Who: Hunter and Zee What: A Rescue Call (1/2) Where: Hunter's Ranch, Zee's car, and the apartment When: Today? Warnings/Rating: Some injuries and angst in this part. Naughtiness in the next though.
Hunter’s truck sat conspicuously in the middle of the parking lot to one side of the ranch, not because of its size or state (because in the black emptiness of the gravel lot only a pickup would look right) but because it had its hood propped open. Under the pink of the beautiful desert night it was somehow obscene, like somebody with their ribcage opened up on a buffet table draped in silk cloth. There wasn’t a dog or man in sight, and the abandoned truck was a corpse without mourners.
It was obviously too late in the day for anyone else to be at the ranch, a cluster of buildings surprisingly modern considering the relative distance from the Strip. Behind the barn, a long green structure with a flat roof and no hint of the red octagons of old, the painted backdrop of scrub and cliffs was now blue shadow, and the desert hush was ominous in the last remaining floodlights. As the sound of wheels pulled up outside, a side door at the front of the barn opened, letting out the hum of the running air conditioner and the musty grass smell of horses at rest.
Zee had maybe driven just a little too fast on his way to the ranch. With no need to stop for clothes or Tylenol, he made better time than he'd expected, pulling up only about 15 minutes after Hunter hung up the phone. He wasn't quite certain where he was going, but it was hard to miss the truck. There was another tug of sadness behind Zee's ribcage at the sight of it. For someone that had lived a decade on the road, the loss of four wheels was a distinct tragedy.
He pulled to a stop nearby, squinting at the desert colors and wondering if he should get out of the car to look for Hunter. The best bet would likely be the barn, but he'd never made a habit of getting too close to creatures that were larger than himself. He was still debating when the movement of the door opening and the air conditioned hum caught his attention.
From this angle, it was clear that all the gravel of the lot and a low metal fence was meant to keep the horses in while they waited for the next bus of tourists from any of a number of fancy hotels, and for form and function’s sake there was a wooden barn-ish thing that could house perhaps ten people or three horses in foul weather. The sign said HORSEBACK RIDING above it and somebody had gone to the trouble of painting one side of it red to appease expectations. The building Hunter exited was the one that they really used to house the animals, though; animals there for training or recuperation from the shows in the city.
From the look of it, Hunter might need some recuperation of his own. His head was bare of hat or sunglasses and his hair was dusty, and in the low light it wasn’t easy to see what was wrong right off, at least not until he limped a little up the passenger side of the still running car. He looked as if someone had recently roped him under the tailgate of a truck and driven to Arizona and back. He was bruised and torn down his entire left side, and his shirt was in tatters. The jeans were in slightly better shape, but not by much. He had not been exaggerating; the boots were the only thing in one piece. The rest of him was another matter. Hunter pulled the door open with his right hand before Zee could get out and worked himself onto the passenger seat with a grunt. He was holding his left arm out in front of him and he was a little pale under all that dirt. “Not as bad as it looks,” he said, squinting at Zee across the center of the car. His cheek and jaw were scratched up but his eye was in one piece under a cut at the edge of a brow.
Zee’s stomach dropped as he watched Hunter cross to the car, and while he left the car running, he shoved the stick into park just as the passenger’s side door was opening. He extended both hands, as if to help Hunter settle into the seat, but he didn’t know where to touch along that exposed side that wouldn’t hurt. It left his hands hovering between the two of them, expression gone dark with worry. “Jesus fuck, Hunter...” It slipped out as a whisper, voice warped with concern around his name. His hands finally found resting points, one on what appeared to be the less injured shoulder, the other with fingertips barely a ghost under the scraped angle of Hunter’s jaw, just enough pressure to turn his face to get a better look.
“Better try again, with something more believable. Because it looks like shit.” His voice was still quiet, close and warm with worry in the small space between them, made smaller by the way Zee leaned in to look for more injuries. His own stomach was doing a sick, slow turn. It was the sort of feeling he didn’t have much experience with, especially not until recently. The last time he’d felt it, he was picking Sam up off the hotel’s kitchen floor. Hunter wasn’t nearly that injured or abused, from what he could see, but it didn’t stop the panicked concern from making itself known, loudly and insistently in his mind.
