“You know, I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this,” I said, shooting Jason a wry smile.
He’d taken us to the mainland, to the fancy stretch of Gotham where the truly elite have their fancy sprawling manors. We were at an estate that one of Jason’s brothers apparently owned, out on the grounds in a dirt field, standing under a well lit metal pavilion.
There were tables covered in breakable objects, some that looked ridiculously expensive, others that were from the dollar store. Off to the side of the pavilion were various pieces of furniture and an old beat up car, all lit up with floodlights that made it nearly bought as day. To the other side there was an area paved with asphalt that had a large concrete wall in the center, lit up with more floodlights.
The table next to me held some safety gear, several gallons of paint, a box of what looked like spray paint, a few baseball bats, some metal rods, a blow torch, and a crowbar with a pink bow stuck on it. Jason had rolled his eyes at that last one.
“Best therapy there is,” he said, grinning, “First, you break shit until you break down or until the feelings aren't so loud. Then, you make some art.”
“That ‘you’ had better be a ‘we’,” I said, inspecting the bats.
“Oh absolutely,” he agreed, picking up one of the metal rods and twirling it like a baton, “Breaking shit is what I’m best at.”
I didn't agree, but I didn't have the energy to argue the point. Opting for one of the metal rods, I let him take the lead, following him to one of the tables of breakable objects. He set down his rod and pulled a cardboard box out from under the table.
“Alright, load this up with anything that looks like it might be fun to break,” he said, getting to work adding things in.
I picked at random, avoiding anything that looked too expensive. If it was here I was sure that it was probably okay to break, but the idea of destroying something worth more than one of my paychecks felt weird. When the box was full, he carried it over to the wall and set it at the far edge of the asphalt, next to a pedestal.
Jason pulled a fancy vase out and set it on top of the pedestal, “Now there’s obviously no rules on how to break the shit. Steph likes to chuck it at the wall. Personally, I prefer this.”
He took a swing at the vase, shattering it, sending shards flying in the direction of the wall. I felt a strange sort of anticipation as he gestured for me to take my turn. I dug out a ceramic statue of what was probably supposed to be a mom and daughter hugging and set it where the vase had been.
“Here goes nothing,” I said, taking a deep breath.
The moment the rod made contact I felt the same rush that I’d felt that night at the cabin, when I’d made a bullseye with my first arrow. It was incredible, the sense of freedom and power the action gave. The dissociative fog that had settled over me was still there, but as ceramic shards went flying I felt a hint of something that wasn’t just the pain I’d expected. Something almost like anger.
“Better than state therapy?” he asked, his voice light and teasing.
“Hell yes.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
(do you ever write a line and then look at urself like “aw man. now I have to write the drabble, huh?” anways… who feels like some motherflippin backstory?)
content warning: self-surgery, field medicine (kinda), mild body horror, mild gore, implied prescription drug abuse, mild innuendo
-
Josiah needs a shower. Desperately. His shoulders are aching and his head is thumping. Today has been hard and long and he still has things to do with Ellie tonight. He just needs the white noise of water rushing over his head for a minute to reset his thoughts.
The third floor bathroom is maybe Josiah’s favourite room in this whole place. Unlike the rest of the bathrooms in the facility, this one is private. One shower, one door, one lock. Whether because of bad planning or very intentional planning, it’s hidden down a hall, squished between a storage room and a switchboard. To find it you’d either have to know where it was or, like Josiah did, stumble across it looking for a spare mop.
So no one comes here. No one bothers him. For a few minutes, for a few quiet minutes, he can relax. Let the pressure of being around people fall away. He can breathe. Be still. He barely even gets that at night anymore, if Ellie has anything to say about it.
It’s not that he minds people. They’re just… exhausting. Especially in a place like this. Open and communal and always moving. Even if you weren’t talking to someone it was rare that you got a room to yourself to enjoy alone.
