Page 68 of Changeling
Jim patted Nathan’s cheek gently but firmly. “Hey. Hey! You need to stay with me for a bit yet,” he said. He quickly turned to the first aid kit Nathan had nearly forgotten he’d brought in with him and found what he needed. Once Jim set to workon the stitches, it was easier to stay alert—they didn’t have any anesthetic.
After cleaning and stitching Nathan’s head, and cleaning and disinfecting the small cut on his belly, Jim went through Nathan’s duffle and found some sweats and a long-sleeved Henley he could sleep in. He undid Nathan’s boots. When he went to slide off Nathan’s ruined jeans, Nathan snapped to full consciousness and flinched.
“It’s okay, Nathan. It’s just me. Just Jim,” he comforted quietly.
Nathan knew it was foolish to be so easily spooked, but his head was fuzzy and his nerves shot, and he just didn’t want anyone touching him right now.
Jim got him to slip into the sweatpants and Henley, and then re-tucked the blanket around him. Finally, Jim grabbed a glass of water and four ibuprofen.
“Not sure I can keep those down,” Nathan protested weakly.
“At least try, Nate. It’s not much, but it will help with the bruising and some of the pain. You need to take a few of your antibiotics too.”
Somehow, Nathan managed to down the pills.
“Come on, ya big lug. I’ll put you in my bed. You probably don’t want Sasha rolling over and giving you a hug tonight,” Jim joked.
Nathan felt nauseated all over again. He’d been able to put Sasha out of his mind while Jim attended to his wounds. Sasha was going to be pissed. At him. At the goons. Nathan saw angry incubus all over the horizon.
“You’re the one kicks me out of bed,” Nathan stalled.
“You can have it all to yourself,” Jim countered.
“Hey! You keep your hands off my incubus,” Nathan returned.
“You can have him all to yourself too,” Jim chuckled.
Nathan struggled to stay awake, get his feet underneath himself, and help Jim get him up without stumbling too much. As soon as he was upright, the world tilted alarmingly and he was convinced he was going to be sick again. He was able to breathe through it though as Jim led him back into the main room and over to the closest bed. Nathan gratefully sank down onto the mattress and was asleep almost before he felt the covers drape over him.
ThefirstthingNathannoticed was the smell of coffee. The second was pain. Which got far worse when he cracked his eye and light tried to stab through the center of his head. Nathan felt the nausea building. He knew that he’d better start heading for the bathroom now because he was pretty sure it was going to take him a while to get there.
The minute Nathan tried to move, he let out a groan. He had barely moved at all before pain blossomed in his head again, through the cut over his eye and the bruises on his face. At least his chest felt normal, though his shoulder throbbed slightly again.
“Nathan! You’re awake.” Sasha crouched by the bed, his cobalt eyes shining with concern.
“Brilliant statement of the obvious there, Sherlock,” Nathan croaked back, though he felt bad almost immediately, punished by the hurt look that crossed Sasha’s face. “Help me up, will ya?” His next words conveyed the urgency of the request.
Sasha helped Nathan up by grasping his arms, which seemed relatively unscathed from the night before, other than his tender shoulder. As soon as Nathan was upright, the room pitched violently and he would have face planted if Sasha hadn’t beenessentially holding him up. His determined forward momentum meant they kept going toward the bathroom, and he had regained enough equilibrium by the time they reached the door that he was able to shrug Sasha off.
Before Sasha could follow him, Nathan pushed the door in the incubus’ face and sank down at the toilet retching. There really wasn’t anything to come up. Nathan rested his head against the cool porcelain. This was the worst hangover he could remember—and without the benefit of a good time to go with it. Nathan shuddered again at the memory of the night before.
His relationship with Sasha was no longer strange to him. He’d stopped thinking about Sasha in terms of being with a man, of being gay or bi or whatever, a long time ago. The words had ceased to be important to him. The people close to them had found their relationship perfectly normal and a logical outcome of who they were—as people—even if Jim did tease Nathan about it occasionally. He was Nathan’s brother; teasing was mandatory!
It wasn’t that Nathan was naïve. He’d just never imagined having that kind of blind hatred directed at him, not the way seals directed it so cavalierly at Jim just for being a changeling. Or the way he had once directed such hatred at fae.
“Okay, Grier. Get your shit in a pile. Nothing happened. And nothing’s ever gonna happen. Not like that. Not with Pete, not with anyone.” Nathan shook his head and pushed up to look at himself in the mirror.
He wasn’t surprised to see that he looked as bad as he felt. He was pale and a thin sheen of sweat was covering his face. Jim had done a good job with the stitches over his right eye, but seeing as how the cut ran cleanly through his eyebrow, Nathan knew it would scar.
Sasha cracked the door open. “Nathan?”
“Hey! Don’t you knock? It looks worse than it is.” Nathan tried to grin as he turned to the door, but it came out as more of a grimace.
“Maybe you should try to have a shower? It might help a bit,” Sasha said. His voice was carefully controlled, but Nathan saw a flash of anger in the redhead’s eyes.
“Sasha? You know it’s not worth it to do anything about this, right?”
“Jim’s already made that case.”
