“It’s fi—”
“Gideon.”
We glare at each other for a moment. Glaring isn’t exactly my specialty, but he’s being enough of an exasperating dick that I’ve got no problem right now.
After a moment, he huffs out a short sigh.
“It’s not that bad,” he says. “I just need a minute.”
I, a human being with eyesanda brain, don’t believe him, so I reach out, grab the cuff of his pants, and start rolling it up. His leg jerks and he hisses again, but he doesn’t manage to move it much, and I wrap my hand around his ankle, right above his boot.
“Does that hurt?” I ask, glancing up at him.
“Not really.”
“Does it really not hurt, or are you still lying about it because you think—”
“You barely touching my ankle actually doesn’t hurt, believe it or not,” he snaps, one elbow still leaning on the arm of the couch, his hand in his dark wild hair, and it would be a relaxed pose if every muscle in his body weren’t so tense right now.
“How about this?” I ask, pressing just above his ankle bone with my thumb. His leg twitches again and he inhales sharply, so there’s my answer.
Gideon meets my eyes when I look up, his face resigned and wary, his eyes steady on mine. The cabin has plenty of windows, and even though it’s a cloudy day the blanket of snow outside diffuses the light and even inside it’s bright as anything, the perfect all-around glow of Christmas morning or a magazine shoot.
Seated at his feet, a hand around his ankle, gazing at each other, I feel like a Renaissance painting. Some sort of supplicant, except we’re both tired and muddy and bitching at each other on a couch that’s probably older than either of us.
“I’m taking your shoe off,” I tell him, and he grunts in response. When I look up, he’s rubbing his hands over his face, finally relaxed back against the couch. It takes most of my self-control not to roll my eyes and sarcastically tell him thathe’s welcome, so I settle for just rolling my eyes where he can’t see.
“My feet are gross,” he says once I get the knot in his laces undone and start unwinding them.
“You’re gross.”
“Your face is gross,” he mutters, like we’re eleven again, and I snort.
He’s right, though. His feet are kind of gross, once I get both boots and socks off, but worse things have happened to me. Including a couple of times that I bled all over Gideon, so this is fair.
“It’s swollen,” I say, comparing it to his other ankle. His feet are several shades paler than his legs, even in December, the dark hairs on them surprisingly soft. I wonder if his beard is also soft, which isn’t a particularly useful thought.
“Yep,” he offers, still draped over the couch.
“Can you move it?”
“I’d prefer not to.”
I prod a little more, gently, and he grunts a few times but doesn’t kick me in the face or anything.
“It’s not broken,” he says, after a bit, his big toe twitching. “It’d hurt worse if it were broken.”
“Where’s the First Aid stuff?” I ask, standing, and Gideon points at the tiny coat closet. He lets me wrap his ankle in an Ace bandage and fasten several ice packs from the freezer around it as well as around his knee, which he begrudgingly admits he wrenched a little when he fell.
Finally, I sit back to admire my handiwork, such as it is. Most of my expertise in this sort of thing is limited to drunk friends who did something dumb, and it’s been several years since an incident of that sort, so I’m out of practice and also boring now.
“Thanks,” he says, when I scoot backward across the floor and settle against the armchair, because I don’t feel like going through the effort of getting all the way in. He leans his head over the back of the couch, the tendons in his neck obscured by the bright light, though his Adams’ apple moves when he speaks again. “I might not be able to drive you into town tomorrow. If the Parkway’s even cleared. We’re not very good at snow around here.”
To my credit, I don’t sayno shit, Gideon.
“Well, it’s Christmas,” I point out, a fact I’d kind of forgotten until right now.
“Right,” he says. “That.”