Most of it was dirt, and if there was blood, it was thin and dry and pressed into the scrapes on his face, shoulder and hip. He held his arm against his chest but it seemed to be in the general shape that arms are supposed to be, and the bad light made assessing swelling or bruising impossible. The tattered clothing made it look worse, and the major concern was that Hunter was in this kind of shape with nobody around to notice.
Hunter wasn’t used to anyone coddling him for any reason, and certain instincts kicked in when he was hurt. He leaned away from the hands as they reached out toward him, his eyes cast cool by the low light, a frown pressing down on his lips and his tongue against his teeth. Strange little alarms were going off in his head that shouted at him about danger and the need to be angry, but Hunter didn’t know why. His skin was grainy with dirt and dried sweat, and the line of his shoulder was a hard cord of uncomfortable muscle. Again he attempted to pull away. “Horse threw me. Slid down a hill. I’m fine. Just need a shower.” This last was punctuated by a strangely defensive movement to twist his left side away from Zee’s immediate vision, a movement completely impossible considering he was on the passenger side and Zee was in the driver’s seat.
Zee moved his hands back at Hunter’s frown and attempted twists away. They hung there, palms out and long fingers spread, in the space between them. Too late, he recalled the memory he’d received, the way he’d wanted to track down Hunter’s family again and give back a little of what they’d made him live with as a kid. And he knew, in the way that came with meeting more than his fair share of people over the years, how a childhood like that could stick for years after you got out. He slowly lowered his hands, moving smoothly enough that he looked like he was trying to sooth a wild animal. Even his voice was lower when he replied. “Alright. That’s... okay.” He couldn’t help still wanting to touch, fingers light, to assess for himself whether or not Hunter was (basically) still in one piece, but he knew it wasn’t about him.
“Let’s get you home then. I’ll let you use all the hot water if you want.” He glanced in the back, toward the bag of clean clothes, and then back at Hunter. “You want something else to throw on before we get there?” Without waiting for a reply, he reached back and tugged out a (slightly wrinkled, very oversized) tshirt and let it fall in Hunter’s lap. The car was in gear and heading out of the lot before he said anything else, his voice still soft. “So... why’d you go and let a horse put you in the dirt?” It was a round-about way to ask what had happened, and Zee kept his eyes on the road.
Some of that animal need to strike out faded as the hands moved away, and the remaining vestiges of the feeling made Hunter want to get back out of the car again when it was already moving. It was confusing, because five minutes ago all Hunter had wanted was to see Zee and get all the dirt and sting out of his skin. Now he felt strangely unsafe, as if he’d just gotten into the car with someone that might make the pain--which wasn’t really all that bad at all--worse. The instinct made no sense. Hunter trusted Zee, knew that the man would never lay a hand on him. He turned his head to stare at the other man while Zee was distracted with the clothes, trying to figure out if anything was different. Nothing. He was the same Zee, looking worried through his ink and pretty features. Hunter sent a questioning thought at Dorian, but the immortal wasn’t paying any attention, thinking about something else or sleeping. Hunter shook his head slightly, not understanding the primal defenses against the world in himself that he could have read on an animal in a second.
“Stupid,” he replied, shifting so his weight was off his scraped left side and examining the shirt with his right hand. “Trying to get him used to trails. Skittish, out of Kentucky, you know how they are.” Zee wouldn’t, but it was a phrase Hunter seemed to use often. “Anyway. Not paying attention, some damn plastic bag blows across the trail and he spooks.” Hunter sighed. It wasn’t easy to throw Hunter out of the saddle, and said horse could consider it an accomplishment. Hunter screwed up, not paying attention. He was one of those that didn’t blame a horse for being a horse. “Path drops off on the one side. Went down.” Hunter took out a pocket knife to cut the last couple strips keeping the tattered shirt he’d put on that morning off his neck and right shoulder. It was sharp and he was good at it.
