I added chocolate bars to the basket, paid cash, and we left before the clerk had finished looking at his phone.
The park was dark and rain-soaked and completely empty, our footsteps the only sound on the main path. We cut through to a cluster of old trees near the back — thick trunks and sprawling branches that provided some cover from the downpour — and Cal sat down heavily on a bench tucked underthe largest one, his breath catching as his ribs protested the movement. He was shaking slightly now, the combination of cold and adrenaline crash and pain all arriving at once.
“Jacket off,” I said.
“Romantic.”
“You're soaked and injured. Jacket. Now.”
He shrugged out of it with movements that were too careful, too measured, and I saw the exact moment the fabric pulled against his damaged ribs by the way his breath stopped and started again. The shirt underneath was plastered to his skin, blood and rainwater mixing into pale pink stains across the fabric.
“Shirt too,” I said.
“Christ, at least buy me dinner first.”
“Cal.”
“Fine. Bossy bastard.” He started on the buttons with stiff fingers, struggling with the small ones, and I pushed his hands aside and did it myself — faster, more efficient, trying not to notice how intimate this felt on a park bench in the rain. The shirt came off and I folded it and set it aside and tried not to stare at bare skin covered in bruises layered on top of bruises. Last week's were fading to yellow-green. Tonight's were fresh purple-red, still darkening as I looked at them.
“It's not as bad as it looks,” he said.
“It looks like you were hit by a car.”
“Only metaphorically.” But he was watching my face and reading something there I hadn't intended to show.
I opened the antiseptic and poured some onto a square of gauze. “This'll sting.”
“I can handle— fuck!” He hissed as I pressed the gauze to his knuckles where the skin had split open. “A warning would've been nice.”
“I gave you one.”
“A better warning.”
“Don't be a baby.” But I gentled my touch, cleaning the wounds with more care than strictly necessary. His hands were a mess of split knuckles and scraped palms and defensive marks that told stories about fights I hadn't been there for.
“You're good at this,” Cal said quietly, watching me work.
“Adrian makes sure all his people know field medicine. You never know when you'll need it.”
“Is that why you're so calm? Patching people up in parks in the rain?”
“I'm not calm.” I moved to the cut on his temple and cleaned away dried blood with careful strokes, feeling him flinch under each pass of the gauze. “I'm furious. At Harrow, at his people, at you for going to that museum without proper backup.”
“We managed.”
“We got lucky. Next time we might not.” I pressed a plaster to the temple cut, my fingers brushing his hairline as I smoothed it down. He went very still under my hands, his breathing evening out despite the pain he had to be feeling, neither of us moving even after I'd finished. The rain drummed steadily through the branches above us. The city felt very far away.
“Ribs,” I said. “Let me check them.”
“They're fine.”
“Let me check anyway.”
Cal sighed but shifted to give me access. I pressed carefully along his ribcage, feeling for anything clearly wrong, and he sucked in a sharp breath when I reached the worst of it — left side, three ribs down, swollen but nothing that felt broken.
“Badly bruised.” I taped gauze over it, more for padding than anything else. “You need ice and rest and actual medical attention if it gets worse.”
“I'll add it to my list. Right after 'destroy corrupt prosecutor' and 'try not to die.'”
