have, something stuck in her chest. She wasn’t actually angry, not like she could have been. More startled, more scared, more worried for her riddled man and the state he was getting himself in.
Eddie was angry, he was still angry and slamming his shoulder back into place only barely worked some of that off. Pain scraped away feeling now, but it didn’t take away what he saw in that scientist’s lab and that sick feeling Eddie got in his stomach every time he thought about it. “Can you hand me my tape?” Eddie pointed to a black circle on the pool table by the bar and leaned his shoulder into the wall to keep it in place. He closed his eyes and sighed. This was what he wanted, right? To figure out what got under his skin? Maybe a part of him didn’t think there was anything that could.
“I convinced the guys to hunt down a Cerberus scientist with me. I’ve been going on their jobs long enough, so they agreed. Plus, the government pays good for Cerberus.” Eddie set the practically untouched beer down on the bar and looked at her. “It was this scientist. A guy who was working on turning adept girls into zombie slaves and I kind of lost my shit.” He said it like he didn’t think it was going to happen. Eddie always had a cool head on missions, that’s why people liked to have him calling the shots. But, this? This got to him. “He had a girl cut open on a fucking table waiting to get her final procedure and instead of doing the smart thing and taking him in so the government could question him and get more information, I tackled him. I tried to pop his eyeballs out of his head.”
That wasn’t an exaggeration and they both knew it. When something hit the wrong nerve with Eddie? He almost didn’t even see color anymore. He could just lose it in a way that was all Gotham. But, it didn’t happen often and Eddie thought he was past that in his life. He thought he was as emotionally detached to this kind of thing as someone could get. “He had some guards. They messed me up. Malbia pulled me off him and killed the guy before I could stop her. Dead or alive bounty is the same so she didn’t give a damn.”
Steph was rooted to the spot in a way she hadn’t felt for a very long time. Eddie used to always do that to her when they were first dating, arrest her completely with a single word or glance of his deep brown eyes, and that was what happened right then and there. Wide blue eyes still took him in, frown flickering between something completely pissed off and absolutely concerned for him. There were a few beats, and then her brain clicked, and she pushed herself to grab that tape. She was almost on auto drive for a second. Mind still struggling to catch up with everything he’d just said. Still frowning, she rounded the bar to come up to him, eyes downcast and brain still processing everything. Before walking to him, she stooped down below and grabbed a bottle of vodka and a rag.
“C’mere, let me check that shoulder. Please?” She had been a field medic on Earth-3 when she wasn’t slicing through throngs of Owlman’s mobsters, and she was good at it. Really good. And, she’d seen her fair share of dislocated shoulders in her day, and slamming it against a wall probably did not help as much as he wanted to believe. She twirled the tape on her finger, waiting for him to relent and let her see the shoulder. Cataloging his injuries with a deep, deep frown, she resisted the urge to kiss all the wounds spread across his skin. She kept telling herself to be mad about it. “I was really fucking worried,” she confessed, and she looked up at him finally. “And I look like I had a good goddamn reason for it.”
The reason behind all it? Made her stomach lurch too, and Eddie would know that Stephanie couldn’t fault him for going after men like that. Men who hated women and used them as objects rather than treat them as actual human beings. She’d been treated like that before, and oh god, anytime she heard stories of girls getting hurt, she felt sick. But that didn’t absolve him from his recklessness. She shook some of the vodka onto the rag before holding the bottle out to him as a sort of makeshift anaesthesia for the pain she knew he was feeling. Warzone medicine at its finest. “You could have fucking gotten yourself killed, Eddie.”
Eddie didn’t argue. He plopped down on a barstool, hand pressed on his shoulder as he watched her round closer to him. Eddie remembered enjoying feeling like a dangerous creature. Before Earth-3? He’d smile and quip and shrug his way out of all of this. All of that was gone now and he didn’t have the how or why. “Oh, don’t give me that I could have died bullshit.” Eddie gestured towards a very antiquated first aid kit for space that had all the stuff she needed to patch him together. Yeah, maybe he could have just gone to a doctor who could slap some medigel on him, but Eddie wanted to feel the process of being patched up. He wanted to know every little open cut that spelt mistake in his blood. “I seriously can’t count the number of times either of us could have died on my hands and feet. Yours, too. Could have died is what we are.”
