Work Text:
Red sat himself on the uncomfortable chair, face dark and arms folded. He didn’t need a fucking hospital. Everything smelt of bleach and cleaniless and he couldn’t even see a fake plant. It made him anxious, he would run if he could walk unaided. Everything had been fine. They were hunting, and he’d got a fucking excellent shot in on a deer, but he hadn’t realised there was a stag nearby. It had charged at him, and he had a nasty gash in his leg. He was fairly certain he could see the muscle. It was a good thing Theo was around to shoot the bastard. At least they had two deer now, Regi had insisted they take them back to the cabin- if Theo was going to drag him to A&E he wasn’t going to waste perfectly good meat.
Theo sat down beside him, and turned his head to him “sorry, they thought they misheard me when I said you got attacked by a deer. They said to keep pressure on it while they get a doctor.” Regi scowled, keeping his eyes on his lap. He could feel his leg throbbing, but he was sure he would have been fine in a couple days. Theo put his head on his shoulder “It’s alright, Red. I won’t leave you, and I'm sure I smell like dirt and blood.” Regi let himself untense slightly with the contact- he could smell the outside clinging to his partner and it made him feel better. “If you leave me I'm walking out.” Theo laughed at him, and took his hand “I ain’t going anywhere.” Regi was called pretty quickly- he did have a pretty nasty gash. Theo helped him into the little room, and he sat himself down on the bed. The doctor was unhappy with this and made him lie down, which just made him anxious. Theo could see his partner was practically vibrating in his position, and so he dropped his hand onto his arm “you’re alright, Red.” His voice was soft, but confident. Regi’s legs bounced in their spot, he had fear in his eyes- something Bear hadn’t seen before, it broke his heart. What Bear assumed was a nurse was examining his leg, cleaning it and generally just trying to stem the bleeding. He kept kicking his leg out. “I’m fine, piss off” he kept shuffling, trying to straighten himself out as much as possible, but he was clearly in a lot of pain- not helped by his constant moving. “We won’t do anything without your consent- if you want me to stop I will but it wouldn’t be a good idea. You’re bleeding pretty badly, and you might have torn the muscle.” Bear nodded loosely, and Regi scowled at the nurse. “Just do whatever you have to. I’ll try to stop him from kicking you.” Bear responded, keeping a hand on Regis arm “Stop being a pussy. Do you want to go home? Or do you wanna spend the next six months learning to walk with a fucking plastic leg?” Bear snapped at his partner; he had tried being nice, and it was awkward and felt uncomfortably out of character for both of them. Regi scowled at his partner; eyes flinching as the nurse continued to work on his leg. Bear could see Regi was scared- it might not be entirely obvious to most, well hidden with anger, but Bear knew Regi hated hospitals. It took a great amount of convincing just to get him to put on the occasional bandage. Bear put his head down on Regi’s shoulder- pretending he didn’t notice him smelling his hair. “We’ll be back in our cabin before you know it. I’ll even cook dinner, yah know if you ask nicely.” Bear spoke; he didn’t like hospitals either and he would have left if he didn’t think what Regi had said earlier was 100% true. Regi took a breath in, smelling Bears hair; he smelt like smoke, and pine and it comforted Regi more than he cared to admit- he smelt like their home and that’s where he wanted to be. The smell of bleach was all that seemed to exist in places like these, and nothing in here was natural. Everything was made of latex, and had ridiculously complicated chemical-sounding components to them. It was everything he hated, and everything he had spent his life trying to get away from, it sickened him that he was currently weak enough to need to be here.
Bear stayed with him the entire time he was treated; he did have a torn muscle. It was wrapped up appropriately and Regi was given pain killers bear knew he had no intention of taking (but if he got pissy bear wouldn’t hesitate to break them up into his food) and crutches. Regi was unimpressed by it all, and stayed silent until they were home. He lay down on their bed, with Scruffs head on his lap and took in a long breath; they were indoors, but you could still smell the forest and only the forest. “You know I'm still gonna go hunting right?” Regi stated, shuffling the deck of cards in his hand “I know. And I’ll be there to laugh when you fall over.” Bear replied- sentence punctuated by the sound of his gun clicking back together as he cleaned it. This was the life for him; injured partner or not.