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A lot of her friends said that Julia worried too much for others. She wanted to know how they were doing. She wanted to help. They said that she could literally be bleeding to death on the ground and try to offer assistance to a stranger on the street.
Besides the impractical metaphor, Julia had to admit to herself that the hyperbole was true. She cared for others. She never lost that little edge, that kind of unwelcome but needed nudge to check in on people.
How she learned the hard way in college: calling up her classmates to see if they understood the material on the study guide. No, no, not for her, she was fine—for them. The mache-like realization that Julia herself had her own classes to pass, her own problems hooked on her like chiggers, but she pushed them aside. Let the wound air.
She could practically see her mother pacing around in the kitchen, shaking her head, but Julia was unsure whether it was directed to her or not. Julia, xīngān, this is why medical school would suit you more. Your strive to help indicates therapist.
Julia didn’t consider herself cut out for med school, but she knew her mom was right.
Which is why she can’t repress that natural instinct to lean over to look to the driver’s seat, at Chase wrapping his wrist in kinesiology tape, his face twitching as he hit some particularly tender spots. He’s probably tiredly aware of Julia’s gaze on his, like she was waiting for something.
And she was. More or less.
Julia drums her fingers on the dashboard, her neatly trimmed nails making clicks like glass. She starts to bounce her leg. The words begin the trek up her throat.
Julia doesn’t know if she’s just paranoid, or if Chase really has ESP, but she can see him tense up. Probably waiting for the inevitable avalanche of softcore interrogation to leave her lips. She adjusts her glasses, and Chase furrows his eyebrows as he tries to stretch the tape in a way that’ll get him the most relief.
Julia feels her leg bounce harder as she turns her body around fully. Seeing him work with the KT tape is about as graceful as combing hair with a fork.
Her eyes trail to the open glove compartment with the ACME issued first-aid kit, contents astrew like the car rolled down a hill. Julia swallows, practically feeling the aching bolus of words down her throat. She decides to busy herself with tucking away the blue latex gloves and single-use pill packets back into the kit.
Julia hears him grumble louder when she clips the kit shut, and she does it.
“Sir, are you alright?” She winces at the phrase that had offset so many friendships after uttering it one too many times, the one that she knew Chase absolutely abhorred with a passion.
Julia thinks of barreling out of the parked car, running down the hillside they were parked on. Her hand actually grazes the handle when she sees Chase crumple the wrapper for the kinesiology tape in his good hand. She knows what sentence follows after she says the dreaded ‘are you alright?’ It’s worse, despite ironically being coined to aid in worse situations.
Julia rubs her hands on her thighs as Chase lets the white wrapper fall to the mat of the car, putting on a peeved expression that deepened the premature lines below his eyes. He presses his lips together and narrows his eyes, looking off into the distant city that overlooks the hill, shining with its nightlife.
Julia feels like she ate an under ripe persimmon: mouth dry. She truly can’t believe her eyes when she watches Chase’s shoulders relax, and his whole body untense, despite neither of the two having said anything for minutes on end.
Julia takes the sudden atmospheric and demeanor change to prompt her next question, despite really knowing that she had a 75% chance of getting her head bitten off.
“Do you.. do you need me to help?”
This time it’s his nose that wrinkles. Chase’s hand again clasps against an imaginary wrapper, face conflicting.
Following the same awe-inducing pattern, he lets out a breath big enough to blow them both away and turns to her. Chase’s eyes are tired. Hell, they should both have hit the sack by now, had Chief not sent them on a last minute mission.
Chase nods. Slowly, begrudgingly, but he still does. He cradles his stupidly injured wrist in his free hand.
“Please, Agent Argent.” He rubs his eyes and turns to face her again, his arm with the injury stiff in the air, unmoved. “I can shoot an assaulter from tens of yards away, yet I cannot wrap my fucking wrist.” He gruffs, Julia already moving to take the tape from him.
It’s blue.
Only ACME.
She sighs and takes a look at the manual that comes with the tape. Her eyes take over the different wraps for different injuries, like scarification. Eyeing the one for the wrist sprain, she tears the proper amount of tape.
“Give me your wrist.” Julia tells him with knitted eyebrows, beckoning with her hand. Chase bites his lip, and for a second he himself looks like he stuck his hand in the dirty sink water.
Julia refrains herself from steeling her voice. Refrains herself from making it harder and telling him he wasn’t like that two hours ago, when he pushed his way through a labyrinth of people to chase after Carmen Sandiego, and ended up with a sprained wrist, somehow managing to trip and land on his wrist not even ten seconds later.
Chase nods and moves his arm to her, hand limp. She takes it and rolls up the sleeve of his coat, the brief medical training that she had back at Interpol fresh in her mind. They didn’t have splints in the car, so the kinesiology tape would have to work for now.
“Ah.” Chase gasps as she pulls his wrist backward just a tad too hard, teeth digging into his lip. Julia retracts her hands suddenly, and puts them back on his arm again, lower than his wrist. His arm was warmed by the double layer of his coat and dress shirt, and Julia will admit, she let her hands linger on his skin for a longer moment than needed. Julia adjusts her glasses and leans closer to scrutinize the wrist, making sure it wasn’t dislocated.
