dog_eat_dog | IC Inbox

One corner of her mouth curls up.

Can’t say you feel bad and then say it’s fine, big guy, it doesn’t work like that.

He’s self depreciating sometimes, but it must be big if he was willing to open with it, so she’s up and out of bed, pulling on clothes. (And god, isn’t it nice to not have to lace herself into a corset.)

He looks at the message, then groans and just puts the communicator down. Word or no, she's going to show up anyway. He drags himself out of bed to unlock the door, and then falls back, eyes closed, resting until she knocks.

She’s at his door promptly with a mug of coffee in one hand and a package of candy in her back pocket, and she knocks twice before deciding to just try the door anyway — almost a year with him has slowly eroded any chance of respecting his space.

“You didn’t spend the whole week drinking without me, did you?” she says, veering cheery.

She crosses the tiny room and sets the coffee on his table, and then she frowns when she sees just how rough he looks up close.

“Jesus, Arthur.”

Well, he did drink a lot without her - but that's not the cause of his state. He's pushed himself up to lean against the wall, but even the low lighting doesn't hide the black eye, the bruises on his face, the split lip, the wounds on his knuckles. There's no prizes for guessing what he looks like underneath his clothing.

"I'm not winnin' any beauty contests right now," he says, his voice hoarse.

She sits down on the edge of his bed, taking inventory of what she can see. She reaches to take one of his hands in hers to inspect his knuckles.

“Not today, no,” she agrees. “Anything broken?”

He's clearly been in a fight, but some of those scrapes look like damage from rough-hewn stone, or something else coarse enough to rip open skin. It's clean enough; he took care of that.

"Don't think so. Everything hurts pretty much the same."

He's talking even slower than he usually does, and his eyes drop to the way she's holding on to his hand. He doesn't feel like he's worth much, and her touch stands out to him.

Tess frowns as she gives him a closer look-over. Cleaner than she'd manage back home, she's sure, but she figures some of them shouldn't be open to the air anyway. Certainly not if he expects them to heal decently.

"I'll go grab a kit and patch you up, but tell me what happened first."

Unspoken but heating up under the surface: who's now on my shit list?

He grunts and pulls his hand away, crossing his arms over his equally-bruised chest.

"If I wanted to talk about it, I wouldn't have told you to stay home."

She's sorely tempted to tell him that that's bullshit, that the whole song and dance about pride and pain being something to hide is ridiculous, but she can't talk: she does it all the time.

"Well, I'm here now anyway," she tells him, like it doesn't sting to be shut out. "Did you make it hard for the bastard, at least?"

He clenches his teeth and lifts his sore hands to his face, to rub them over his eyes and through his beard. It hurts, but it also gives him some distraction.

"Wish I coulda said I did. They took me and tied me up, so I didn't do much fightin'."

"Don't rub at it," she says, scooting closer to stop him, "You're just going to aggravate it."

The anger she feels at the idea of him just getting wrecked without being able to defend himself is very casual, very calm. She plans, swiftly and quietly, that she'll do something about it later.

"What are you planning on doing about them?"

"What the hell can I do about it?"

There's a dark rumble in his voice - anger, that he doesn't want to show her. Not her. Maybe he should pick a fight with Jake. He'd let him wallop him.

"They were overboarded, just like you. Didn't know who I was. Just that I had those stupid damn powers, and the metal to go with 'em."

“So you’re just supposed to forget about it?” she points out. That seems worse to her than anything. Who wants to live that way, without a resolution? It drives her up the walls whenever she thinks about it.

She gets up and fetches a damp cloth from the bathroom, and she comes back to mop him up a little more. Feelings on retribution aside, she daubs at his face gently.

"If they're inmates, I can't do anything!"

His frustration is bubbling up so easily, he almost pushes her arm away. Anyone else, he would already have pushed away. This feels unbearable.

"I fucked up before then," he says, to change her mind about this. "I lost control. Forgot who I had to be, and just acted like -"

He can't, but she can.

Tess just keeps wiping his face. She can feel his anger about this, but she decides that she won't let it drive her off.

"Like what?"

He closes his eyes, gritting his teeth. It feels good, being a little cleaner, the cold soothing for a few seconds.

"Like the dumb piece of shit I was before the bank robbery." Which, in his head, is capitalized. The bank robbery.

She runs the cloth across his forehead and considers, briefly, that he could just choose any day to be this other Arthur, this one she's only seen in glimpses here or there. The one who leans on violence, who acts like a jackass.

"Do you want to be who you are now, or do you just have to be?"

"Who I am now? I don't know who the hell I am, Tess," he snaps - and he comes so close to pushing her away, and instead just takes her hand and rests his forehead against the palm, damp cloth and all.

"I can feel my daddy laughin' at me from hell. Thought you could ever be anything but scum? Think again, boy.."

God, she can't remember the last time she had anyone looking for comfort from her, and it takes her a second to acknowledge that for what it is. Arthur's always been open with her, but this...

She shifts closer again, letting him rest against her hand.

"Your dad wasn't right then, and he isn't right now," she replies. "And if you don't know, then he certainly doesn't."

"All it took was for you to be gone for one week," he says, wretchedly. His whole body aches, but his head hurts worse.

"I'm supposed to be the one here for you, Tess, not the other way around. I came here - I came here with an idea of what was right. But I can't even uphold it myself."

"You weren't an asshole when we first met, so there's more to it than just me being there," she tells him, seriously, and she cups his jaw on her other hand, thumb stroking idly, carefully. "And if I'm allowed to have a dozen fuck-ups, you are too."

It's so nice. He closes his eyes and rests his sore head in her calloused palms, indescribably grateful for her care.

"But what if I go back home and do this? I shoot some fella 'cause we're both drunk as hell, and that's my second chance wasted?"

"Then you just don't get drunk as hell," she says, with the slightest shrug. She has no idea how that works. She remains convinced that she herself will do the exact same, though less from drinking and more out of pure spite. "You know what kind of bullshit will start that, so you just... don't get yourself into it."

"You got a lotta faith in me," he murmurs, because she does, and because he doesn't believe he deserves it right now.

“Turnabout is fair play, and all,” Tess says. “We’re doing this together, right?”

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