I look at the cut. It's long, down the left side, below the ribs, shallow enough that the danger has passed but deep enough that it's still bleeding sluggishly and will need closing. The skin around it is already darkening.
I open the antiseptic.
"This will sting," I whisper.
"I know what antiseptic does."
I give him a look that says. “Of course, Mr. Smarty pants.”
I apply it and he doesn't react.At all.Not even a breath change, not even the small flinch that most people can't help, just absolute stillness under my hands like pain is a language he stopped speaking years ago. I work carefully, cleaning the length of it, and he sits there and watches me do it with those green eyes that give nothing away.
"You don't have to do this," he says. Not warmly. Just as a statement of fact.
"I know."
"Then why are you?"
I don't answer immediately. I finish cleaning the wound, set the cloth aside, reach for the closure strips. My hands are steady, they're not shaking, the way I'm able to be here and do this thing and not come apart, and I think it's because having something to do is easier than sitting alone thinking about twelve minutes.
"Because you're injured," I say finally.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting."
Something moves in his face. Not softness. Something more like recalibration, a small internal adjustment, there and gone. I place the first closure strip, pressing it flat against his skin, and I am close enough to him now that I can smell the night on him—cold air and the chemical bite of the fire and underneath his cologne, still there, still the same dark cedar, and I focus on the wound and not on any of that.
I place the second strip. To do it properly I have to lean in, both hands at his side, my face near his shoulder. His breath moves the hair at my temple. I feel it and I don't look up and I place the third strip with complete concentration.
"Who taught you this?" he asks. His voice is closer than it was. Lower.
"My father had men who needed patching up. I watched." I place the fourth strip, smooth it flat. "You learn things in houses like ours whether you want to or not."
He says nothing to that.
I sit back. The cut is closed, four strips neat along the length of it. I look at my own hands for a second, then at the wound, then I make the mistake of looking up.
He's already looking at me.
The kind of attention that has weight behind it, that sits on your skin, and I am still close enough that if either of us moved even slightly, the distance would be nothing at all.
My pulse does something inconvenient.
"Done," I say.
He doesn't look away. "Are you."
It's not a question about the wound and we both know it. I hold his gaze for one second, two, and then I sit back further and reach for the antiseptic packaging to give my hands something to do.
"You should eat something," I say. "Enzo said?—"
"I heard what Enzo said."
I start closing the kit. He watches me do it. The room is very quiet, just the two of us and the low lamp in the corner and the specific charge of a silence that has too much in it. I am aware of him the way I am always aware of him, that constant peripheral attention my body keeps trained on him without my permission, but it's sharper now, up close, after my hands on his skin, after that look.
Enzo appears in the doorway. "Car's out front. I'll leave you to it." He looks at Rafael. "Eat something. Sleep." He looks at me. Nods once. Then he's gone, the front door closing behind him.
Just us.