And so of course, because his day has already been hard. And of course, because he’s already in a bad mood. And of course, because why on Earth would be think he could catch a break today, there’s someone already in the bathroom when he swings the door open. Josiah flinches, thinking he’s caught someone in a moment of privacy and he’s already apologising, moving to close the door when he processes what he’s seeing.
A young man is straddling the edge of the bath. Save for a towel bunched loosely across his torso, he’s shirtless. The shirt in question is sitting by his bare foot in a heap. Torn by the looks, stained with oil or maybe dirt, it’s hard to tell. The guy’s head lolling back against the tiles, med kit open and scattered on the toilet seat beside him. Unconscious, maybe. Fuck.
Josiah clears his throat. When there’s no response, he knocks on the bathroom wall, awkwardly.
“Hello?”
At the sound of Josiah’s voice, the guy’s eyes flutter open, bleary and unfocused. Not unconscious, then. His gaze slides across the room before settling on Josiah’s face. He cocks a lazy smile, half-salutes with the hand not occupied by the towel across his waist.
“Oh. Hello”
“You alright?”
“Didn'see ya there,” the words smudge together slightly, as though keeping the words separate is a challenge the speaker can’t handle right now. He doesn’t answer the question.
“Are you, uh… are you alright?” Josiah tries again.
The guy looks down at himself, then shifts up a little more where he’s sitting.
“Yeahhhhh,” he drawls “Never better”
“Do you need help? I, um… should I go get someone?“
“No!” the guy yelps. Josiah freezes, and the guy thumps his head back against the tiles with a sharp inhale, trying again for a smile. Probably making an attempt at laid back “No, nah. All good, I’m, uh… all good"
“I could-”
“Don’t need any help,” the guys grunts, eyes fluttering closed “Thanks”
“You look like your about to pass out,” Josiah says. Iif he was being completely honest, it looks like the guy already did pass out and is just trying to cover it up. Poorly.
“M’fine. Jus’ having a lil break,” the guy says, and shifts again uncomfortably, pressing the cloth into his side again. He doesn’t open his eyes.
Josiah looks over his shoulder at the empty hallway behind him, then back again at the slumped figure. He should leave, now. He doesn’t know how long this is gonna take or if this guy means trouble, and he still wants a shower and Ellie will need him shortly. Besides, he can’t help someone who doesn’t want any help. Maybe the downstairs bathrooms will be relatively empty.
“Okay, well, uh…If you don’t, uh, need…” he gestures behind himself awkwardly “I’ll, um-”
He’s nearly got the door closed when the guy’s eyes flick open, head jerking with a start as he calls out.
“Actually wait, wait, hold up. Hang on, I do need a hand with something”
Josiah stops, opens the door again slightly. The guy gestures to the scattered med kit, and a bottle of pills that’s tipped out on the tiles.
“Those. There. On the floor,” he says, waving his hand loosely
“The… painkillers?” Josiah supplies
“The… Yeah. Yeah, them,” he decides “Dropped ‘em before an’ can’t reach ‘em. D’you mind?”
Josiah looks between the guy’s hooded eyes and the mess on the tiles. He looks again at the hallway behind him. Makes a decision.
“Alright”
And he’s stepping through the doorway, closing it shut behind him. He scoops a handful of the pills back into the bottle, turning to pass it to the guy on the bath. It’s then that he sees the wound on the guys ribs, torn skin a handspan wide, flushed red and hot and angry, several gaping stitches pulled half loose. And blood. An uncomfortable amount of it.
“Holy shit,” Josiah says, pill bottle nearly falling from his hand “What happened?”
“Nothin’,” the guy says, lazily inspecting the injury as he presses a hand to the flesh above the cut “Just a bit'a self surg'ry. ‘Sall good”
To Josiah’s horror, he trails a hand down to the wound, grabbing the needle at the end of the thread and pulling.
“Stop” Josiah forgets himself, reaching for the guys arm and tugging it away from the wound.
“Handsy,” the guy mutters with a smirk and Josiah drops his wrist like it’s burned him. Josiah’s heart is racing. What the fuck. What the fuck, what the fuck?
