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They keep the first aid kit at the top of the stairs, just as they enter the loft. It’s easy to grab when they come back from fights, if anyone is bleeding outright, and also easy to get to when they start to feel it later.
Today’s one of the bleeding outright days.
Fran is waiting for them when they traipse up the stairs, the first aid kit in her hands.
RJ grins at her, at her readiness to help, at her worried expression, and he reaches out as he passes her and puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Fran smiles weakly back at him as she watches him go over to his chair, where he collapses.
Lily holds out her wrist to Fran, distracting her, which RJ is glad for. She doesn’t need to see him wince. “I think I twisted it.”
“Hey, sever injuries first,” Theo teases, pointing to his ripped uniform and the bleeding cut on his stomach.
“First come, first serve,” Lily teases back.
“I’ll help,” Casey tells Fran, and she nods at him, handing him an ace bandage for Lily’s wrist.
“It’s a miracle you weren’t hurt worse,” Fran says, helping Theo take his uniform off. While he inspects the tear in the fabric, she inspects his torso. “I watched some of that fight after I closed the store. It was brutal.”
“So that’s why my chair feels sat in,” RJ says, readjusting. Fran shoots him a look over her shoulder, a look that is half reprimand, half amused.
Dom is the last on up the stairs, a piece of cold pizza in his hand. “Should I make us something fresh?” He asks, knowing the toll it will take on their bodies to heal by the time they have to go out and fight again. The power heals, but of course, it can only do so with their help. Extra food, extra sleep, extra care.
“I really don’t want pizza tonight,” Theo says pleadingly from his perch on the counter, and then he hisses as Fran dabs at his cut with a small cotton ball of peroxide.
“We could order in,” Casey says hopefully, and he and Lily both glance up from her wrist with raised eyebrows at him.
RJ pretends not to look at them for a moment, inspects his finger nails. When Dom sticks his hip out in a very ‘I’m waiting’ manner, he smiles. “You all just want me to think you don’t know where my store credit cards are,” he says, amused at the sheepish way Lily and Casey duck their heads. “Go on, then.”
There’s a brief argument about whether to get Chinese or order from that burger place that delivers, but the Chinese food eventually wins.
Dom picks up the phone while everyone calls out things they want, and he orders a nice large amount of food. RJ closes his eyes, listens to them all shout directions and orders at Dom in good fun, tries to listen for any underlying fatigue in their voices. Perhaps he should give them the morning off tomorrow, he’s thinking when he feels a presence near him.
He peaks one eye open to see Fran staring down at him. She’s holding a bottle in one hand and a cotton swap in the other.
“I’m fine,” he whispers gently.
Fran purses her lips to the side. “Where?” She demands, ignoring him.
“Fran,” he tries, but she ignores him again and sits down on the arm of his chair, facing him. She makes him hold the bottle while she examines his face, moves his hair around to see what he’s keeping from her.
“I saw you get bonked on the head,” she says back, when she finds it. “You should give me more credit.”
RJ tilts his head, lets her push his hair back away from the tiny, miniscule, ow ow ow, not so much peroxide, cut. “That stings,” he says through gritted teeth.
Fran baps him on the nose. “You big baby,” she says back, smiling.
Her hands on his scalp would feel nice, the way she pushes his hair around, if it weren’t for the ache under his skin, the stinging of the peroxide. He doesn’t mind Fran taking care of them, of him, but sometimes his wolf would rather she leave it alone and let him lick his own wounds.
When Dom finishes ordering the food, Fran puts his hair back down and takes the bottle from him, stepping away. RJ brings a hand up to massage the spot gently as she goes.
“Anybody else?” She calls, going back over to the first aid kit.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Dom says, coming over and sitting himself on one of the bar stools next to her.
“Where are you hurt?” Fran asks, her face going concerned.
“Right here,” Dom says, pointing to the tip of his finger. “I smashed it in the fridge.”
Fran’s eyes narrow, but her mouth twists into a smile. “Put some ice on it.”
“I’m pretty sure you could kiss it and make it better.” Dom teases, and RJ raises his eyebrows at his forwardness.
Fran manages to keep calm, and she eyes his finger. “I don’t think it’s that serious.”
Dom makes a noise. “Are you kidding? Its life threatening!”
“Better do it, Fran,” Theo says, putting on a fresh t-shirt and sitting down next to Casey and Lily. “We need Dom in good working order.”
Fran blushes, like she has just realized that the others are still there. She looks back at Dom. Then she leans over and places a small kiss on his finger.
Dom grins, takes his finger and smacks it against his cheek. “Much better.”
Fran laughs, and RJ closes his eyes again, and tries not to be jealous. He has no claim on either of them, but seeing them being so affectionate does something funny in his stomach. He tries to ignore it.
When the food get there, they reconvene at the small kitchen table. Like the wild animals they are, the tear into the food, passing cartons around and eating straight from them, dumping some onto plates. Lily complains about her wrist making it difficult to eat, and Casey and Theo end up using their chopsticks to help feed her bits of food.
