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The first thing Lindsay noticed about being awake was that it felt like he had been hit by a train in his right shoulder. The hot ache that pulsed there took his breath away and he couldn’t help but moan from the pain before he even opened his eyes.

Last night’s events came tunneling toward him and his body jolted with the wave of stress that caught up with him now that he was awake.

The fire. Smoke. The pop pop pop of gunfire and pain exploding in his shoulder. The hot, sticky smell of blood and Evelyn speaking to him in a low, soothing voice. Ryan, sounding as worried as he ever had. Alex’s voice boiling with cold rage.

He blinked his eyes open and looked around the room.

Alex’s house. One of the spare bedrooms. Sunlight streaming through the windows, open to let in a fresh breeze. The curtains fluttered gently, animated by the soft drift of air.

Good God, he was still alive.

But, Christ, his bladder was nearly bursting. Slowly, he wriggled his good arm up by his waist and attempted to leverage himself into a sitting position. The pain in his shoulder tightened until he wailed softly in a most unmanly fashion.

“Pony, you’ll pull out your stitches,” Alex’s muffled voice said from a very intimate distance.

Lindsay blinked, trying to clear the sleepy blur from his eyes. Alex’s blue eyes were inches away and his strong pale hands were suddenly behind Lindsay, hooking around his good arm, pulling him into a sitting position.

“Where are you trying to escape to?” Alex said, a note of amusement in his voice.

“The washroom,” Lindsay said in a voice so hoarse he barely recognized it, and then coughed. His mouth was so dry, he was so thirsty, that he felt like might die.

“Okay,” Alex said. “Up you go.”

Lindsay watched him in a daze as he got up and walked around the bed until he was standing next to Lindsay. He stripped back the blankets and took Lindsay’s good hand, prompting him to turn toward him.

Lindsay shifted his weight onto his good leg and grasped Alex’s hand with his good hand. Well, now he had two limbs that were indisposed. He was too exhausted to feel more than a flicker of annoyance about it. The certainty that Alex would look after him eliminated much of the anxiety he may have had otherwise.

Alex stepped up beside him and pulled Lindsay’s good arm over his shoulders. “Off we go, Pony.”

One careful step at a time, they made their way across the bedroom and down the hallway to the lavatory. At Lindsay’s insistence and Alex’s amusement, Alex left him to do his business.

“Try not to fall, Pony,” Alex said as he closed the door behind him. “Nothing as undignified as falling with one’s pants around one’s ankles.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lindsay said in a voice that cracked with his thirst.

When Lindsay finished and stood at the basin to wash his hand, he was shocked to see how pale he looked. His freckles stood out like splatters of blood across his face and down his chest and his arms. Evelyn had patched the wound on his shoulder, but he could still see a bruise radiating away from it, crawling out from underneath the linens she’d wrapped over his shoulder and under his armpit.

“God,” he breathed.

“All finished?” Alex said, cracking the door.

“Yeah,” Lindsay said. He was so tired just from the trip to the lavatory that he could have gone to sleep on his feet.

“Come on, then.” In the same way they came, they made their way back down the hallway.

“Don’t you have work to do?” Lindsay asked, his voice reedy and soft.

“Yes, always,” Alex said, his tone betraying nothing as usual.

“Then why aren’t you doing it?” Lindsay asked as Alex lowered him onto the bed, sitting on the mattress next to him.

“Bossy Pony today, aren’t you,” Alex said. He carefully removed Lindsay’s arm from his neck. “I’ll manage my work when I’m ready to. In the meantime, my work is to make sure you don’t die.”

“Well, it seems like I didn’t take that turn, after all.” Lindsay started to lay back, but Alex was quick to maneuver him back onto the bed.

“Besides,” Alex said in a soft voice that made Lindsay shiver in spite of his exhaustion, “I can never pass up the opportunity to watch you suffer.”

“Well, feast your eyes on this,” Lindsay said, settling back into the pillow, eyes drifting closed. The corners of his lips turned up a bit, in spite of himself. And in spite of the pain and the exhaustion, pleasure was needling through him. Being the subject of Alex’s undivided care and attention always filled him with pleasure.

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