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"Fuck." William curses quietly under his breath, sticking one of his fingers in his mouth thoughtlessly as he continues to poke around under the hood of the Winnebago with his other hand. Blueish blood spills down his hand as he pops it out of his mouth, his eyes flicking down to the gash for a moment before shrugging and jamming the hand back into the smoking mess before him.
Vyncent and Dakota are lazing about behind him, Dakota flopped back into a bank of snow snoring softly, and Vyncent tapping slowly at a game on his phone as he leans against a telephone pole. They'd been stopped there for at least half an hour now after William, who demanded he knew what he was doing, definitely did not and did something that made a loud cranking sound and sputtered the van to a smoky stop. Now, he's watching a YouTube video on full blast about how to fix the problem instead of calling an auto repair (see: being a little shit). One by one, they'd all filed out of the RV and stood around it like dads around a grill on a summer day.
But now it's down to William. With his hands covered in soot and smeared blood that Vyncent eyes every time the hands resurface. His gaze flicks up to catch the teal streak at the same time as a zombie punches him off a cliff in his game and he turns off his phone with a huff. It's not his fault, really, the vibrancy of the blue is very distracting. William looks up and meets Vyncent's gaze, his brow furrowed in a mix of frustration and concentration, and rubs at his forehead.
"Dude." Streaks of blue and black paint his scrunched up brow. "I'm going as fast as I can. They didn't teach me about how to fix fuckin' cars in highschool."
"No, I uh." Vyncent waves his phone in the air dumbly. "Died in Minecraft." William just turns back to the hood of the Winnebago and pokes at it some more with his ghost tools. After a few minutes of watching him do whatever it is he's doing, William whirls around to stare at Vyncent.
"What?"
"What do you mean what?"
"What, I can feel you staring at me, what?"
"You're- You've got blood everywhere." William inspects the gash in his finger. The bleeding has pretty much stopped but the cut is deep and jagged. "That looks pretty bad."
"It's whatever." He shrugs and leans against the Winnebago, curling his finger slowly.
"Dude, that's gotta hurt."
"I mean. Yeah. Everything hurts. All the time." Vyncent pushes himself off the telephone pole he was leaning against and approaches William, gesturing for him to hold out his hand. He does so but not without rolling his eyes and averting his gaze.
Vyncent gently takes Williams hand and squints at the cut. "Yep. Ghost blood." William immediately tries to smack at Vyncent, a deep blue-tinted blush on his face, but Vyncent grabs his wrist and instead drags him towards the Winnebago's door. "C'mon."
The inside of the Winnebago is dark with the battery dead since Tide confiscated all of their Bed Bath & Beyond candles but Vyncent knows his way around the haphazardly placed furniture well enough. He leads William through the pitch dark to the sink where he holds up a flame in one hand and turns on the tap with the other, releasing William's wrist.
"You're going to get an infection." In the dim light, Vyncent can just barely make out a mocking sneer on William's face. It takes all of his willpower to not strangle him. The look on Will's face fades into one of uncertainty as he hesitantly moves to stick his hand under the running water. Vyncent's free hand finds it's way onto William's other arm, making him jump. His skin is cold, not as cold as it used to be before he had blood to pump beneath it, but still cold enough to be sub-human.
William sucks in a breath and puts his hand under the water. A small sound escapes his throat and Vyncent watches, mesmerised, as the blue tainted water swirls down the chrome drain. The soot, on the other hand, remains very stuck on. But William stands there for a minute or two, letting the water wash over the gash on his finger in silence. The cut is still sluggishly seeping blood and Vyncent isn't entirely sure if it's due to how deep it is or William's inability to clot properly.
Slowly, William tugs his arm out of Vyncent's loose fingers and begins to scrub the motor grease off his fingertips with the remains of a bar of soap kept beside the sink. Half of the bar is gone, just faded teeth marks remaining from when Tide had to pry the remaining half out of Dakota's mouth back on Harttawa Island.
"I don't think I even can." William says softly, breaking the silence.
"What?" Vyncent wets a paper towel under the faucet and starts wiping at the smudges on William's face.
"Get an infection. I read online that corpses can't really sustain that kind of bacteria or whatever. Just the decomposing kind. I'm like... Never-Get-Sick Boy. That's my new hero name." He laughs half-heartedly at his own joke and turns off the faucet, shaking the water off his hands.
"That's not a good reason to not take care of yourself. I mean, like, I don't want to see you- Y'know."
"Yeah. I- Yeah. Sorry." Vyncent finishes scrubbing and wipes at the damp spot with his sleeve. "I didn't mean to make you worried."
"It's alright." The hand with the balled up bloody paper towel drops slowly and Vyncent hesitates. "I actually think your blood- I think it's pretty." William sputters immediately, his face flushed a bright teal in the dim lighting. "I've seen coloured blood before, back on Fauna. Mostly green. Goblins. Bleh. It's not a good green, either. But I've never seen blue blood. It matches your whole-" He gestures slightly. "You."
"Thaaaaanks...?" William's eyes are wide and searching for something in Vyncent's face. For what, he really doesn't know. Then, slowly, as if moving through water, William leans in closer, his breath ghosting (ha!) across Vyncent's face. "Vyncent. I don't know how to read you."
"Will, what-" A sudden pounding at the Winnebago's door makes the two of them jump apart, the flame snuffing out and leaving them in complete darkness.
"If you two are having sex in there, you better not be because I'm coming in!" The door slams open and pale light floods the van, illuminating the silhouette of Dakota in the doorway.
"WHAT?" William's head jerks towards the door, a look of horror barely readable on his face.
"Oh! Good. I fixed the Winnebago." William screams into the palms of his hands, dragging them down his face. Vyncent just stares at him dumbly, attempting to piece together what just happened. "Man! That would have been awkward." William looks at Vyncent, then at Dakota, then just grimaces and heads to the front of the Winnebago to take his place in the driver's seat.