Zee didn’t know animals very well at all - anything more subtle than a growl was beyond him - but he could read people well enough, and he knew that everything about the tight lines of Hunter’s body said ‘hands off’. Every quick glance over revealed the same thing, and every glance etched the frown line deeper between Zee’s brows. He didn’t like it, didn’t have to like it, felt like punching at the stupid fucks that had made the tension an automatic reaction for Hunter. He didn’t know entirely what to do, but he could work out well enough what not to do. So he listened, and when he did speak, he kept his voice as non-threatening as he could. He also didn’t make another move to touch Hunter again, even though he wanted to.
He had no clue why horses out of Kentucky would be any different than any other horse, but he nodded, like it made sense, anything to get Hunter to keep talking. He was always looser when he was talking about his animals, and Zee knew that was a very good thing. “So a wrong place, wrong time thing then?” His eyes shifted from the road for only a second to check on Hunter again, then back to the asphalt between them and Vegas. The knife, so close to Hunter’s neck, especially in a moving car, made Zee’s heart meet his stomach, and he let out a murmured “jesus...” at the sight of Hunter cutting his own clothing off. “Be fucking careful with that,” he said as he shook his head and kept his hands clenched on the wheel to avoid any sudden swerving.
Hunter was relaxing quickly, the strange initial reaction quickly fading away from his mind, something to be chalked up to adrenaline or fatigue. Pulling the shirt off the other way was impossible, because he didn’t want to bang up his wrist (the arm was scraped up, but it was the wrist that was hurting him). He made an irritated little growl in the back of his throat as he sawed at the ring of cloth still stuck to his neck, blade out toward the windshield and away from his skin. “My own fault. Horse like that needs looking after, and I wasn’t paying him enough mind.” He caught Zee looking at the knife and gave him something of an incredulous squint out of one eye. The cut made him look like a pirate. “Relax.” The knife was only sharp on one side, a fold-up that every ranch hand stuck in a pocket for the odd little task. Hunter’s wasn’t a pricey version but he kept it sharp and the wooden handle looked like it had been through hell with him. Nobody was going to carry around a dinky set of scissors when a tough pocket knife would do for almost everything.
“Be easier to relax when you don’t have a knife near your own throat in a moving car,” Zee muttered, mostly to himself, but he didn’t complain any more than that. Even if he did continue to send worried looks across the car as Hunter sawed at the fabric. It was silent for a bit, other than the sound of the car itself and the saw-pop of threads giving way to steel. And other glance at the road to make sure they were along on the ribbon of asphalt, and Zee looked back over at Hunter, really noting the damage he could see, most especially the cut over his eye. His first thought spilled out without being checked, something quiet and still laced with warm concern. “Gonna have to clean you up good. Looks like you got dirt in all sort of painful places.” With another squint of his own, he returned his attention to driving. “Don’t want all that to get infected,” he murmured, half to Hunter and half to himself.
“Just need a shower. Buncha rock and shit, is all.” Night was coming fast, but they were nearing the city and the light pollution was filtering into the car. Forsaking a seatbelt and hoping there weren’t any state police waiting to nab people going into town, a now shirtless Hunter turned over on the seat to examine his hip and left leg. While he was waiting for Zee he hadn’t done anything, because there was nothing to change into and all he was doing was bleeding into the fabric. Now all that blood was dry and he was starting to regret his inaction. “Fuck.” Moving the clean shirt out of the way, Hunter tried to shift some of the ragged jean threads off a tear down his thigh. “Thing about Montana is it’s fucking flat,” he said, through gritted teeth. “You land on your ass that’s it, none of this rolling into fucking canyons.” This was an exaggeration, naturally.
Zee frowned at Hunter’s shifting and the grunted curse. He looked over again and the car drifted toward one side of the lane for a moment before he righted it again. “Knock that shit off. You’re just going to open it all up and bleed all over shit. Wait for a few minutes, and you can get yourself in the shower and soak it off.” He made no comment about the canyons, but after a second he huffed out a sigh and shook his head. “Yeah, I remember it’s flat. Got nothing to break up that line of sky for miles sometimes...”
