by Kayla Wolf
“Far enough. Are you sure you can make it?”
“I am sure,” he said, as resolutely as he could. What other option did he have?
Chapter 6 – Lisa
Lisa couldn't believe what was happening. Was she in shock? Had there been some kind of delayed psychological impact of seeing this guy covered in blood? Or perhaps the conflict with the green-haired guy had caught up with her and caused her to completely lose her damn mind. Was she really going to escort this enormous bloodstained madman to her actual apartment, where she lived, alone? She could just imagine what her mother would say – or more accurately, the way her mother would scream.
Hey, mom, you want the good news or the bad news first? Well, the good news is that the pepper spray finally came in handy! You wouldn't believe what an adventure I've had! Oh, the bad news? Well...
God.
They got to the end of the alley before Lisa realized that there was an unforeseen problem with the “why don't we just walk home?” prospect – it was midday on a weekday and the streets were absolutely packed with people. This didn't seem to bother her strange charge at all – Alexander glanced down at her when she hesitated at the mouth of the alley, a kind of gentle impatience in his expression.
“Seriously? We're just going to walk down the street with you looking like a murder victim?”
“I will keep my eyes open so that passersby know that I am alive,” he said with a stilted kind of dignity that would have made Lisa laugh uproariously had the situation not been so dire. She still felt the impulse, vaguely, in the back of her mind – knew that it was a sign of stress, of impending breakdown, and suppressed it. Plenty of time to lose her shit later. For now, she had a six-foot-fifty madman to steer down the street. What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Lisa? Serves you right for poking your nose into a drug deal, I guess.
But to her surprise – and then reluctant acceptance – nobody on the street tried to interfere with them at all. Oh sure, they got plenty of stares. Lisa imagined Alexander got stares at the best of times, what with being taller than basically anyone she'd ever met and drop-dead gorgeous besides (he didn't look great at the moment, of course, but Lisa had a professional interest in seeing the best in people, and it wasn't hard to tell that this was a good-looking man under all the blood.) As badly injured as he was, more than a few people stared openly. But it was New York, and weird shit like this happened every single minute of every single day, and the majority of the people they were passing had long since learned the lesson of keeping your head down and minding your own goddamn business.
Like you should have, before, in the cafe, when you heard what you were pretty certain was a drug deal going on in the alleyway, she scolded herself again. Maybe if she spent enough time beating herself up over it, she'd manage to avoid making such a profoundly stupid mistake ever again. It wasn't too late, technically, she thought a little wildly. She could just leave him on the nearest bench, borrow someone's phone to call an ambulance despite his protests (how was he going to stop her? He could hardly walk under his own power) and go home. But as much as she hated to admit it, she was invested. She cared about what happened to this dangerously injured weirdo. And she'd agreed to help him. It would have just felt wrong to abandon him after all that.
Nobody even spoke to them the entire trek home, which to Lisa felt extremely rude. She was a slight woman, and this guy was enormous – someone could at least have offered to help her support him, or something. Chivalry really was dead. She steered him into the foyer of the building. He was breathing heavily, shallow and high up in his chest (trying to stop his ribs hurting, she supposed grimly) but there was no wheezing still, so his lungs were intact. Probably. She had absolutely no medical training unless you counted a lifetime's worth of Paramedic Stories from her dad. Alexander stirred a little from the fugue state he'd seemed to occupy since they left the alleyway, and she saw him looking carefully at the tile floor.
“What's up?”
“Checking I am not bleeding ... on your floor,” he said with some difficulty, then pointed.
“Well, look at that. You've stopped bleeding.” That was – impressive, actually, given how many injuries he had. She scanned his face quickly, a little surprised – he grinned back at her through his bloodied lips and swollen eyes.
“Told you. I told you I would heal. I am very good...” He swayed alarmingly, and she steadied him.
“Yeah, yeah, you're the best. C'mon, we're nearly there.”