“What the hell are doing? Are you high?”
The question’s meant to be rhetorical but the guy snorts a laugh, cringing as the jerking motion twists the wound in his side. He presses down on it again with the cloth, trying to ease the blood or the pain or the something with the pressure.
“Yeah,” he slurs through gritted teeth “Something like that”
“You can’t just do that to yourself, you need help”
The guy laughs properly at that. A low, bubbling thing. Then it dies, voice sobering as he speaks.
“I don’t need help, I need my fuckin’ drugs,” he holds out a lazy hand, gaze barely barely focussing on Josiah’s face, “Here, please”
Josiah stares, eyes flicking to the wound at the guy’s side. He should be getting back to work. He should be getting back to Ellie. He should be going and getting someone else to help with this. He should be doing a lot of things. Instead, he stands to his full height.
“I’ll give them to you after you let me help with those stitches,” he says, putting the bottle on the sink, carefully out of reach. The guy stares at him, eyes dull.
“You’re joking, right?”
“No”
“I can do my own damn stitches,” he says. His voice is firm enough that it’s almost convincing. The woozy sway that accompanies it is less so.
“I don’t care if you can,” Josiah says, crossing his arms “You shouldn’t”
The guy thumps his head against the tiled wall again.
“Had to be the one guy with a helpful streak, didn’t it?” he mutters to the ceiling, before straightening up with a rough pant “Look. You seem nice n'all that but this isn’t exactly new t'me, alright? Don’t need help. M'fine”
“Okay. In that case you can get the pills yourself,” he says, moving to the door.
“No, no, wait!” the guy yelps. Josiah stops, holds back a smile. He knows the sound of the victory siren when he hears it “Fuck. Fuckin hell. Fine. Fuckin’ fine. You c'n play nurse. Fine”
Josiah turns back around, tries to hide his smugness at least a little.
“Good,” he says. The guy rolls his eyes as Josiah washes his hands, but there is a vague expression of relief there. They both know he wouldn’t have gotten the job done on his own.
Josiah moves the med kit to the top of the bathroom cabinet, freeing up the toilet seat a temporary work stool. The guy only hesitates a tiny bit as Josiah reaches for the towel, pulling it loose. The wound is radiating heat, three or four stitches doing the work of twelve to hold it together. They’re rough and loose and different lengths, like someone was doing a patch job for the sleeve of an old jacket.
“Christ, you’ve made a mess of it,”
“Well excuse me for lacking surgical precision as I stitch my own flesh back together”
“That’s my point, idiot, you should have surgical precision when stitching flesh back together,” he says, running the pads of his fingers lightly over the inflamed skin. The guy cringes.
“I’m gonna have to pull these out, and start again” he mutters apologetically “Where’s the disinfectant?”
There’s a heavy, jostling silence.
“You used disinfectant, right?” The guy is looking pointedly not at Josiah “What the fuck was the med kit for, then?”
The guy makes bored eye contact, pulls a face like it obvious. Right. Pills.
Josiah looks across the mess on the ground, finds a bottle of ethanol near the bathmat and some tweezers in the drawer and gets to work pulling out the hack job sutures.
Now that he’s looking more closely at the wound, he can see some small puncture wounds lining the edge. He glances down the edge of the bath, can see the scraps of old stitches lying in scattered clumps.
“You reopened this, didn’t you?” he says, leaning back “Why?”
The guy hums and knocks something small in the bath with his foot. Josiah watches as a small piece of metal, the size and shape of a battery, spirals in an awkward loop, trailing a thin line of blood behind itself. If Josiah looks close, he can see something that looks like the facility logo hidden behind blood.
“Any idea what that is?” the guy asks. Josiah shakes his head “Yeah, me neither”
The thought that this is something more sinister than stupidity and bad luck chills Josiah like ice. Enough questions, he decides. He doesn’t need to know. It’s not his business. He’s here to help with stitches. Then get back to work. He doesn’t need to know. He just needs to do the stitches. He can do that. The rest of it is irrelevant. He doesn’t need to know.
