As Lita takes a tour of the weirdness contained on his shelves, Rodeo feels strangely laid bare and has to distract himself by going through the motions of his usual home-for-the-night routine. It ain't that she's the first woman he's had in his bedroom, but she's certainly the first one whose opinion ever mattered to him. He wonders what she thinks of a grown-ass man posing old toys in epic battle scenes, wonders what she thinks of that stale cigarette smell and the darkened bloodstain on the worn carpet where he passed out once with a bloody busted nose. There's only one conclusion he can imagine she draws about all of it-- that she wants nothing to do with this mess of a life. So while she makes her rounds of his room he shrugs off his cut and tosses it over the chair in the corner, then yanks off his shirt long enough to remove the stiff kevlar vest he wears under his clothes. Perhaps it's lucky they never got very far, 'cause the truth about him might have been revealed to her anyway once his shirt came off. The tattoo covering most of his left bicep depicts a wolf with a crown inked above its head. Of course it had crossed his mind that she might see it if one of their dates went particularly well for him, but he had foolishly convinced himself that she would be too ignorant to realize its significance or just too carried away to notice it. Now it seems ridiculous to imagine she'd be that easy to fool.
Rodeo's shirt isn't off long. He doesn't want to give Lita time to take stock of the crowned wolf or the blue-black bruises along his back from bullets hitting his kevlar. He pulls his shirt back on as soon as the vest is shed, takes Crow Jane from the back of his jeans and sets her down on his nightstand, and by then Lita has summarily ended her explorations. Suddenly she's all business, and though he knows he should be glad she's here at all he can't help wishing that the first and probably only time he'll have her in his bedroom could be less about her doing her job and more about them.
But there is no them and there never will be now.
With that sad smile and her little sigh, she echoes the thoughts he'd had before. There are a lot of ways he'd pictured himself taking his pants off in her presence, and not a single one of them was like this. Alright, maybe there was that one weird "let's play doctor" fantasy he'd had, but that was just that one time. This sure as hell ain't the same. He gives her a look that clearly echoes the sentiment, even as he drops his hands to his belt and unfastens the oversized buckle.
"You tellin' me this wasn't at the top o' your list of fantasy scenarios?" he says dryly, lifting his brows. "I mean, if you ask me, we really got some magic happenin' here." Nope. This is objectively awful. He toes out of his boots and unzips his fly at the same time, trying not to grimace as he pulls his wounded leg up to step out of his pants. He drags his hand roughly though his hair, thankful at least that his complete lack of shame prevents him from feeling bashful as he takes a seat on the edge of his bed in a pair of dark green boxer-briefs. The wound on his left thigh is messily dressed with a wad of duct tape that has, thankfully, started to peel away after the sweat and friction of his long day. He picks at the edge of his slipshod bandage and clenches his jaw as it catches the hair on his leg, and after a moment he gives up going about it gingerly and tears the tape away from his leg in one quick movement. The wound he exposes is garish at best, ineptly sealed with superglue, half of the laceration already re-opened where the glue came off with the tape. The pig stuck him pretty good, a sharp six-inch blade sinking in deep and dragging across his thigh, tearing through skin and sinew to leave a mean gash in its wake.
"I cleaned it," he tells her, as if that's all it takes. "With my man's moonshine. You oughta try a sip, it'll sear the hair straight our your nose. But I reckon it ain't as bad as it looks. Closin' up on its own, probably. And before you start in on me for my dressin's, I'll have you know I'm impervious to germs. I reckon the same guys who designed the Terminator built my immune system."