Hunter darted a look at Zee’s face. He’d never heard the other man really talk about where Hunter had come from and to Hunter Zee had always that weary, incredibly sexy element of other. Hunter may have hated his home, but he knew that grass, those trees, the land. It was part of who he was, and even when he was picking desert out of his skin, he still thought of it. “Sometimes.” Then, a little disgruntled: “I’m not bleeding over anythin’.” But he stopped pulling at the jeans and awkwardly set his ass back on the seat, slumping over the folds of ground-out muscle that made up his waist and abdomen. A brief pause and the lights of the city got stronger. “What were you doin’ out there in Montana, anyway?” he asked, abruptly.
Zee didn’t say anything for a bit in response to Hunter’s question, eyes locked forward, hands on the wheel. It was long enough ago that he had to trace his way backwards from Hunter’s little town in his mind to remember, to place it on the meandering map and timeline of the past decade. “Don’t quite remember, H,” he finally said quietly. “Know I settled in for a bit to do some learning. Got my start with inking there.” He was silent for a bit as the wheels carried them closer to the city, mind still trying to move backwards. “Think I’d been coming from Texas. Just kept driving north.” He didn’t add that if he was remembering correctly, he’d left a petite redheaded girl that had been letting him crash in her extra room until her parents found out and threatened to stop paying her rent. They hadn’t even been hooking up - she liked girls a little too much to want his company, but hadn’t told her parents that yet. And it wasn’t his place to force her hand on it, so he’d left. Packed up so she wouldn’t have to reveal secrets she didn’t want to before she was ready. Lost in his thoughts, his gaze went distant on the Nevada road, and he didn’t say anything else.
Hunter gazed at Zee’s profile without blinking. Zee’s past before he had come to town all those years ago was a mystery to Hunter, only slightly more a mystery than the man himself. Hunter never really understood why Zee did the things he did, and the allure of his strangeness was almost intoxicating, even now when Hunter had other things to think about. Finally, Hunter looked out over the road, just to have somewhere to rest his eyes, and then back down at the mess of his hip. Ignoring the previous advice he started cutting at some of the loose threads. Gave him something to do as he spoke. “Texas. That where your family is?” Like hell. Hunter had ideas about what to expect from men from Texas, and Zee wasn’t it.
Zee was pulled back from his own thoughts, and he shook himself slightly to clear his head. “Nah,” he smiled at the road, still caught in memories of redhaired girls from Texas. “Bit further north than that.” He felt almost guilty about not revealing more, but it had been too long since one person knew too much about him. He was willing to talk about the places he’d been, but not about the one place he started out. “Just where I was staying for a while. Already’d been gone for a few years by that point.” He paused, then as if to make up for his remaining secrecy about his origins: “Five. Five years. By the time I made up toward you.” He finally glanced over to see Hunter cutting at the threads, and frowned again. He didn’t say anything though, just reached over and tried to wave Hunter’s fingers away. But it was only a half-hearted attempt before returning his hands to the steering wheel.
Hunter pulled the knife away from Zee’s fingers as soon as they entered his field of vision. Focused on protecting, he didn’t feel any sudden flares of anger or animalistic fear, and he made a sharp little tsk-ing noise against the roof of his mouth the way his mother used to make when he reached for hot pans and sharp knives. Hunter lifted the pocket knife into his right hand, palmed it, and then closed it shut in one fist, sighing and giving up on the jeans. They were going past the city limits now so he started to pull on the shirt, making little sounds of annoyance and pain as his battered limbs stretched into the oversize pattern. “How come you leave?” Hunter asked, innocent.
