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He wasn’t a clumsy person in the slightest. He hadn’t meant to drop the glass. It wasn’t like he was doing anything wrong, either. This was his house, that he bought with his own money from his own job, the glass that he had paid for. If he broke something, so be it. It wasn’t a crime, it wasn’t an offence, there were no written rules that a glass couldn’t be broken.
So what if he did? If he just left it, Alexis would come around and clean it up for him anyway. There was no gun to his head, no looming threat forcing him to deal with it himself.
The shatter had been loud, enough for Michael to jump back at the sound. There wasn’t anything in it—no liquid mess to clean or stains to rub out. It was early in the morning, and he had just wanted some water.
He could drink when he wanted to; he paid the water bills, and no one would stop him. No one could stop him. He would drink and eat and sleep whenever he wanted to. He had a fridge stocked with food, fresh from a grocery store, that he could grab whatever he wanted.
Michael kneeled on the floor, the microscopic shards of glass poking at his skin through his pants. He started with the biggest chunks, piling them into his hand as he swept the rest with his palm. Quietly, quieter than he had been in a long time, he crawled to the garbage can and buried them inside, digging deep into the thrown-out wrappers and leftover mush to bury the evidence.
No one could know he dropped it, or else.
His knees ached, just enough for him to be worried about bruising, about questions . If Alexis saw bruises, if he saw the little cuts, he’d ask questions. If Michael told him to stop, to drop it and never mention it again, he would, but that wouldn’t stop the fact that he’d have seen it in the first place.
He needed to clean the glass, and then he needed to clean his wounds. Michael buried the shards deeper, shifting on the cold tiles as if that would make him more comfortable. He rocked onto his heels, making sure his head was ducked under the kitchen countertop as he continued cleaning. It took long, too long, long enough for his heart to start racing, his eyes darting around the room, waiting for loud, heavy footsteps to come down. He could grab the broom, it would make too much noise, and he couldn’t waste towel paper, so he used his hands.
It was uncomfortable, but he had to do it, and he had to do it quickly, or else.
Or else.
There was still glass, pieces so small they’d be invisible to the eye. But they were there, he knew. He knew because he could feel them, burying themselves deep into his skin where they’d be impossible to dig out, and then everyone would know, when he’d leave the house and walk into public, they'd see the shining bits of glass like stars on his skin, blood pooling in the dimples and pores, thin trails running down his legs.
He turned the sink on as hot as it would go, boiling water that would sterilize and clean him, the pressure forcing everything dirty and disgusting out of his hands before anyone could see. It was scalding, like his skin was going to melt off, but if it melted off, it could grow again, cleaner and untouched.
The water was loud—so loud he didn’t hear the door slamming open and Alexis running inside.
“Micha, what’s wrong?!”
There was nothing wrong if Alexis had bothered to look around. The floor was clean of any mess, and all Michael was doing was washing his hands. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing concerning. No one could tell something had happened in the first place, exactly what Michael had intended.
“Nothing, there was just a—”
“You’re bleeding everywhere!”
Oh.
He was.
On his palm, where he had first picked up the glass, there was a gushing wound, stretching from end to end. The already-drying blood covered half his forearm; there were a few pools on the floor and stains on his shirt. He hadn’t felt the throbbing at all until Alexis pointed in out, now noticing his hand shaking slightly under the still-burning water. It poured directly against his nerve endings, sending sparks of pain up his muscles.
It was just a cut, though. He could wrap it up and go to a doctor later, and it wasn’t like he played football with his hands.
Michael couldn’t understand why Alexis looked close to tears.
“It’s fine.”
Alexis teared up further, droplets gathering at his waterline before spilling onto his cheeks, like little lakes in his eyes. He cried over everything, even after Michael had told him not to. He cried over sad movies and puppies on the streets; he cried over plums in the grocery store not being as ripe as the rest, blubbering about how no one else would want to buy them and that they’d be sitting and rotting forever. He even cried over little cuts that weren’t even his own.
“It’s not fine." Alexis was almost hiccuping now, sniffling and clearing his throat as he grabbed for Michael’s arm. He wanted to pull it away, shove Alexis out the door, and tell him to make himself more presentable before trying to continue this conversation, but the pain was more than Michael anticipated, making his arm feel weaker than even Alexis’ gentle grip.
“You’re hurt…”
“It’s a cut.”
He wasn’t hearing it, having wiped his tears away and now staring at Michael’s hand like it was his greatest rival.
Alexis pressed at the tender skin around the wound, turning the water temperature to a freezing cold instead.
“This’ll numb it and stop inflammation... You need to clean it before it gets infected.”
He spoke quietly, muttering to himself more than addressing Michael. Alexis bit at the inside of his lip, thumb pressed against Michael’s wrist as he watched the blood run down the drain. It was starting to go numb, and he flexed stiff fingers to get some feeling back. He felt impassive, indifferent to his own body, like he was witnessing this through someone else’s eyes. Except Alexis would never be so bold as to take the lead like this, hardly ever with Michael, let alone anyone else.
So he had to be himself right now, or Alexis would have melted into a puddle of self-doubt before he could even make it five steps in.
After he deemed it clean enough, he put Michael’s hand on the countertop, like he was dealing with a plate instead of a person’s hand. Alexis was hardly aware of his own actions, instead rummaging around the cabinets until he found whatever he was looking for, leaving a bemused Michael stare at his own hand like it was a foreign object.
He scuttled back, slathering a layer of something on the wound, still muttering something about necroticisim and scarring before unrolling layers and layers of bandages onto the counter. Like a little doctor, he hunched over Michael’s cut with a surgeon’s precision and focus, wrapping tightly and neatly, perfectly professional.
The team medics should take note. Maybe he should buy Alexis a nurse’s uniform to wear if he was this focused on treating something so inconsequential, switch fields to something more suitable for his overreactions.
“All done!”
He finally lifted his head, smiling like he had just won a trophy. Michael looked at his hand, now covered in white gauze, looking like something out of those old horror movies Alexis would put on. If it weren’t for the blood still on his shirt, you wouldn’t know he’d been bleeding at all. He clenched his fist, digging his nails into where the wound should’ve been, expecting a jolt of pain to wake him up and clear his brain from whatever fog had been filling it.
But it didn’t hurt at all—the tightness of the bandages, how thick the layers were, kept his cut safe from his own hands.
“Go sit, I’ll clean the kitchen.”
Alexis nudged him ever so slightly, Michael barely feeling it but walking away all the same. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from it, turning it back and forth like it belonged to someone else.
The glass was cleaned up though; no shards stuck in his skin, no heavy footsteps following him.