He took a swing of the vodka with a buurrrrr noise as the strength of it sent a chill up his spine. Eddie immediately snatched one of her hands and pressed a kiss to her fingers, not caring if it was going to piss her off any more than she already was. “It’s fine. They’re not letting me anywhere near Cerberus anymore. And, what’s the point anyway, right? Cerberus is just going to find another scientist, another girl who can do things no one else can and cut her right open. And, then the Reapers are going to come down from the sky and kill them all.” Eddie said with wide, sarcastic eyes. He knew how insane it sounded, so insane that he couldn’t tell anyone that was from this door.
Stephanie rolled her eyes hard, reaching to grab that first aid kit and placing it on the bar next to her. “Fine,” she snapped, her concern getting the best of her and festering into a heat in her chest. The sharp smell of pure vodka filled the air, and she wrinkled her nose. Relenting for a second, she let him kiss her fingers, wiggling each one against her lips as a fond smile crawled up the side of her mouth. He was right; she was easy. But, her brain snapped back on, and she detangled her hand from his grasp. “I was worried. You were gone all night, and I was worried. Can’t I be worried about you potentially dying without me there?” Without warning, in quick bout of frustration, she pressed the alcohol-soaked rag to one of his shallower cuts, fingers digging so the vodka spread right into the wound.
Less than a second passed, and she removed the now bloodstained washcloth from his skin and pressed a kiss to his messy, sweaty hair. She adopted a gentler approach, kissing a different part of his head as she ran the rag over each cut or wound. Some were deeper than others, some might require stitches. The bruises were another concern, and truthfully, she should have suggested he go to a doctor here and get fixed up. But, she wanted to be the one to patch him up. Selfishly, she always wanted to be the one to do that. “Don’t act like you don’t care,” she murmured, cleaning cuts bit by bit. “You obviously cared right then and there. About her, or about what they were doing, or whatever, but you cared.” She didn’t even want to think about the inevitable destruction in the door. All the lives in this city lost. She pressed a kiss to his ear, then nipped his lobe. For a moment, she rested her cheek against his hair, just glad that he was alive and relatively okay. “You could go to a doctor and skip all this,” she breathed into his ear, then found a relatively blood-free piece of his cheek to kiss.
Eddie yelped pathetically at the sting of booze to an open wound and pouted, big brown eyes up at her like she kicked a dog while he was down. Still he was smiling and there wasn’t much room for anything else in his eyes but love. “Baby,” His tone softened just as her attitude did and he tilted his face this way and that for kisses. “Look, I’m sorry. I’d be pissed if you did the same.” He set the vodka down and wrapped his good arm around her waist, opening his legs so she could scoot closer. Her body against his was better than any painkiller he could think of and part of him was glad she caught him like this. Otherwise, he’d have time to bury it and all this would just keep building until it exploded into something actually dangerous.
“I go on these missions. I save people sometimes. And, it doesn’t do anything for me. Then I go out and do something that I hope will get under my skin and when it does, I can’t think.” Eddie shook his head. “If I want to be in the Justice League or be something good I can’t be like this.” He said it like he didn’t know what he wanted. And, he didn’t. Right now he was just trying to find was to forget about Earth-3 and feel good about himself. “I don’t know who I am anymore. Everything’s changed.”
He sighed and tilted his head up for a real kiss. “A real doctor?” Eddie asked with a smirk wiggling the edges of his mouth. “I don’t want that crap. I want you. I want you to fix me up.” Eddie could be selfish, too.
She slid into the embrace without further incident or fighting, stepping between his legs so she was close enough that it was almost difficult to get her job done. The hand not holding the odorous rag caught his chin and tugged him to look up at her. The pad of her thumb traced the corners of his mouth, and she looked down at him with a mingling sense of love and concern. She’d known for some time that his anxieties were plaguing him just as badly as hers were. The panic attacks, the edginess, the compartmentalizing. “You wouldn’t be in pain if you let someone else do it.” He could see her thinking, of what to say or what to do, and she sighed sharply before obliging that real kiss. Leaning close and tracing kisses across his cheekbone to his hair and wrapping her arms around to hold him as tightly as she could without hurting him. She didn’t care about the blood staining her jeans and white t-shirt. She just wanted to hold him close.