The far corner of Zee’s mouth, the side that was farther from Hunter and hidden by the rest of his profile, quirked into a smile at Hunter’s sharp sound of warning. He was glad to see the knife be put away, though. Not for for his own safety, but so that Hunter was less prone to sawing at clothing near his own skin. Especially while in a moving car. The soft sounds of pain made him frown again though, eyes worried when he glanced over. He didn't scold or try to help, simply let Hunter wrestle his battered arm through the sleeve. "Texas? My time there was done." Again came the considering pause as he decided how much to share. "Place I was staying had some parental type issues come down. It was better for everyone that I moved on."
The shirt looked extraordinarily clean and white under Hunter’s seared and battered face, and he looked very young, though not soft, with it covering the expanse of gristle and bone that made up his chest. Hunter slipped his right arm under his left wrist and hand, cradling it to his chest and frowning. There was a short pause, and then he seemed to return his attention to Zee. “Parental type. That mean kids?” Hunter brought his chin up and shot the other man a look of disbelief. “You knock somebody up, Zee?”
It took a moment for Hunter's question to make sense because it was so far from anything Zee would ever even contemplate that it didn't register at first. Once it did, the car swerved sharply toward the shoulder of the road as he snapped his head to the side to look at Hunter. "What?!" Once he realized the car was headed toward an expanse of desert, he swerved again, this time back into the lane, his heart pounding - more at the thought of being a father than at nearly running off the road. "What the fuck, Hunter? No! I didn't knock someone up!"
All of Hunter’s senses lit up at once with searing neon, sending alarms of not safe! down his nerves and into every limb. He forgot he had a bad arm but the left one didn’t get far as his right plastered along the side of the passenger door and he pressed his feet down against the floor. He wasn’t wearing a fucking seatbelt and he slid across the seat before nearly cracking his head on the window when Zee jerked the car back onto the road. “Fuck!” he shouted, making an abortive move with his bad wrist and squinting through the abrupt pain and his own adrenaline. “Fuck!” he repeated, glaring at Zee, white under his tan. “You said parents! Christ, Zee, are you trying to kill me?!”
Zee had gone ashy at the thought of being a parent, but he still took a moment to make sure Hunter hadn't hit the window with the sharp swerve of the car. It didn't stop his voice from being tight and a little too loud in the confined space of the car. "Kill you? Jesus, I should be asking you the same thing!" He shook his head, muttering to himself, words that sounded like "fucking kids" and "jesus" and "what the fuck". It took a minute for him to take a breath, still shaky, and glare over at Hunter again. "Her parents. The girl I was staying with. They didn't like me and thought we were hooking up, and it was causing trouble for her. So I left."
Jealousy seized Hunter’s features. It was quite stark and easy to read, and it turned his youthful face into something sharp and unpleasant. He never actually directed the expression at Zee, but instead into the space in front of him, imagining a willowy blonde not too far off from the recent memory of Jules. This was Hunter’s immediate reaction whenever he thought Zee was interested in someone else, past or present. “Her parents,” Hunter repeated, scowling, bringing his arm close like an infant. “What were you doing, sleeping with her in broad daylight?” The question straddled the border between innuendo and real curiosity.
Zee glanced over just in time to catch Hunter's sharp look of jealousy, and he frowned at it and sighed. The question made him sigh again and shook his head. "Yeah, her parents. And I was doing nothing more than sleeping in her extra room because her girlfriend slept with her most of the time. Not in broad daylight, since tiny little red wasn't out to her parents yet. Which was why they thought we were." He paused and glanced over, his voice hardened just a little. He tried to be gentle about it, but he needed to say it: "And even if I was, it was before I even met you, H. I got people all the way across this country that I know. Both before you and after. And only the one during. Which I have been doing my best to make up for. Known no one else like you though, and you're the only one I've ever spent time with more than once, so you gotta stop looking like I'm stepping on you every time I talk about someone else."
Hunter had the grace to look a little ashamed of himself, and he turned his face toward the window, examining his reflection and then (when he realized how awful the left side of his face looked) out at the passing road. “Can’t help it,” he muttered. It wasn’t quite an apology, but to Hunter it felt like one. “You don’t know what it feels like when I think about you getting all cozy with someone else,” he burst out a few seconds later, obviously unable to hold it in. His head turned a little back sideways and a dirt and blood speckled gaze surveyed Zee out of the extreme left of Hunter’s vision, worried what might come of the confrontation but too angry to let it go.