Lily seems positively gleeful at the attention. “I should get injured more often,” she says thoughtfully, before opening her mouth for a large bit of chicken that Casey is holding out for her.
RJ grins at them, eats his own bit of eel with a loud slurping noise. Dom laughs, reaches over and grabs some eel off of RJ’s plate, and makes the same loud noise in return.
RJ grins, slurps back.
Fran rolls her eyes on Dom’s other side. “Boys!” She exclaims, and Dom and RJ break into laughter.
Later, when things quiet down, RJ sits by the window, sipping his hot tea and enjoying the moonlight. He can hear bits and pieces of the conversations from around the room, hushed though they are.
Fran and Dom are still in the kitchen, cleaning up the small amount of leftover food, rinsing off plates in the small sink. They bump shoulders occasionally, tell each other little jokes, act like the couple of lovesick puppies they are.
Lily has her head resting happily on Casey’s shoulder while he and Theo play some kind of card game near Theo’s beanbags. Her eyes are closed, but every once in a while she says something sassy that betrays her otherwise peaceful looking state. Theo seems to be taking great satisfaction in beating Casey at whatever game they’re playing.
RJ sits, contemplates the stiffness of his ribs, the throbbing of his head. He’d come out of today better than he had other days, of course, and none of the others seemed to be too seriously injured. If he watches carefully enough, he thinks he can see Casey start to stiffen a little, and he can see a bruise formed on Dom’s arm. Their bruises will disappear almost as quickly as they’d come, like usual, RJ thinks, and he wonders if he should insist everyone go to bed soon. He still hasn’t made up his mind about giving everyone the morning off or not.
Fran and Dom come over to him when they’ve finished. Dom sits next to him on the floor, sprawls out against the wall. Fran sits down on one of the little foam cubes.
“I can run the store in the morning, if you want,” she says quietly, reading his thoughts, “so you all can get some rest.”
“I’ll help you,” RJ says back, and she looks like she wants to object. “I’ll be fine, I’m a seasoned warrior,” he waves her look of concern off, “It’s the kittens who need coddling.”
“I heard that,” Casey objects loudly from across the room, and RJ gives him an innocent smile.
“If you expect me to chip in and skip a morning off,” Dom says sarcastically beside him, “you are mistaken.”
“I should get home,” Fran interrupts, looking like she’s about to get up.
“Nonsense,” RJ says at the same time Dom says “For all of three hours.”
Fran smirks at them both.
“Man has a point,” RJ says, and he gives her a soft look. “You might as well sleep here. I can give you something to wear.”
“You should give me a drawer,” Fran says mischievously, looking between them. “This is the third time this week.”
“You should just move in,” Dom says casually, looking questioningly at RJ. “We have room.”
“I second this idea,” Lily yells at them from across the room.
“What idea?” Theo says, and Casey rolls his eyes at him. He’s the only one in the room not eavesdropping.
“Yes, because we aren’t crowded enough,” RJ jokes. He and Dom have been sharing his room since Dom arrived, which RJ doesn’t mind. It’s like being back at the academy. But Lily’s room is considerably smaller, and he doesn’t think she and Fran could coexist in it together very well.
“We’d manage,” Dom says dismissively.
“I’ll think about it,” Fran says with a grin, and RJ shrugs. It would certainly make things more interesting than they already were. “How’s your head?”
“Full of thoughts,” RJ quips back, “How’s yours?”
Fran rolls her eyes, reaches over and gives him a shove.
The cubs come over to join them, apparently having finished their game. Lily makes a fuss about moving, so Theo and Casey drag her over by her feet, each of them grabbing an ankle, and she giggles uproariously as they do it.
“You guys,” she says, smacking both their shoulders with her good hand as sit down beside her.
“You need to learn to be more specific,” Theo says, evading her hand good naturedly.
“Who wants to fetch the red ranger a hot pack?” Casey asks, stretching his side out with a wince.
“I’ll get you one,” Fran says immediately, standing up and going back to the kitchen. RJ shoots Casey a disapproving look, which Casey shrugs to. He’d just been up, after all, there was no need to make Fran do it.
After the sound of the microwave comes and goes, Fran returns with a warm water bottle. “Where are you sore?”
“I took a nice hit in the ribs,” Casey says, and he and Fran put the hot pad in the spot he indicates.
“Just think,” Fran says, pulling back and sitting down again, “When all this is over and you’re not getting beat up every day, you might miss it.”
“Not likely,” Theo says back.
Lily leans over against Casey, wraps an arm around his waist to help hold the water bottle in place so that Casey can drop his hand. He gives her a grateful nudge. “I’ll miss it,” Lily says, closing her eyes. “Maybe not the getting hurt part,” she admits a moment later in the comfortable silence, “But I’ll miss taking care of each other, and being taken care of.”
“We’ll always take care of each other,” Theo says matter-of-factly, and it makes RJ smile.
“Of course we will,” Dom agrees, and he wraps a happy arm around RJ’s shoulders. “That’s what friends do.”
“And we’ll always be friends,” Casey agrees hopefully.
“I hope so,” Fran agrees, and she gives RJ a happy look.
He smiles at her. He hopes so, too.