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“I remember my first day, too.”
Luz wasn’t expecting Hunter’s voice to be so soft and gentle after watching him scream vile, vile threats onstage while he was restrained to have needles forced down into his nailbeds beneath his fingernails. After seeing how much that hurt him, she was relieved to have only gotten the whip during her debut.
The welts were bloody and raised, hot to the touch, but Hunter was so careful when he went about disinfecting them.
“It just stings a little,” Luz said when he’d pulled away after hearing her hiss in pain. “You can keep going.”
“I’ll have you double up with one of my shirts,” he said, removing the wet cloth from her shoulderblades. “The most important thing you can do is keep the dirt out. Performing with a systemic infection can kill you.” He said it with so much weight. Luz could only imagine the horrors he’d lived through.
“Hunter?” She asked, on one hand testing to see if she remembered his name between his screams of agony and the crack of the whip against her skin and on the other to get his pretty magenta eyes to meet hers. “Why are you here? You don’t exactly look like a human...”
He handed her one of the few loose shirts he was provided with terrible, terrible bruising where the needles were forced into his nailbed. He had managed to wipe all the blood away before tending to Luz’s wounds. “I’m not a human,” he said. The pointed ears and bright eyes had already confirmed that to Luz.
“So, then why do they have a witch in a freak show?” She asked.
“Because,” he said, helping guide her arms into the holes and pulling the fabric over her head. It practically swallowed her whole, but the fit was baggy on Hunter as it was. “I don’t have any magic of my own to fight back.”
Luz blinked up at him a few times. He showed her such a soft, sweet smile. She could hardly believe he’d survived any more of this than she had. “But how did you get here?” She asked, desperate for more information on her new roommate. Although, calling the train car they were stuffed into a room was extremely generous.
His smile faded and he looked away from her shyly. “It’s-... Don’t worry about it,” he deflected quietly. “Um. You should try and get some rest. You’re gonna have some really bad dreams, but come and wake me up if you do, okay? I don’t-” He paused and bit his lips, wringing his hands together nervously. “They’re hard to deal with alone. So just ask if you need a little help.”
There was a quiet unease about Hunter, but there was still something so genuine about the way he offered his care to Luz.
“Thanks,” she said, squeezing her arms and snuggling into the second shirt he had dressed her in. “Um. I guess here’s to eight shows a week together.”