Steph held him for a long string of moments. Her heart hammered just a touch in her chest, and he could feel how scared she was for him in her clutch. She dropped that rag to the floor and rubbed her hand up and down his back gently, staining her fingers with his blood like she had countless times on the dirty, deadly streets of Earth-3. They used to hold each other like this sometimes, in the middle of that battlezone when things got scarily close to taking one away from the other. Clinging like the world was going to take them away before they got the chance to save each other. She sighed a little shakily and pulled back finally.
“Baby,” she murmured as she let him go, wiping his blood off on her shirt and going to hold his face in her hands. “You don’t have to be Justice goddamn League if you don’t want to. You are a good man to me, and that doesn’t mean you have to be in the fucking Justice League to do something good. To feel good about yourself.” The blood that was left on her fingertips spread across his cheekbones. “I feel lost, too. I do. I’m still trying to find myself, and I promise that we can find ourselves together.” She sighed, blues bearing into browns. “I’m worried about you, baby. I’m worried about what’s going on with you.”
“Maybe I don’t mind the pain.” He murmured and then smiled at that sharp sigh and the supposively reluctant kiss. Eddie didn’t like pissing her off as much anymore, but he always loved getting under her skin. She could claim that they’d get used to each other, that one day she’d know all of his tricks and cons. Eddie knew that wasn’t the case. There wasn’t a man more unpredictable and sometimes it even showed in the very beat-by-beat love he had for her. He kissed her like she was the only way to sooth the pain and closed his eyes as she roamed kisses and fingertips over his body. Stephanie thought she was a blunt object most of the time, but she could be delicate with him. She could work through the mess to see what he needed.
“I don’t know what I want.” He told her about the Justice League and everything else. “I thought here I’d be happier playing by my own rules, with people who are just as untrustworthy and dark as I am. But, I’m bored.” Eddie was a dangerous man when he was bored. He got reckless and mean and sharp. “I’m good with the League, but I don’t feel right with them. I’m good playing Oracle, but I don’t feel right with them. I can do so much and none of it feels right.”
Eddie kissed her palm as blood marked his cheek and he pulled his teeth over his bottom lip, tasting rust and leftover vodka. God, he was sick of being drunk. Of drinking. But, he needed it here to not pass out from the pain once she started stitching him up. And, he wanted her to stitch him up. He really couldn’t stand anyone else looking over these wounds at the moment. “And, then when I try to do something I care about, I can’t. I lose it. I’m not cut out for anything anymore.” Eddie pulled her closer, digging his face into her bloodstained t-shirt and listened to her almost frantic heartbeat.
“I’m worried about me, too.”
She rumbled out a noise as he buried his face into her chest, and she held him close, fingers tangling into his dark curls and pressing his face into her breasts. Her hand ran through his hair, then smoothed over the back of his head while she rubbed her thumb on the back of his neck. Stephanie could be rough and tumble, she usually was, but something gentler always clicked on when Eddie needed it. After years and years together, when she wasn’t lost in her own shit, she could almost always figure out what he needed. Sure, he would always surprise her and get under her skin, but she knew him too.
Another long string of moments passed where she held him like that, like she was trying to repair something just by bringing him close. And maybe she was. Maybe she didn’t know the exact answer for his problems, but she would always be there to love him and support him. To help figure out the solutions. It hurt her immensely that he was in pain, both physical and mental, and a big part of her knew that her riddled man wouldn’t stop doing this shit just because he got the crap beat out of him. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” she said quietly, then huffed out a laugh. “Well, more hurt.” Her grip in his hair twitched.
