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“You wanna shower?”
Stevie frowns round at Iain where he’s hovering in the hall behind her, waiting patiently for her to coax off her shoes. “How am I supposed to shower, without getting this wet?” She gestures at her shoulder.
She spends half her life telling people about wound care and there is a level to her hypocrisy.
Iain doesn’t answer though, just asks again, “Do you want to shower?”
“…Yes,” she admits hesitantly, frowning at him because it’s the truth, she can feel the dust settled in a fine grit through her hair and the ache through her muscles that just screams for the balm of warm water, but that either means she’s going to have to struggle through it with one arm or…
“Then I’ll help you. If you’re comfortable with that.”
Or he’ll suggest that. And he’ll suggest it with that earnest look on his face that means he actually doesn’t mind, that he’s not just suggesting it because it’s polite, that he actually wants to help her.
It’s not the first time he’s directed that look at her but it somehow doesn’t get any easier for her to receive.
She’d known in some distant corner of her mind that not even her stubbornness (which is considerable) would make her arm entirely useable for the next few days and she’d known they would fuss, him and Faith, she just hadn’t expected it to start quite so soon.
She must be too tired to fully hide her thoughts because he sighs gently, “Stevie, don’t overthink it.”
Taking a breath, she nods, forcing as much of a smile as she can muster onto her face. “Okay. Thanks.”
He follows her up the stairs, hovering a just about manageable distance away like he’s not worried she’s going to fall but he’s not entirely discounting it either.
In the bathroom, she runs a brush through her hair to get a few of tangles out while Iain potters about getting a clean towel of hers from the shelf.
“How are we going to do this?”
From behind the towel where she hadn’t seen him place it, he produces a roll of cling film.
“Here and…-” then he steps over to the cupboard where they keep their medical supplies and pulls out the medical tape- “here.”
“Right, no peeking you,” she warns him lightly as she begins to unzip the hoodie he’d thrown at her earlier.
He holds his hands up in mock-surrender, insisting, “My eyes are strictly at eye level.”
Rolling her eyes at his antics – because they live together, they share a bed, Stevie might not quite be sure how exactly she feels about her body at the moment but she knows it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before – she lets him help ease the sleeve off her shoulder.
As he hangs the hoodie on the back of the door, she looks down the bruising blooming in impressive colours across her skin and the small, neat line of stitches across it.
It’s strange, almost like it doesn’t really belong to her, and she forces herself to stop staring at it, instead perching on the edge of the bath and checking lightly, “Is this medically sanctioned?”
“If we’re doing it, it must be,” he shrugs, amusement just peaking onto his face as he pulls off a strip of cling film.
Stevie scoffs at that. “That is not a good unit for measurement of ‘a good idea’ and you know it.”
“Oh well,” he grins, “you never asked if it was a good idea.”
As she shakes her head in amused despair, they lapse into comfortable silence, Iain’s hands sure but gentle and thankfully warm against her skin as they lay the cling film over her shoulder and tape it deftly down.
“Ready?” he asks her when he’s done, voice low as if scared to shatter the quiet.
Silently, she nods, accepting his hand of offering to lever herself upright again and carefully kicking off her jeans.
The water cascading from the shower is much too hot, in the way that it’s utterly perfect, and she can’t help the little sigh of relief that slips from her as it begins to fall over her, then hissing in pain when she accidentally goes too far and the force pummels down on her shoulder.
“Steady,” Iain soothes, reaching up to move the jet of water to the side, “forwards, or backwards?”
She smirks round at him. “At least buy me dinner first.”
He just seeds her a long-suffering look back. “I regularly buy you dinner.”
“Hmm, in that case,” she concedes, “forwards would probably be easier. Just try not to waterboard me, please.”
Shaking his head in exasperation (she can see he’s holding back a smile), he pushes her very gently around. “Get away with you.”
The conversation tails off again after that, it’s quite hard to hear with the water around her ears, but she hears a few reassuring mumbles and the clatter of a shampoo bottle behind her before the water stream moves off her and those same careful hands appear on her head.
They massage the thick liquid into her scalp, working gently but methodically, until she’s cocooned in the pleasant, slightly floral smell of her usual shampoo.
Then the water comes back again, a wider blast for a moment until she senses him reach up and pull the shower head off the stand to hold it closer to her, working carefully to make sure all the soapy suds are gone.