There was finally a section of level shoulder, and Zee pulled off the side of the road, throwing the car into park and angling himself toward Hunter. "No, I don't know. But dammit, H, I haven't hooked up with anyone in months." He stayed quiet for a moment, then dropped his voice into something gentler. "But yeah, I got people I got cozy with. Wasn't going to not. Sometimes finding someone to hook up with was how I had a place to crash for a while." He paused again, then even quieter. "You hooked up with other people, yeah? Can't have just been me."
Looking mutinous, Hunter muttered something too low to make out. He slumped a little deeper in his seat, legs cramping together under the dash and the rest of him twisting awkwardly. He shouldn't have brought this up. The throw hadn't shaken him but the fall had, and he was feeling angry at himself and defensive already.
The muttering seemed to be as close to a “yes” as Zee figured he was going to get, and he nodded to himself. Hunter may have been regretting bringing up the subject, but Zee had to push at least a little bit more. He kept his voice soft, though. “I get that I fucked up, but you told me to leave. Didn’t think I was ever going to see you again. I tried changing shit after you, but I wasn’t ever going to stay all on my lonesome.” He paused, contemplating reaching out to touch, but kept his hands to himself for the moment. “But I’m here, Hunter. I could’ve just as easily ditched town after seeing you were here, but I didn’t. ...Didn’t really want to.”
To Hunter’s mind, not leaving was not the same as staying, but as he didn’t intend to argue with Zee about his reasons, he kept that to himself. Hunter honestly didn’t care that much why Zee was staying, as long as he did, because Hunter didn’t understand that such a thing could be reassuring. Instead, he assumed there was nothing that could guarantee Zee’s continued presence except some ephemeral, definitely sexual quality that he probably didn’t possess. Hunter stared out the window into the black desert. The city painted colored stains on the new shirt and the flat planes of his face. “Didn’t ‘spect you to be all ‘lone,” Hunter muttered, this one slightly more intelligible than the last thing he said, whatever it had been.
The sky outside the windows was dark enough to make the flat glass into a mirror to reflect Hunter's expressions back to him even when he was turned away. He was about to ask what was going through Hunter's head, but the mumble came first. "Sometimes I am," he replied when he finally figured out what it was Hunter had said. "And sometimes someone shows up and I try to convince him that I'm not the same jerk I was a few years ago."
When he thought that Zee couldn’t see, most of Hunter’s anger and hurt went out of his face, leaving behind disappointment and dejection. Hunter was better at covering his emotions than hiding them, and anger always worked best when he didn’t want to feel any of the other things. “You’re not being a jerk,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth. “Putting me up, aren’t you?” As if all Hunter wanted was a roof. “Need that shower,” he said, wanting to avoid coming off needy (again, as if it was not obvious).
"Yeah. Letting you crash at my place doesn't really feel like enough, not when you still get so angry at me." He was finally watching the expressions on Hunter's face though, able to track the disappointment, and it made his stomach clench hot and achy. He didn't say anything about the shower for a long stretch of time, his frown a sad sort of thing. "Yeah, you do. ...you gonna talk to me more after though? Or am I gonna need to bust in while you're in there and try to keep my hands off you while I'm telling you things?" It was maybe not quite the right way to approach things, but Zee was running out of ideas.
Hunter brought his head away from the window to look back at Zee with surprise. This was the closest the man had come to flirting in months, and Hunter was trying to figure out if he’d hit his head hard enough to be hallucinating. A split-second’s evaluation of Zee’s face to see if he was serious, and then Hunter’s battered face split in a shockingly shy smile. “You might need to try that, yeah. Just in case.” He thought of apologizing for being angry, but the anger seemed to come and go so quickly, it now seemed pointless to draw attention to it.
