The doctor positioned his arm and began to rotate it outward. Slowly. Steadily. Applying careful, increasing pressure to the joint.
The pain built in layers. Each degree of rotation added another, the joint grinding against the socket in a way that made Dustin's whole body want to come off the table.
He focused on the ceiling.
He counted inside his head.
One. Two. Three.
The doctor rotated further. Dustin's vision swam.
Four. Five.
His breath was coming in short, controlled bursts. He could handle this. He'd handled the bar fight dislocation while drunk, Tyler holding him down on a bathroom floor, he could handle?—
The doctor applied pressure to the joint and every thought in Dustin's head whited out.
His right hand shot out and grabbed the first solid thing it found.
Greg's hand.
Greg didn't flinch and didn't pull away. His fingers closed around Dustin's and held on — firm, cool, steady in a way that shouldn't have been possible for someone who'd phased through a wall twenty-four hours ago because a kiss had overwhelmed him.
Dustin squeezed—hard. Harder than was fair, probably.
Greg held on.
The doctor rotated the arm to its final position. There was a sound — a deep, wetthunkthat Dustin felt more than heard — and the joint slid home.
The pain didn't disappear, but it changed, from the grinding wrongness of dislocation to a hot, throbbing ache that was at least the right shape. The shoulder was where it belonged, finally.
Dustin lay on the table, breathing. The ceiling light flickered. His hand was still wrapped around Greg's.
He didn't let go.
“All done,” the doctor said. “You'll have to wear a sling for two to three weeks and take anti-inflammatories. We'll get that road rash cleaned up now.” He made a note on his chart. “I'd also recommend not getting hit by any more cars.”
“I'll take it under advisement,” Dustin managed.
The doctor stepped out to get supplies for the road rash. The curtain swished shut behind him.
Dustin lay on the exam table with his eyes closed and his hand around Greg's and listened tothe sounds of the hospital. Footsteps. A monitor beeping somewhere. The low murmur of voices behind other curtains.
It all seemed to belong to a different kind of reality. None of it touched him the way Greg's presence did.
“Look at you,” Dustin opened his eyes, “managing to stay solid.”
“I had to.” Greg was standing right beside the table, looking down at him with an expression that Dustin had to take in pieces because the whole of it was too much. Worry. Relief. Something raw and unguarded that Greg probably didn't know was showing on his face.
Dustin looked at their hands. Greg's fingers were still curled around his, cool and steady. No flickering. No transparency at the edges.
Idly, Dustin wondered if he could survive a kiss now.
He didn't have a chance to find out before the doctor came back in to clean the road rash—and while the doctor picked out gravel with tweezers, Greg snapped back into character, making small distressed sounds as he watched the process.
“You're worse than me,” Dustin told him.
“I can't help it. That looks painful.”