A few seconds pause after the water stops falling directly on her and she hears another click of a bottle, the hands beginning to run conditioner through her hair.
The position is starting to get a little awkward, her tired muscles protesting and a little cold from being half out of the water, but the tiredness sweeping over her is one that she knows will be rewarded when she can sink into bed feeling clean so she preservers as the water comes back over again.
“There y’are,” he mumbles, hooking the shower head back up.
Flipping her hair back over her head, she answers, quietly enough that she’s not quite sure he hears over the noise of the water, “Thanks.”
He hovers a respectful distance away as she washes the rest of her body, like he’s not quite sure that she won’t need him again and she would love to be able to tell him that she won’t but her legs are beginning to tremble, threatening to fall out from under her.
That’s what dictates her turning off the shower in the end, when the relief from the warmth of the water no longer outweighs her need to not be stood up anymore.
She wraps herself in the large towel he holds out, leaning carefully against the now slightly slippery bathtub when he holds up a second smaller towel in wordless offering.
She’s doesn’t think he’s particularly effective at ringing the moisture out of her hair, not sure whether to be endeared or insulted that he’s acting like she could break if he’s too rough with her.
The aching in her muscles is traveling up now, becoming a throbbing pulse in her shoulder. He’s gentle as he removes the clingfilm but she still grits her teeth against the pain and the stuffy sort of feeling that’s building in her head.
Leaving the humidity of the bathroom is a relief but it seems to accelerate whatever is happening in her head as a sharpness grows behind her eyes. Still, she ignores it as she goes to her draw and pulls out some pyjamas, forgoing a t-shirt in favour of him helping her pull a clean zipped hoodie on over the dressing.
Admitting, if only to herself, that sitting down is probably a good idea, she takes her comb and sinks down onto the foot of the bed. Though she only runs it through her hair once before she’s having to take a breath, her arm trembling under the strain.
“Here,” he offers softly and she surrenders the comb to him with less argument than she would like as he settles behind her.
Maybe because of the exhausting threatening to overtake her, this is what makes the emotion rise in her. She clasps her hands tightly in her lap, willing herself to not start crying for no reason as he carefully teases the comb through her hair.
He doesn’t tell her that he’s done, just lets her figure it out from the way he climbs off the bed and returns the comb to its home on the dressing table.
Easing herself back up, she gestures at the bathroom. “Right. I think I can do this bit by myself you know.”
He laughs at that, holding up his hands as he heads for the stairs. “Alright, alright. I’m going.”
And to his credit, he does give her that bit of space she’s starting to need as everything begins to get just a little too much.
She doesn’t spend long in the bathroom but when she comes out he’s back in their bedroom, now in his own pyjamas.
“Got these.” He holds out the painkillers she’d left in the hall.
So, either he’d been paying attention to how long it’s been since she’d taken the last lot, or she’s even easier to read than she’d hoped.
(Both, it’s probably both.)
“Cheers.” She accepts them, then the glass of water he offers.
She swallows the pills then downs the rest of the water, setting the now empty glass on the bedside table to find that Iain has pulled back the duvet and is half sat up against the pillows.
“Come on,” he offers, holding out an arm and she raises an eyebrow.
“It’s still early.”
It can’t be much past nine, Faith won’t be home for a few hours yet.
“I will take any excuse to sleep,” he grins, though not quite as widely as usual, “it’s been a long day for me and all.”
That’s Iain for ‘I don’t want to leave you alone.’
That and the exhaustion still threatening to floor her is all it takes to convince her to call across their massive bed and curl under his arm as he pulls the duvet up around them.
His head rests on hers, his hand carefully holding her around the tenderness of her shoulder.
It doesn’t take long before she starts to drift off, that strange space between awake and asleep finding her in a dusty, creaking room, with a beam crashing down towards her and in what feels like no time at all, she’s flinching awake.
“Iain-“
“Shh,” he soothes, “you’re alright darlin’, I’ve got you. I’m right here.”
“You don’t need to-“ she tries.
“Tough. I’m stuck to you like a bad smell.”
Settling back against him, she teases sleepily, “You’re that alright.”
“Oi, I resemble that remark,” he gasps quietly, dropping a carefully, lingering kiss to the top of her head as he repeats more softly, “you’re right. I’ve got you.”