Page 2 of Fortress
Something to think about, but not before they’d gotten something on the moron’s wound to make sure he didn’t bleed to death or go into anaphylactic shock.
Roger headed to the kitchen, where he kept the herbs he cooked with and the herbs he worked supernatural cures with (more overlap than you’d think; it was amazing the things a man could do with garlic and a little caraway). Halfway through putting together an antitoxin, he double-checked the ingredients ratio in one of the more versatile grimoires (if you substituted “chicken” for “sucklyng dragyn,” it made a damn fine fried wings recipe). Then he fried it into a stinking, soggy mess, drained the liquid off, and packed it into a poultice.
When he came out, he caught only the tail end of Tobias’s abrupt movement away from the couch. He had probably been sitting wedged in there some way that wouldn’t cause Jake pain, but by the time Roger had cleared the doorway, Tobias was standing about a foot away from the couch, watching Roger without ever meeting his eyes.
Roger dragged one of his lighter chairs one-handed to Jake’s side and pressed the compress onto the wound, hard. It musthave hurt like a bitch, but Jake did nothing more than groan and toss a little. That more than anything brought home how close a save it had been. Jake wasn’t in much danger of dying now, but without the kid, he’d have been pretty much screwed.
Roger lifted the compress every few minutes, checking to make sure that the poison was drawing out and leaving a luminous purple smear soaking into the compress. When Jake’s fever finally dropped, Roger set aside the compress, now stained with more blood than toxin. He rubbed the edges of the slash with a local anesthetic, popped open a sterile, pre-threaded needle, and then slid the needle into Jake’s skin.
Even though the pain had to be mostly dull, Jake moaned and twitched while Roger laid a neat line of stitches between the two ragged edges of skin. Once or twice, Roger thought he heard Jake muttering, “Toby, where’s Toby?” When Jake’s movements got jerky enough to upset the stitching, Roger replied, “He’s safe, now hold still, moron, while I sew you up.”
He looked up when he was done, but Tobias wasn’t hovering worriedly next to the couch. Blinking from fatigue and the change of focus, Roger had to make two visual sweeps of the room before he was completely sure the kid wasn’t in sight.
“Tobias?” He glanced toward the kitchen, then noticed a light shining from the bathroom. Roger pulled himself unsteadily to his feet—it had been a damn long day—and moved cautiously toward the ajar door. “Kid?” When Roger didn’t hear a response, he pushed the door open.
Tobias’s bloodstained overshirt was folded neatly on top of the closed toilet seat while the kid leaned against the bathroom counter, holding his left arm over the sink. The jagged slash across his forearm was too big for the neat line of butterfly bandages barely holding it together. The amount of blood covering the kid’s shirt (why hadn’t Roger noticed it before? Had he just assumed it was all Jake’s, that Tobias cowered behindhim and got away without a scratch?) was enough to give Roger one of those angry and unpleasant fear-based adrenaline shots.
“The hell?”
Tobias started, almost dropping the needle. Not that it would have mattered much with one end of the suture already sewn through his skin. Roger took a step inside, and Tobias flinched and dropped his eyes, his left fist clenching and straining the bandages.
“Sorry,” he said, eyes darting to his shirt on the toilet, the blood streaking down into the sink. “I’ll c-clean it up when I know I’m not g-going to make more of a mess.”
“I don’t care about the decor, kid. Why didn’t you say something?” Roger motioned toward the bloody arm and the awkward angle. “You could have held down the compress while I stitched that up.”
Tobias’s eyes flickered nervously in Roger’s direction and then back down to his wound. “It’s not that b-bad. I staunched it so I wouldn’t get dizzy on the drive. It’s almost stopped bleeding anyway.” He looked down at the needle in his hand with a sudden flare of worry. “I’m sorry I took your supplies. I’ll replace them from our kit once you’re done with Jake. It’s just—” Tobias swallowed and continued carefully, as though reciting a chant in an unfamiliar language. “It’s important to Jake that I take care of my injuries right away because blood loss and infection are a serious long-term risk reducing both our chances of survival.”
Roger put a hand against the door frame, wondering wearily how Jake did it. Roger didn’t think he could deal with that kind of painstaking precision every day, not when he felt stuck in that doorway. He might have no right to move closer, but he still felt an essential resistance to the idea of running away and leaving the kid to his pain. Not this time. Not even when Tobias would only let one person help sew up his skin. “Need a hand with anything?
Tobias shook his head, already leaning back over the sink. “It’s fine. Please just make sure Jake’s okay.”
Roger left, though it wasn’t to watch Jake rest. Unless that moron rolled off the couch, there wasn’t a lot more Roger could help with. He returned to the bathroom a moment later with a glass of water and a prescription bottle of pills.
Tobias stared at them, until Roger said gently, “They’re just painkillers, kid.”
Tobias shook his head. “No, thank you. It doesn’t hurt that m-much. If you c-could step out, p-please, I’ll only b-be a—” Tobias paused to take a careful, almost pained breath, eyes focused on the corner of the bathroom next to Roger. “I’ll only be a minute.”
“Oh, sure thing.” Roger ducked out hastily, pills still in hand. He left the water glass behind, though.
Tobias eventually came out, carrying his overshirt and the med kit supplies in his good arm while keeping the other crooked close to his chest. Roger did his best not to look at him, figuring any kind of attention wasn’t what the kid wanted. Tobias settled himself on the floor next to the couch and rested one hand lightly on Jake’s wrist, curling his fingers over his pulse as though Jake’s skin was as thin as cigarette paper.
Even drugged out and recovering from Roger’s patch-up job, Jake twitched, twisted his hand around until his fingers could grab at Tobias’s, and murmured his name. Roger knew he hadn’t been meant to see the smile that flickered over Tobias’s face.
“You want to crash in the spare bedroom, Tobias?” Roger finally asked. “It’s all set. I get folks coming in here wounded all the time. You can catch a couple hours’ sleep, check on him when you need to.”
Tobias glanced up at him, and then back down. “Can I...” he started, stopped, took a breath. “Would it be t-too m-muchtrouble for me to st-stay here? I w-won’t block your way if you n-need to take care of the wound again o-or anything.”
Roger was pretty sure that if he needed to change the poultice or the stitches, Tobias would bolt away as fast as he could. “No, that’s fine, kid, you won’t be in my way. I’ll bring some blankets down. Don’t want you creaking around like me with my back. “
Roger went upstairs and raided the faintly mothball-scented linen closet. Dammit, if Tobias was going to sleep on the floor, injured—to be close to Jake—then the least Roger could do was get him enough padding to be comfortable.
He brought down a sheet, a couple quilts and pillows, and a sleeping bag. Tobias’s eyes widened, and then when Roger told him to move himself, he jumped up and stood behind the couch, one hand touching Jake’s shoulder, until Roger crouched painfully and started laying out the bedding over the floor. Then Tobias came around and helped, always careful to keep a few inches of space between them. In no time they had the sleeping bag, pillows, and quilts laid out in a nice nest right next to Jake, whom Tobias had covered with one of the blankets.
“You need anything else, Tobias?” Roger asked. He’d realized somewhere in the last few hours that he hadn’t used Tobias’s name much. He tended to think of him as “the kid” or “poor sonuvabitch” because that was what he would be in Roger’s head as long as he remembered that day he’d walked away from that wretched boy in the interrogation room.
But the kid had a name, and that was pretty damn important.
Tobias shook his head. “No, I’m fine. Thank you, M-Mr. Harper.”