Julia hums. “A little bruise, but it’s not that big.” She sets the limp hand on her knee and takes the tape again, peeling the wrapper away. She takes great care in making sure that the tape doesn’t fold in on itself, like she had seen Chase woefully do so many times.
Chase looks at her with his eyebrows raised a little more. “Miss Argent, you are knowledgeable in the medical field?” It wasn’t a condescending question, like he was so infamous for, but rather a rare streak of genuine interest. His green, sea glass like eyes searched her for answers. Julia didn’t stop, letting his hand dangle off her knee as she began the first therapeutic wrap. She stretched the tape and began to press it parallel to his arm.
“No, not really. I didn’t… I didn’t go to nursing or medical school if that’s what you’re wondering, sir.” Julia replies without missing a beat, seeing his features contour slightly at the topical pressure of the tape. “I took a quick class at our academy on the basics of first aid, as we were required. Didn’t you?”
She sits upright this time as she begins to prepare the other wrap. Chase runs his fingers absentmindedly over the rough texture of the first tape. He clears his throat at the question. Julia hopes she didn’t catch him off guard and cause him to pull his walls up again—she was beginning to enjoy the emotional breathing room they had at the moment.
“Maybe once or twice. Such things do not bother to return to my mind anymore.” Chase taps two fingers above his ear for emphasis. He shrugs. “I presume, then, that the courses are fresher in your memory, no?” He stifles another noise of discomfort as Julia takes his wrist ever so gently, more out of preparation than anything.
“I suppose so.” Julia nods, gaze stuck on the electric blue tape that she began to peel, stretching it before wrapping it around the circumference of his wrist.
“And you never.. considered going to medical school?”
Julia stops this time, half of the tape wrapped around his wrist. She thinks of what to say. Chase, for once, looks like he instantly regrets his choice of words. He opens his mouth for nothing to emerge. Julia knows he didn’t mean any hurt, but it warms her to see him act so consciously of his wording for once. She doesn’t know, however, if it’s something he’s been doing to everyone else, or just to her. No matter, Julia welcomes it.
She can’t suppress the chuckle that slips out of her lips like soap. “I didn’t, but my mother did. I knew law and investigational work was where I was meant to be. Especially since my—our job requires a lot of knowledge from history. It was my favorite subject.”
Chase purses his lips in thought and nods, clearly looking relieved that Julia didn’t slap him point-blank across his face. Not that she could ever.
“The thing is, you.. help people a lot. Or try to, at least.” Chase looks rueful as he turns his face to look at the blanketed city ahead. He rubs his chin with a free hand. “Especially after-” He gestures to his wrist with a single nod. “-this. Thank you.” Chase exhales and begins to bounce his leg restlessly like Julia did, as well. She half wonders if he has something he’s bursting to say as well.
The airance of gratitude feels new. Fresh. Julia smiles, though she knows that when she does she looks worried. She reaches to apply the final circumferential piece of tape on top of the previous one. She doesn’t want to overreact about the simple thanks, despite it almost being an eighth wonder of the world itself.
“Of course.” Julia nods, treating it like anyone else would. She witholds herself from running outside for the second time and whooping.
She finally finishes the wrap entirely, and Chase flexes it just a little bit out of instinct. He looks at her and smiles, wordlessly showing her his abundant thanks. Julia feels very much satisfied. He looks almost like a model by the way he leans on the crook between the car seat and the door, inspecting his wrist. Julia’s not sure if he can feel her gentle gaze on him.
“You’ll be able to drive?” Julia quips very, very softly, with a voice like haze.
Chase adjusts his coat with his good hand on the lapel. By straightening the coat, he straightens himself. Runs a hand through his chestnut hair. “Of course I can, Miss Argent. Never had a simple overextension of the wrist stopped me.” A little later, and more gingerly he adds, “I will not perform any risky maneuvers, if that is what you worry about.”
It was, because Julia knew that Chase would somehow feel inclined to kick someone with a broken leg. He was that type of person.
“Don’t.” She says simply, with an amused look on her features. His eyes squint with an emerging smile of his own. He digs the keys into the ignition and Julia steadies herself as she feels the car pull out of the bumpy gravel track. She hopes Chief won’t question why they’re well over forty-five minutes late. If anything, telling her they had to stop to treat Chase’s wrist is easier than trying to spit up to the cross-armed woman that they went to an urgent care facility. That divergence would have taken more, and siphoned well over a couple hundred dollars for a simple sprain.
It was better to have Chase visit on his own dime than risk the wrath of Chief, despite the expense being hardly a dent in ACME’s resources. It took Julia a well of patience to calmly explain that to a writhing, thrashing, cursing Chase in the car.
She’s interrupted by his voice, as gravel-ly as the road.
“For what it is worth, Agent Argent, I could say that I am glad with that fact that you did not decide to take an alternative career path.” Chase opines. Julia can tell he’s trying not to stutter.
It’s probably one of the nicest things he’s ever said to her. Julia feels her cheeks rise up on their own.
“Thank you, Agent Devineaux.” She replies with a voice that can barely withhold her ecstasy. Julia remembers what she had told Carmen that one choking afternoon on the train: I love my job. She taps her pen against her knee. “I do believe feel the same way as well.”