She rocked on her feet, his head moving with her chest as she swayed them back and forth. “Come with me to see Dr. Coleman.” For once, it wasn’t a question. There was suggestion in her voice, sure, but she wanted him to do it. “It’ll be good to talk stuff out, baby. To get to the root of everything. You’re cut out for anything you want, but right now there’s just so much going on in your head.” It wasn’t accusatory; it was understanding. “I think it’ll help a lot. He’s good, baby. He’s been good for me, and he’s been just what I needed. I think he’ll be good for you.”
Eddie gave a jagged sigh and held onto her like a goddamned lifeboat. His hand snaked up under her shirt and over her back. “I used to like getting hurt. I don’t even have that anymore.” He laughed sadly into her chest and then looked up at her when she suggested Dr. Coleman. Yeah, he knew he needed help, but help from Gotham in any form felt useless. Gotham wasn’t Gotham anymore and every time he spent time through the door he felt homesick in a way that he couldn’t explain.
He instinctively went to touch her, to wrap his arms around her, but then hissed out pain when his bad shoulder didn’t want to budge. He held it with his other hand, eyes closed as he powered through the pain and then turned his head to take another swing of vodka. All of this? Was going to hurt for weeks. A constant reminder that he couldn’t answer his own riddle. “Don’t you mean, I should go back to Arkham?” Eddie asked wryly and made a face at the strength of the vodka before setting the bottle down. “Every shrink and their mother has read my files. I’m incurable, right? And any shrink worth their salt would do the smart thing and stay the hell away from my mind.”
As his hand snaked up her back, he could feel her erratic heartbeat start to steady. Just like her touch managed to help him like a salve, she calmed down when she could feel his fingertips drag down her skin. Her eyes closed briefly, and she leaned down to kiss the top of his head with brimming affection and love. She snuck another kiss to the side of his temple before he hissed out his pain, and she jumped back. “Stop distracting me, I need to clean you up,” she teased, knowing full-well that he had couldn’t have done a thing to have to keep her away.
“Don’t fucking joke around about that place,” Stephanie chided him, earning him a flat look like she would never goddamn ever let him go away to that hell again. Sure, it was nice when he went back by some fluke, but Leland was gone. Arkham couldn’t be anything good anymore. “He isn’t like that, baby. I promise. Don’t you think he should’ve been running for the hills the second I said I was a bat? Snitch me out?” She shook her head, and she stooped down to pick up the rag, but she was concerned about it getting contaminated. “Think I can use my shirt to clean you up?” She smirked over at him, tossing the rag to the side and opening up the first aid kit again. Concern came back into her voice. “You’re gonna be in pain for weeks if we do it this way, Eddie.”
Eddie gave her a roguish grin when she accused him of distracting her and shrugged like there really wasn’t anything he could do about it. He could be bleeding out on the floor and he’d still try to cop a feel. He figured one day, when they were old and he was dying after a long, happy life, he’d probably motorboat her one last time before croaking. That was living the dream. And, the reminder of living a long life left a clue, a hint to what this way all about even if he didn’t understand it yet.
“What if he gets frustrated with me or tries to medicate me to high heaven?” Eddie was already on board, she could hear it in his voice, but he needed to know he could trust this guy. It was one thing to be a bat, it was a whole different ball game to be a rogue. “And, what’s going to happen if I start getting treated in Gotham? We might as well move back at this rate.” He flopped his arms and gave another string of ows and curses. He was a man in transition, a person who didn’t know who or what he could do with his life. He wanted to keep searching for the right thing, not matter what it was, with her at his side. Eddie didn’t know if that was possible in Gotham.
Eddie smirked and tilted his head, eyeing her frame under the shirt and shrugged. “I think I can live with that.” He snuck fingers under the bottom of her shirt and tugged it up a little, delicate fingertips tickling her belly. “I want it to hurt. I need to be reminded of my fuck up, otherwise I blaze right past it.”