It was funny, the kind of things people said when they were out of it. Alexander seemed to honestly believe he had some conscious control over the rate of his healing. She fumbled in her bag for her keys, wanting to unlock the door as quickly as possible, a little worried by the prospect of her landlady turning up in that unexpected and bone-chilling way she had. Lisa knew it was technically illegal to drop by unannounced, but pointing that out was also a really good way of not getting your lease renewed. She'd just gotten in the habit of keeping the flat looking ready for visitors at all times.
Which she was glad of as she brought Alexander into the combination kitchen, dining room and living room that made up one of the three rooms of the tiny flat. There was a little couch, but she'd already decided he was too big for it – it wasn't even comfortable enough for her to stretch out on, and she was at least a foot shorter than him. Carefully, she guided him into her bedroom and helped him lower himself onto the bed, where he sat, eyes drifting vaguely around the room.
“Here we are. How are you feeling? Did the walk rip anything else loose?”
“Fine. I have —” he shut his eyes for a moment, “seven broken ribs, a broken collarbone, a dislocated shoulder, a sprained wrist, twenty-six serious lacerations, and bruising to the majority of my body.”
Lisa blinked at him. “And how the hell do you know all that?”
“By paying attention,” he said primly. Then, without a single shift in his facial expression, he slowly, like a collapsing souffle, collapsed backwards onto the bed.
“Alexander?”
He made a hoarse sound of assent, his golden eyes sliding shut. Lisa hovered, a little worried about him. What if he just – died, right here on the bed in her apartment? Her landlady would never renew the lease then. She'd kicked out the tenant before Lisa for smoking a single cigarette on the balcony. And she'd probably be arrested besides.
She waited until she could see his ribs rising and falling, then stepped into the bathroom and looked under the sink. She knew she had a bottle of antiseptic in here somewhere – whenever she cut her fingers trying to cook, she'd always wash the wound out. A Dad rule that she'd somehow kept. She tipped some of the stuff into a clean bowl of warm water, sloshed it around a bit, grabbed some clean hand towels (the only thing she had available) and crept back into the room.
Some of the wounds were easy to get at – the lacerations on his face, for example, were easy enough to dab the antiseptic onto. Lisa had worried that he would wake up at the sting of it, but he didn't even stir – Lisa even checked his breathing again, just to be sure, but sure enough, his chest kept rising and falling. With the blood cleaned off, she confirmed her diagnosis – definitely a handsome guy. Beautiful skin, under the contusions – olive skin, set off perfectly by that lustrous dark hair of his. Like a Mediterranean prince or something. And those remarkable golden eyes – they were closed now, but she remembered them well enough. Who on earth was he? She'd never met anyone like him. How had he gotten on the wrong side of that maniac in the alley? Frustrating that he was asleep, really. She had quite a few questions now that the adrenalin of the situation was wearing off.
His hands were badly damaged, too – she gently lifted each one, working methodically across his bloodied knuckles and the scrapes on his palms where he'd tried to break his fall, sponging away the blood and cleaning out any grit or dirt that was trying to settle in the wound. She carefully unbuttoned the white shirt he was wearing, too, pulling the fabric gingerly away from hi
s skin – a bit of an invasion of privacy, perhaps, but she didn't want the cloth getting stuck in his healing wounds. But of course, he was far too heavy to move for long enough to get the shirt off. Lisa considered the problem for a moment – then went into her kitchen for her scissors. The best bleach in the world wasn't going to rehabilitate that shirt from all the blood on it. Plus, it was torn in a dozen places. Deftly, she snipped along the arms and freed him of all but the piece he was lying on. No doubt he had injuries on his back, too, but those could wait.
