I didn’t want to add insult to injury, but I felt it pertinent to point his face out to him.
“You’ve also got some of them on your face. A couple on both cheeks, two on your chin, one on your forehead, and what looks like a puncture on your nose.” He raised his head to glare at the ceiling as I cataloged his injuries, enabling me to see three that I’d missed. “Oh, and there’s some on your neck, too.”
Lowering it back down, he glared at me like he was trying to melt ice with laser beams. “You done?”
I could neither confirm nor deny because a good friend would point out things like that to another, wouldn’t they?
Growling, he caught my hand and started pulling me toward the main bathroom. There were four bedrooms up here and three bathrooms, but the largest one was between mine and Pops’ room.
Once we got there, he pulled open the medicine cabinet and looked at its contents before plucking out the hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, and a box of BandAids, putting all of them on the counter.
Nudging him out of the way with my hip, I leaned into the cupboard under the sink and pulled out the cotton balls that I’d need for the adventure ahead.
“Are you still a big pussy when it comes to pain?”
The sound of the toilet lid closing and the creaking of wood as he sat on top of it followed my question. “Given that it’s been like fifteen years since then, no.”
The ‘then’ he was talking about was when we were climbing around his parents' garden, and he’d skidded down a muddy hill onto the gravel of their driveway. His parents had pulled out a lot of small pieces of the stuff, and you could hear his screams where the rest of us were seated in their backyard as they cleaned the wounds out.
Washing my hands, I prepared myself mentally for the job. I hated causing people pain, so I was dreading what I was about to do. Picking up the bag of cotton balls, I pulled a couple out and then opened the bottle of peroxide.
With a sigh, he held his arm out, signaling that he wanted me to get it out of the way. So, with my teeth clamped firmly into my lower lip, I tipped it slightly and let some pour out onto the first cut.
His scream wasn’t the same as it’d been fifteen years ago, but the muted adult version had the same impact all these years later. After the first four, we realized that it would be better for me to just saturate the balls with it and then wipe in long sweeps down his arm, so that’s how I did it, biting my lip each time he made a noise.
After that came the Neosporin drama. I thought it felt soothing when I had to use the stuff, but Logan had always said it felt just as bad as the peroxide, except it didn’t dry off and stayed stinging for longer.
Halfway through the first arm, I threw the cotton ball I’d been using on the floor and glared at him. “If you keep flinching and wincing, I’m going to knock you out. Take it like a man.”
He had the audacity to look hurt by this. “It fucking stings, Bex. Not just a small sting, but like you’re putting acid on them. Multiply that feeling by however many cuts I’ve got, and I think I’ve got a right to make a noise.”
Biting my tongue, I went back to the job and managed to switch off to his noises until I got to his face and neck. It was one thing to deal with his arms, but another altogether to do his face.
Reading me correctly, he picked up the tube of cream and a cotton ball and looked in the mirror. “I can do these.”
I didn’t argue with him because I was emotionally drained. Yeah, hearing the noises had been hard, but a big chunk of it was also guilt because I was the one hurting him. It wasn’t just a couple of cuts, I’d counted seventeen on his forearm alone. That was a lot of pain to inflict on someone you cared about, so not having to do it to his face was a relief.
At least, that’s what I thought until he didn’t even blink as he applied the shit by himself.
“You’re a freaking fraud, Richards,” I hissed, throwing the balls that’d missed the trash can earlier into it.
“I don’t know if it’s because I’m doing it or if I’m just immune to the sting after years of shaving,” he shrugged, screwing the lid back onto the tube. “It just didn’t hurt like my arms and hands did.”
I was about to turn around and call bullshit when I saw a couple of small rips in his shirt. “Did you go to work in a torn shirt today?”
“No, why?” he asked, looking down at it and trying to see what I was talking about.
Because he was looking down, the small rips weren’t immediately visible, so I pulled it away from his body and stuck my finger through one—admittedly making it worse than it’d been initially.
Lifting it, he stared at his torso in the mirror, inspecting it to see if any of the damage on the item of clothing had made its way onto him. I probably would’ve done the same thing, but the area of his body that I’d seen as a kid wasn’t the same as it was now.
Back then, he’d been slim but had some definition on his stomach. Now, he had a nice level of definition that was more than before but didn’t border on ‘harshly cut.’
I’d never caught onto the trend of super-defined six-packs and fitness like that, it just seemed like a lot of work to be hidden under clothing all day. By all means, work out and be fit