“He isn’t going to. He’ll give it to you as a supplement, but god, baby, he makes me talk a lot. And it’s good. I felt like shit at first talking about everything -- about Earth-3 and my dad and Black Mask. It hurt a lot. But now? I’m starting to feel better about it all. I feel like I’m actually working past stuff, y’know? And I know you know it’ll be good for you too, Eddie.” And then, she shook her head. Part of her really, really wanted to go back to Gotham. It was her home, after all. But she knew he didn’t want to just yet, and despite whatever the fuck Damian thought, she wasn’t sacrificing herself for him. At least she thought. “No, that doesn’t mean that, baby. You can do what I do. Go there for a couple of hours. Go see Dr. Coleman, maybe go to a Veterans’ Anonymous meeting if you want. Come back here when you’re done. We can go to lunch or something over there. It doesn’t even have to be an all day thing.”
The pain earned him another a frown, and she pulled out the suture kit from the box, along with gauzes, medical tape, and fabric bandages for a makeshift sling, laying it all out on the bar before turning back to him. Stephanie smirked down at him, eyebrows wiggling just a touch. They could be bleeding out on the ground or yelling themselves raw, and they’d still find a way to flirt or touch each other or suggest dirty little things. That was just the way the Nashtons were. She shivered a little as his fingers barely skated up her skin, and she tried her hardest not to pull him into her arms again. After a moment, she looked at him to tug it up the rest of the way.
“Do you regret it?” she asked, encouraging him to touch her for a moment before waving at the vodka bottle for him to take another shot. He didn’t have to be in blinding pain. “I wish I had something other than that for you, babe. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll do it if you come with me.” Eddie said childishly. “Put our meetings back to back or you can just walk me there.” He knew at this point he didn’t have a whole lot of options. He needed medication, he needed to stop seeing his dead friends and he needed someone to talk to. Stephanie was too close to give him the perspective he needed and really he didn’t have very many people besides her. Everyone thought Eddie was put together since he was good at hiding pain better than anyone. Now, the cracks were starting to show.
He smiled brightly at the wiggle of her eyebrows and carefully, slowly, pulled the shirt off her. He had to do it one handed, the other arm folded at his side. Once the shirt was off, he pressed a kiss to her exposed skin to claim it, dark eyes looking up at her filled with storms and want for her.
Did he regret it?
“I regret trying to hurt someone like that.” Eddie admitted and then leaned back, taking another swing of the vodka and found it going down a lot easier. “I regret that my emotions got the better of me, that rarely happens when I’m working.” He squinted up at her and then shook his head. “But, I don’t regret pushing myself. I don’t get some hero high off helping people. I don’t feel compelled the way the Bat or other heroes do. I help because I want harmony. Because I want to live in a place I can raise my kids. That’s really all of it.” Eddie didn’t always wear his logical detachment on his sleeve, but there it was. “But, this got to me. I cared about someone I’ve never met. I tried to kill someone for her. And, that means something. I just don’t know what.”
Stephanie smiled down at him softly. “I can do that,” she obliged, running her fingers down his bruised jaw. “We can even do joint sessions, if you want? Sometimes? It might be good to talk together.” That couples therapy they always joked about might actually come to fruition. “I can call him later. Ask him to squeeze you in as a favor. We’ll give him one of our bottles of champagne for bribery,” she teased. Then, she looked at him earnestly. “It’s going to be good, baby. And I’ll be there every step of the way, just like you were here for me.” They both knew it was something that he needed, and who better to be there along for the ride than Steph?
A pleased smile crawled up her mouth when he kissed her skin, and she ran her hand back and forth through his hair, and then she took her shirt out of his hands. “You’re buying me new clothes after this.” She took the vodka, and she poured it over the still relatively clean shirt, and she started to slowly clean the rest of the blood in earnest, listening to him talk as she pressed the soaked fabric into deep wounds. Slowly, carefully, and sure to cause him as little pain as possible. “Stuff like that is always sensitive for me,” she said thoughtfully, wiping the blood away from a wound that was still bleeding a little. Yeah, that one was going to need stitches. A lot of them were. And then his arm had to be set. Fuck, he was a wreck, and he wasn’t going to let her convince him to go to a real doctor. She frowned deeply, continuing on with her ministrations.
