Chapter Text
D3rlord flinches back.
Avery sucks in a sharp breath, an apology on the tip of his tongue.
He doesn’t spill it yet.
D3rlord’s recovery has been going well these last few days, but changing his bandages is still something of a trial.
How can it not be?
His chest and torso are…well.
For wherever he had been and whatever he had been doing while there, that pretty golden armor of his didn’t do him much good.
Avery tries to be gentle when it comes time to do this, but he can’t always manage it, and when D3rlord flinches Avery jerks his hands away quicker than a lightning strike, dropping the roll of bandages with the same bone deep rumbling of an ensuing thunder clap.
It falls onto the bed.
Rolls to the edge.
Clatters to the floor with the echoes of a fading summer thunderstorm.
For a moment, there is nothing more than a fuzzy silence.
“I’m sorry!” Avery finally blurts out. Then, “Did that hurt?”
D3lord doesn’t answer right away.
He looks down at his chest, to his ribs, and Avery follows the line of those pretty eyes.
The bleeding of his odd gold dusted blood has lessened, but not stopped. It has only grown sluggish, pulsing with the same speed and viscosity of honey and tree sap. The bruising on the knight’s skin is dark and mottled and has deepened over the days he’s been bound to this bed to something almost concerning if Avery didn’t know that bruises often looked worse before they looked better.
Still.
The indigos and violets and emeralds have twisted and contorted and grown, curling around the curving lines of D3rlord’s ribs in ways that made Avery uneasy and unsettled. It is almost as if someone had grabbed him, digging fingers into beaten flesh and using his bones as an anchor to hold.
“It's fine,” D3rlord says.
Which means it does hurt.
Avery bites his cheek.
He hadn’t really been expecting the knight to say anything different–he is, as Avery had the pleasure of learning these last few days, one stubborn mother fudger–but it’s still aggravating all the same.
“You have to tell me if something hurts.” Avery argues. He swoops down to rescue the roll of bandages, gesturing wildly with it once he straightens back out. The wooden stool Avery is sitting on groans in protest at the movements, but he ignores it. “That’s how this whole thing works you donkey–you go oh, Avery, thank you so much for changing my bandages but please don’t wrap that so tight, I have some pretty gnarly bruises you know and then I go apologies, sir knight, let me just loosen that for you–”
Avery abruptly cuts himself off.
D3rlord is looking at him.
That is not anything new.
D3rlord looks at him all the time.
It almost feels like there is never a moment where the knight isn’t looking at him.
Avery had…not gotten used to it.
Not really.
He is no stranger to people staring at him. That part he’s far more familiar with than he’d care to admit to. But the way D3rlord looks at him is, well. No one else looks at Avery like that. No one has ever looked at Avery like that, like he hung the moon and the sun and the stars and made it all go round.
It’s a lot.
And Avery doesn’t know what to do with it.
“...what?” Avery asks softly.
D3rlord blinks slowly.
His eyes flicker like embers. Pop like fireplace coals.
“I love you,” D3rlord says easily.
Avery swallows.
He knew D3rlord was going to say it.
He always says it.
And still Avery looks away, down at the roll of white sterilized bandages in his hand, and stays silent.
D3rlord lets out a quiet sigh.
The bandages an odd contrast against the green of Avery’s own skin, making it seem lighter in tone than it really is and far more transparent. He flexes his fingers, digs them into the soft cotton he’s holding. It’s not a texture he enjoys. Soft, yes, but there are too many holes. Too many places to get stuck. Too many ways to leak through.
“I mean it,” Avery says briskly. He looks back up, somewhere just over D3rlord’s shoulder. He watches the strong line of that shoulder drop, sees D3rlord tilt his head, and only when Avery is sure he’s looking away does he dare to glance back at the knight. “If I'm wrapping this too tight or whatever, say something.”
D3rlord does not say anything.
Avery would like to think it’s because he manages to wrap the bandages perfectly this time.
But he knows it's not.