Josiah pulls the last of the poor stitching out and feels himself exhale. He hadn’t even realised he’d been holding his breath.
The job, after that, is easier than he thought it would be. Just re-threading the needle through old puncture wounds, wiping down the blood and cooling the wound with a damp cloth. It’s a long time, maybe half a dozen stitches worth of silence, before the guy speaks.
“What’s your name?“
“Josiah,” Josiah says, not looking away from his work. He winces as he pulls the needle through, swears he can feel it slicing through his own skin “Yours?”
“Ace”
“That your real name?”
“No. Is Josiah yours?”
“Yes”
“That’s interesting”
Josiah does stop then, his hand resting gingerly on the guy’s hip as he looks at his face. Half-lidded eyes look back at him. Glittering and amused. Josiah almost feels like he’s being laughed at.
“Why is it interesting?”
The guy – Ace –shrugs, “Dunno. Just interesting”
Ace’s face screws up with sudden pain and he shifts where he’s sitting, grunts out a breath of air “Keep talkin’, Josiah. Stops me from thinkin’ ‘bout the fuckin’ pills”
Josiah bites his cheek. He’s never been the best at small talk. Even worse while his conversational partner is shirtless and bleeding in front of him. He pulls another stitch taught.
“Why do they call you Ace?”
The guy laughs a little like there’s some joke Josiah’s not getting.
“Cause I’m fuckin’ ace”
“Ace at what?”
“Ace at everything” The smirk is heavy in his voice and when Josiah glances up, Ace’s gaze is on him, just as heavy. Josiah can feel his cheeks burning red. Another stitch.
“You’re very pretty,” Ace says, out of nowhere “You someone’s?”
The question makes Josiah’s stomach flip, heart flutter just a little. He nearly says Ellie’s name, decides against it. Rubs a hand absently over the back of his neck.
“I don’t… know what you mean,” he says quietly. The guy shrugs, seeming suddenly bored with the conversation.
“Doesn’ matter. Jus’ a thought,” Ace let’s out a loud sigh and Josiah has to stop what he’s doing as his ribs expand “You nearly done there, doc? M'dying here”
“Not even close. You made a mess of the first lot”
Josiah here’s a thump as Ace lands his head back in the tiled wall.
“Mind if I close m'eyes for a bit, then?” he mumbles “Gettin’ woozy”
“Thought you were fine,” Josiah says, smirk of his own tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“I am fine,” Ace says, a little too defensively. He tries for a joke in recovery “It’s watchin’ those manly, manly hands o’ yours work. Got me swooning”
Josiah huffs a laugh, risking a glance back up at Ace’s face. His eyes are already closed.
“Yeah go on,” he says “I’ll wake you when I’m done”
Ace hums low in response, his hand fluttering to settle gingerly over his stomach. His fingers twitch reflexively with the tug of the needle.
There’s a good chunk of stitches left to do, and then the cleaning and the dressing. He’ll miss out on the shower and still probably be late. Doesn’t matter. He’ll explain what happened and Ellie’ll understand. Or maybe she won’t but that’ll be fine. It’s not like she could stay angry at him for helping someone in crisis. Besides, someone needs to know that this guy is hurt so someone with actual medical knowledge can go check on him. He probably stays in the facility somewhere, if he’s fixing his stitches in the bathroom. Maybe he oughta tell Simon about it as well. Just to be sure.
“Hey Josiah,” Ace says softly, and he looks up to meet the lazy gaze of his patient.
“Yeah?”
“Jᴏsɪᴀʜ, ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴛᴇʟʟ ᴀɴʏᴏɴᴇ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴛʜɪs”
“Course not,” Josiah says immediately, almost scoffing at the absurdity of it. Obviously he won’t. Why on Earth would he tell someone?
Ace smiles like Josiah just gave him the best Christmas present in the world.
“Good,” he says as his eyes slide closed. Josiah smiles too, and finishes another stitch.
