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Hunter had been so visibly irritated all day and it was beyond concerning to Willow every single time she had to see him squeeze his hands and bite his tongue. She’d been keeping an extra close eye on him over the top of a gardening book for the past fifteen minutes and she thought she’d finally figured out what was making him so upset.
He couldn’t reach the middle of his back to scratch it.
She figured that the ex-Golden Guard would have been flexible enough to reach every inch of his own back, but it started to look like she was wrong around the fourth time she’d seen him trying to rub against the back of his chair for any kind of friction.
She closed the book she had been pretending to read and turned her attention to him instead.
“Is there anything bothering you right now, Hunter?” She approached the subject carefully. He still had walls that were ten feet high some days.
He snapped out of his own head and met her eyes. “Nope! Just... You know,” he dodged the question.
But she still had a twelve foot ladder.
She slid out of the wooden chair she was sitting at and came up behind him. “Not even the itch between your shoulder blades?” She asked, placing her hand on his back with the lightest touch she could manage and starting to scratch at it through his shirt slowly.
The way his breath hitched told her everything she needed to know. “A little lower, please,” he moaned, the tension dropping from his shoulders entirely as she moved her hand a few inches down, scratching him right at the perfect place to dispel the itch he’d been bothered by all day. “Thank you...”
“Uh-huh,” Willow whispered, helping him ease his head down onto the table he was sitting at and continuing to scratch. She ceased scratching just for a moment to snake her hand up the back of his shirt and finish the job directly on his warm, fair skin. “You know, you’re allowed to ask for help if you need it.”
Hunter whined briefly as she withdrew her hand for real and ran her hands along his shoulders to soothe him. “It probably would have gone away on its own,” he deflected quietly.
With a soured expression, Willow let out a defeated sigh. “You were really uncomfortable,” she insisted with a gentle tone. “You don’t deserve to be uncomfortable. I don’t know exactly what being in the Emperor’s Coven taught you about vulnerability and weakness, but you’re not a part of that anymore.”
Hunter’s face softened as he turned his head to look up at her, his cheek still pressed to the wood of the table.
“You’re a part of the Emerald Entrails now,” she reminded him. It hadn’t really sunk in until then. “And the Emerald Entrails take care of each other. That means you’re allowed to accept that care from us.”
A smile bloomed across his face. The mere act of doing it prompted her to do the same.
“You’re right, Captain.”