𝙵𝙸𝙻𝙴𝙳 𝚄𝙽𝙳𝙴𝚁 : 𝙳𝙾𝙲𝚃𝙾𝚁 𝚅 . 𝙸𝙻𝙺𝙰𝚈 ( wurmbabe . )
“Wouldn’t have to be if you acted like a functional member of this crew.” A scoff, re-threading the needle to sew up the wound of Juno’s side. “Look – I don’t give a shit if you like me or not, Steel. Hell, you don’t even have to trust me, but I’m the goddamn doctor on this ship. If you try and pull this shit again I will personally see to it we toss you and Ransom off onto some planet and leave.”
An empty threat, but the meaning in there: like it or not, I am a necessary evil. Vespa falls silent, waiting a second or two to let Juno prepare himself – a professional courtesy – before she begins to sew the wound up. The stitches are neat, quick, and clean. Precise, but not purely surgical. It’s clear that Vespa’s medical training, while useful and skillful, was not exactly the formal schooling type you got from medical school.
“There.” A roll of her eyes. “Any others you’re hiding?” Narrowed, nearly acidic-green eyes scan over Juno’s body. “I’m letting Buddy know, you’re on bedrest for at least week. Don’t need you reopening that before it heals properly – and don’t try to argue with me on that, Steel.”
“ I AM A FUNCTIONAL MEMBER OF THE CREW. ” he’s going to say more, going to spat that the same can’t be said about vespa, he bites it back, realizes just how cruel that is, a year ago he might have said it, might have let cruelty spew from lips without hesitation. but . . . they’re meant to be family, they’re supposed to trust each other. it isn’t that he doesn’t want to, it’s that . . . they both make it so damn hard. juno balls up his fists and grits his teeth through it, wishes he’d downed the rest of the bottle instead of the half he drank. hands curl into firsts as he waits for vespa to pull away and tries not to imagine throwing a goddamn punch. it hurts. but it could be worse, he’s had worse. he’s had worse and he’s dealt with it before and so he can handle this without alerting the whole damn crew of his bad decisions.
LADY SNORTS, rolling his own eye now, as if her question is anything other than fair. as if he wasn’t the one hiding wounds in the first place. “ what, gonna put a bandaid on my scrapes and bruises too ? ” he snorts, though his face is burning red and he looks . . . hell he looks tired. “ just the one. ” he huffs, looking anywhere but at vespa, hell the floor is pretty interesting at this point.
" A WEEK ? ” juno snaps, gaze flickering over the assassins' face as if she might be joking. how the hell is he supposed to be on bedrest for a week. “ it’s stitches not a damn broken limb, vespa. ” he argues anyway, because . . . of course he does. “ you can’t be serious. ”