“Girls? Getting hurt like that? It always gets to me, too,” she continued, tongue sticking out between her teeth and concentrated even as she stood there in her bra wiping his blood away wit her shirt. Steph might have been upset, and she was concerned, but she could concentrate on performing procedures with a surprising amount of ease. That was why she was considering looking into it further. “Maybe that’s what it was? I don’t know, baby. I wish I could tell you. I wish I could solve all of this for you. I don’t want you suffering. That’s the last thing I ever want.” The blood was mostly wiped away, or at least the wounds themselves were clean, and she placed the ruined shirt on the bar to take up the suture kit. “Ready?”
“Couples therapy? Wow we’re really running this marriage into the ground fast.” Eddie teased and knew he was going to get swatted for it. “I think it would be good for us, too. And, he probably wants to see how we interact. If the sweetness doesn’t murder him first.” The Nashtons were pretty unbearable to be around sometimes.
The poking and decontaminating didn’t hurt so much anymore and Eddie just focused on admiring her handiwork. Stephanie was a brilliant battle medic on Earth-3 and seeing her work again filled him with a sort of pride. Eddie knew she should just drag him to a doctor, but he wanted to see what she could do on short notice. He wanted her to fix him. In his mind, she was the only one who could. “You’re good.” Eddie told her simply, looking up as she fretted and looked over all his wounds. Whether it was this or her painting or her crime fighting or whatever he saw real merit in, he always told her.
Eddie sighed and shook his head. “I’ll figure it out eventually. It’s hard to find a passion when mine was riddling. On Earth-3 I got to do it every time we took on Owlman. I didn’t have to change. In Gotham, there’s no one to challenge, no one I want to. I don’t know if I even want to be a full time riddle machine anymore.” He was just rambling at this point, never finding a real answer to his problems. But, it felt good and it felt honest. They both needed a little of that.
“I’m ready.” Eddie winced and then put his hand up. “Wait. Gimmie a kiss first. Tell me you love me.” He ran his good hand up her body, between her breasts to hold her chin. His thumb gently rubbed her cheek and he smiled at her. And the smile said everything was going to be okay even if he wasn’t.
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” she said with a barely flat look, lips twitching in the corners, and she was very careful to slap an unbruised piece of him. See? She was thoughtful and considerate. The smile broke through though, and she rolled her eyes with amusement. “I think he’s already a little prepared with how I talk about you. He knows I’m madly in love with my husband.”
Her teasing faded away for a moment when he complimented her skills. “Shush, you.” After all these years, Stephanie was still nearly incapable of taking compliments from him now and then. She’d gotten better over the years, but still she was bashful, especially when it came to her skills. When he complimented her on her artwork or being a bat or anything, she could only smile and deflect. So, she shook her head, and she looked down at the first cut she was going to stitch up.
She looked up at him, rubbing his chest with her flat-palmed hand lovingly to soothe him. “It’s okay to have to take your time. But I really do think going to talk to Coleman’s gonna help. He reminds me of Thompkins.” There was a fond smile for the woman. As much as she used Stephanie for an example, she admired the woman, and she was grateful for how she’d helped her out. Helped all of them out. “You know? A little stern, compassionate. No nonsense. He’s not going to let you get away with shit, baby. Be ready for that.”
She giggled, shaking her head like it was such a burden to kiss him and profess her feelings, and she shivered as his hand grazed up her body. “I love you, Eddie Nashton.” Her fingers tangled into his hair, and she dipped down to capture his lips with hers. It was tentative at first, chaste and loving, and then she deepened it slowly before she could help herself. He’d been gone all night, and she was worried about him, and she rumbled something that spoke of how much she wanted and needed him to be okay. How much she believed that assuring smile even if the solution wasn’t clear at the moment. She knew things were going to be okay eventually.
Pulling back, she pressed a few, feather-light kisses on his bruised jaw before nipping his ear, and then she took the shirt up again to disinfect the cut on his side again before pulling his good arm up to work on the stitches. She made quick work of it, closing that deep wound, and when she finished, she kissed the skin right above it, then reached to kiss his mouth. And that was the pattern for every wound as she closed them up -- a line of sutures, a quick tying-off, and peppered kisses to his skin and his lips.