Seriously, was this guy a goddamn model or something? His body was – well, it was covered in blood and bruising, which took her breath away, but she was a human woman with eyes, and she could see what the guy was working with. Sculpted abs, powerful broad shoulders, pecs that – as she gently daubed away the blood – she could tell were rock solid. God. Alright, Lisa, stop perving. Wildly inappropriate, and pretty creepy, if she was honest. She tried not to think too much about what she was doing as she cleaned off the blood and cleaned out the grazes she could reach. Hopefully, his back wasn't too bad. At any rate, she'd wait for him to wake up before she attempted that.
Not much to be done about the bruising, either – she could see the ugly imprints of boots where those guys must have kicked him. His assessment of his collarbone seemed to be right. There was a lot of bruising and swelling around the area, and she avoided it entirely with her cloth, frightened of hurting him any more than he'd been hurt already. It made her feel a little sick to imagine human beings doing that to one another. She'd only known him for a little while, but he seemed like a decent enough guy – and no-one deserved to be hurt like this, even if they had done something to warrant punishment. Gently, she unlaced his shoes and pried them from his feet, then hesitated with her hands hovering over the pants he was wearing. They weren't as badly tattered or bloodstained as the shirt, and besides, they were – well, his pants. Getting rid of the shirt was one thing. It might be a little more intimate than either of them would be happy with to take off his pants as well. She settled for unbuckling his belt to ensure he could breathe freely.
“There,” she murmured to herself with some satisfaction, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips after tipping out the bloodstained water and putting the cloths she'd used in a bucket of cold water to soak. Aside from the bruises and the strange angle of his shoulder, he almost looked like a regular guy who'd come home from work and dropped off to sleep on the end of the bed.
It felt strange, having a second person in her apartment. Aside from a very few one-night stands, Lisa hadn't had a man over in any meaningful sense since she'd moved in. Well, the flat was almost too small for her alone, so it was partly a practical consideration. But as she moved into the other room, shutting the door behind her to avoid her sounds disturbing him in his sleep, she had to admit that something about it felt kind of ... nice.
Chapter 7 – Alexander
There had been a walk, he remembered that much. The human had positioned herself under his arm and half-supported, half-steered him down the streets of the city. He had tried his best to scrutinize each passerby, searching for any sign that one of them was one of the shifters who'd so thoroughly defeated him. No sign of them, thankfully – just a lot of worried humans attempting to avoid eye contact with the maniac covered in blood. And far enough, too. He was grateful that he'd succeeded in talking the human – Lisa – out of calling an ambulance. He'd had some experience with human medical attention, and it had almost ended in catastrophe, with a member of his family narrowly avoiding being kept as some kind of exhibit in a freak show, a medical marvel. Alexander supposed that from a human perspective, they were rather marvelous. From his perspective, though, it was humans who were fragile and easily bruised.
Helena would have scolded him for that, he reflected drowsily as the human steered him up several flights of stairs. Helena had never seen humans as weak or fragile – she'd always carried on about how deceptively strong they were, how clever, how adaptable. She was absolutely obsessed with the fact that they'd been to the moon. Alexander had no idea why anyone would want to go to that desolate rock in the first place, but Helena was giddy over it.
“They made little suits!” she'd tell him, over and over. “So they could breathe! Can you believe it?”
He could believe it. Helena was always arguing that for a race that changed forms all the time, they were incredibly poor at adapting to change. She blamed the curse on that inability to change, in fact – said the reason they were dying out was that they'd been stagnating for too long. Her interpretation of the prophecy was that the human woman he was meant to go and find would bring a breath of fresh air to their stilted old traditions – show them new ideas, new things, new ways. Shift their paradigms – “pardon the pun,” she'd add, eyes aglow.
And though he'd never in a thousand years admit it to her face, she had a point. This little human beside him, the one steering him now into a tiny apartment, was carrying on for all the world as though this happened to her every day. He was willing to bet – from the expression he'd seen on her face, and from the way that she'd stammered – that she'd never faced a situation like this in her life. And yet here she was, handling it. It had been less than an hour and she'd completely adjusted her angle on life to accommodate him and his injuries.
