semperama:

@loves-pie, this is for you. ❤

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They find an urgent care clinic down the road from the hotel, one where they can slip in and out, use fake names, pay in cash. Zach cradles his hand close to his chest the whole way. One of Chris’s old t-shirts is wrapped around it, and once blood spot start bleeding through it, Chris’s heart rate jumps dramatically, cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck like he is the one who’s hurt.

Zach cradles his hand close to his chest the whole way back too, but now it’s wrapped neatly in gauze and tape. His fingers are black and blue, but in the dark, in the diffuse orange light of the streetlamps, it’s hard to tell. Chris’s heart is still throwing itself frantically against his ribs though, because he can’t stop remembering how Zach had locked eyes with him when the nurse said Rate your pain, 1 to 10 and Zach had smiled and said I hardly feel it and the nurse had looked concerned.

“Only you, goddamnit,” Chris mumbles. He keeps drifting closer to Zach, pushed by invisible hands, nearly knocking into him before he realizes how close they are and pulls away again. Maybe he’s still a little drunk.

Zach snorts. “Whatever, Pine. You’re more injury prone than anyone I know.”

He’s smiling again, a bright, brassy smile, like he thinks this is all just so fucking hilarious. Meanwhile Chris is still trying to get over the fact that four days ago, when he called Zach in the middle of the night with a long-shot plan about meeting up in London, Zach had agreed before he even got the whole sentence out. And now Zach is here, real and solid and grinning like an idiot, grinning like Chris hasn’t seen him grin in so, so long.

Back in the hotel room, Zach sits down hard on the edge of the bed and stares down at his injured hand. Chris stares at it too. It looks like the bruising has spread a little, but that could just be his imagination. Sighing, he fishes the pill bottle out of his pocket, the painkillers that the nurse pushed into his hand rather than handing them to Zach. He rattles the bottle and raises his eyebrows when Zach looks up.

“You want?”

Zach’s grin sharpens as he nods. “Yeah. Please.”

Chris goes to the bathroom to fill a glass with water, then comes back and shakes two pills into the palm of his hand. He sits down next to Zach on the bed and holds out his palm, and he can’t suppress a shiver when Zach’s fingernails scrape across his skin.

Zach puts the pills on his tongue, then just stares at Chris, a silent challenge. Chris feels something inside him give way as he lifts the glass to Zach’s mouth himself, one hand cradling the back of his head, his eyes on Zach’s throat as he swallows. Once Zach is done, Chris drains the rest of the water himself and sets the glass down on the floor.

“How much does it hurt?” he asks. Zach’s hand looks so fragile wrapped up like that. Chris knows it’s not, but it looks that way now.

Zach’s voice pitches low, rumbling like distant thunder. “Less now.”

It’s too soon for the painkillers to have kicked in, but Chris doesn’t think they’re really talking about that anymore. He wraps his fingers around Zach’s wrist and lifts the injured palm to his mouth, brushing his lips over the purple skin at the base of Zach’s fingers.

“How about now?” he asks, and slides his tongue up the outside of Zach’s ring finger until he feels him twitch and hears him hiss.

“Now?” Zach still sounds like a storm, a violent summer storm. He uses his healthy hand to jerk Chris up by the collar of his jacket, to bring their mouths almost together. Almost, but not quite. “Now, not at all.”