Zee had been bracing himself for some sort of backlash, and the smile (so years-past familiar, so missed) slapped a quick look of shock over his own face. It was gone in a few seconds, replaced by a grin and a nod. "Alright. Might need to then." He'd been so wary of pushing, of making Hunter think all he wanted was a warm body in his bed. But maybe Jules was right about this. Maybe he and Hunter both needed some sort of connection again. He tried to push down the warm flare of interest he'd been trying to ignore since seeing Hunter again, but a little of it snuck into his gaze, warming it for a second before he righted himself in his seat and put the car back into drive. "Just in case..." he murmured and went a little heavier on the gas pedal than he maybe should have.
Hunter decided to keep his own mouth shut, not wanting to ruin his lucky streak. He cemented his teeth together in his mind with imaginary rubber glue that tasted like stale taffy, and then he directed his eyes out over the hood of the car. He stopping thinking about the pulsing pain in his wrist in favor of sneaking glances at Zee’s expression, a maneuver that was less successful because he had to turn his head a little farther to let his right eye help with the process. Gently, Hunter set his head against the headrest and let his eyes half-close as the strain eased out of his muscles. He was not one of those people to second-guess the road while Zee was driving, and the guardedness he’d felt a few minutes ago was all but gone.
He may have been driving a little too fast, but there were no more repeats of Zee's swerve off the road. The city crept up on them slowly until it was suddenly there. Once they were within the limits, more attention was needed to keep from running over a wayward tourist, but it didn't stop Zee from sneaking his own glances over at Hunter. It was easy enough to still read the pain from his fall, but the easing of some of the tension was obvious. It helped to ease some of the near-constant worry Zee held about him. "You sure you don't need a doctor?" he forced himself to ask, even though their last comments had pointed toward going directly back to the apartment.
Hunter shut that down immediately. The tension didn’t return but his face closed up like an envelope. “No doctors. Just put some ice on it,” he said, obviously forgetting about the imaginary glue keeping his mouth shut. “Be fine in the morning. It puffs up like that before it gets better.” He sounded casual, even somewhat wise about it, and accompanied the opinion with a glance down at his wrist and a very tentative touch of his fingers along the inside of his hand. The bones seemed like they were all connected, but he wasn’t stupid enough to pull on it.
Zee turned his head just enough to raise a skeptical eyebrow in Hunter's direction, but he just nodded. "Gonna wrap it up for you after your shower though. Can't stop me doing that. Got an ace bandage at home." He let the topic drop though, especially since they were so close to getting back to the apartment. That, and he wanted that shuttered look gone from Hunter's face again.
Hunter had his prejudices. Anything that Zee found attractive, rabid animals that couldn’t think for themselves (including humans), and, apparently, anyone in the medical profession. “Good thing I left the dog today,” he said, allowing the guard to relax again since Zee didn’t seem inclined to resist. “Probably would have gone on down with me just to see if it was fun.” Hunter dropped his good hand into his lap again.
"She's probably sleeping. No idea of all the excitement she missed." He spared a thought that she'd likely need to go out when they got back, telling himself not to forget just because Hunter had been talking about the shower. He guided the car into the parking spot he always used, finally turning it off once they were parked. He turned toward Hunter again with concern thick in his expression. "You gonna need help?" He was already undoing his seatbelt, looking again at the stiff way Hunter held himself in the seat.
“Naw,” Hunter said, gruffly, rolling onto his right hip and sliding out of the car. He had to put a bootprint on the side of the door before he could push it open, but he did it all the same. It turned out that it doesn’t take too long to stiffen up, and standing was a lot like balancing on matchsticks. Hunter grimaced. “Remind me how many stairs I gotta take?” He left the tattered shirt on the seat, forgotten, and made sure to pocket his knife before he lost it. Even if the jeans weren’t recoverable, he didn’t want to lose everything. Hunter moved a few inches away from the car, scattering a bit of gravel from jeans and boots as he went.