Maybe he needed to give humans a bit more of a go, he admitted grudgingly to himself as he fell backwards onto the bed. The softness of it came rushing up to claim him, and he could no more have stayed awake any longer than he could have flown to the moon.
When he opened his eyes again, the room was dark, and there was a gentle sound coming from the other room. Alexander sat up, wincing at the grind and grate of his ribs – and realized to his bemusement that his shirt seemed to have stayed on the bed behind him. Had it been torn that badly in the fight? He lifted the bloodstained pieces – no, this had been cut by a blade of some sort. Had the human – undressed him? His fingertips traced over his skin – it was clean, of blood and dirt as well as the grazes and abrasions that had been left on him by the shifters' attack. A pang of anxiety settled in his stomach at the thought that she had been interfering with him while he was unconscious. What had she seen? Hopefully nothing. It wouldn't have taken so long to clean his wounds, she would have been gone by the time they began to knit over. He reached up to his face, noticing that that, too, had been cleaned – it was kind of her, he thought with some amusement. Fortunate, that it had been her who had found him in the alley. A lot of other humans wouldn't have coped half so well.
Or maybe they would have. Maybe Lisa was an average specimen. Alexander was beginning to realize that he'd underestimated humans for quite some time. Well, at least he'd learned something from this experience. The head wound was gone, as were the various scrapes to his face. A gentle press indicated that his nose had set, too, though it was still tender to the touch. The teeth that had been kicked out of his jawbone were still missing, but the wounds had stopped bleeding at least. His abdomen was still extremely painful when he moved – internal bleeding didn't mend as quickly as the surface-level stuff – and he could tell that the broken ribs were going to need a little more time, as was his collarbone, but overall he'd gotten off pretty lightly.
Every shift of his left arm caused the collarbone to ache, and he knew he needed to immobilize it if it was to have a hope of healing. Looking down at the ruined scraps of his shirt, he set about fashioning – difficult, with one arm, but he managed – a crude sling to hold the arm, supported and immobile, against his chest. It wasn't a particularly good sling, but it did the job. Taking a deep breath, he rose to his feet – and though he felt a little unsteady, he was able to stay up.
Good. Now to thank his savior.
She was curled up on the sofa, her feet tucked beneath her body in an endearing kind of way, wearing the same clothes she had been wearing in the alley. He noticed to his dismay that there were bloodstains on the shirt. The box in the corner of her room ap
peared to be glowing, and he realized to his surprise that there were moving images on it. Some kind of communication device, perhaps – though she didn't look like she was receiving important information. Entertainment, then. They always did take an extraordinary interest in amusing themselves.
“Lisa,” he said, a little formally. She jumped as though she'd been shocked, and spun around to look at him.
“God! You scared me. You shouldn't be up,” she added, concern replacing her shock almost immediately as she shot to her feet and trotted across the short space to examine him. “You've still got – woah.”
Her eyes widened as she neared him, flicking across his chest and stomach, and he realized his mistake.
“No way,” she breathed, reaching out to his right arm where he vaguely remembered there had been a significant laceration. “This was all torn up. How – did you have steroid cream in your pockets or something? How'd you heal so quickly?”
“A family trait,” he tried, hoping that would alleviate her interest. It clearly didn't, from the blatant suspicion in her eyes when she turned her face up to look at him.
“Yeah? Wolverine genes?”
That threw him. “The wild animal?”
“No, like – the X-men. Wolverine? Never mind.”
“Thank you, for attending to me in my sleep,” he said now. Perhaps changing the subject would distract her from his miraculous ability. “And for having me here. But I have intruded enough on your world. I will leave.”
“Do you want a real sling?”
He hesitated. He could already feel the scraps of fabric beginning to give way under the weight of his arm – it had been a long time since he'd done ad-hoc first aid for this kind of form. Lisa was already rummaging in a kitchen cabinet.