"Probably too many," Zee replied, long legs having carried him around the car in barely any time at all. He hovered nervously, ready to help if Hunter made even the slightest sound about needing it. He tried smiling, lifting an eyebrow again. "Can always try carrying you up if you need." He shoved his hands into his pockets though, taking a step backwards and trying to let Hunter do as much as he was able to on his own.
Hunter snorted laughter. “Like the princess in the Disney movie with the dwarves,” he grinned, pleased at the thought. He remembered the plastic tape in its plastic case. It was one of the things his sister had liked to watch before she realized her brothers had better things to do, and those things were, of course, inherently cooler. Hunter took a few seconds to work movement into his bones and then limped off toward the apartment, getting himself there slowly but surely. He looked back to see if Zee was following and then used his own key to open the door. Fluff immediately bounded for him in a delighted white streak, and of course she picked the wrong side to do it on.
Zee laughed and shook his head. "Some day your prince will come, yeah? You already got half the animals in Vegas wanting to make you pretty dresses." That may have been the wrong movie, but he didn't bother to correct himself. He stayed about a step and a half behind Hunter the entire way to the apartment, seemingly casual but ready to step closer if help was suddenly needed. He should have been expecting the streak of white that crossed the apartment at top speed, but he was too slow to intercept completely. He was there almost instantly with hand around her middle, pulling her away with a stern NO, looking over at Hunter and worried how much the brief impact was going to hurt him.
Not quite understanding the confusion of both Hunter and Zee arriving together or the significance of Hunter’s state, the dog attempted to paw her away up to Hunter’s hip before either could stop her, and Hunter swore a blue streak. He didn’t do more than push her off weakly with his good hand, and by the time he could put anything into it Zee was there, and Hunter was limping to one side to catch his weight on the counter. “Okay,” he said, sounding a little strained. “Callin’ in sick tomorrow. Definitely.” Hunter pushed off the counter and started toward the bathroom, working his shoulder to start crumpling the shirt off again. “Get me some of that ice before I fuckin’ fall apart, would you? Siddown and stay,” he added, pinning the puppy with a big-dog-in-charge-glare. She sat.
Zee looked up as he tried to herd Fluff to the side and away from Hunter. The swearing made him frown in worry, and once the dog was sitting obediently, he stood and closed the distance between the two of them. “You were actually thinking of going in?” The frown deepened at that thought, that Hunter would have pushed himself to work the day after the fall he’d had. He followed and murmured softly: “Hold up...” And hooked long fingers in the hem of the shirt, helping Hunter work it up over his injured shoulder. “Get you ice in a second. And some Tylenol.” He was quiet, as close as he was standing, and his movements were careful. “Turn the shower as hot as it’ll go when you get in there. It should stay warm for a while, being so late an’ no one else using it in the building.”
Hunter was tangled in the shirt, trying to work it off with only one arm and not jar his left wrist, which in good light was not the usual, slender limb of strength and bone. There was some ugly swelling and Hunter was doing his damndest to keep from banging it on anything. With the assistance he managed to peel off the oversize shirt; the cloth was dirtier on the inside than it was on the out, stained with leftover blood and dirt. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the one Hunter had abandoned in the front seat of Zee’s car, but it was going to need a serious application of bleach to survive the experience. Hunter blinked down at half his body in the apartment’s cheap lamplight and winced. “I look like raw hamburger,” he observed, stepping back from Zee so he wouldn’t get him all dirty and giving him a look that was abruptly nervous.
"Man, no hamburger that I'd want to eat. You're all full of gravel." Zee didn't care about the dirt or the blood on the inside of his shirt, being more concerned with what was left on Hunter's skin. Once the shirt was off and tossed on the folding table that sat in its place near the kitchen, Zee's hands found their way to Hunter's skin, carefully certain to not touch anywhere that looked like it'd taken on a cheese grater. His hand was skin on skin, pressing to the dip of Hunter's back. "Shower, H." His voice was practically a whisper, eyes studying the abraded skin along Hunter's left side. "Get you cleaned up, wrap that wrist. Put you to bed so you can sleep off the day, yeah?"