#hm. nice

The door to the chapel swung open, rattling in a violent wind that had ripped straight through. John saw Jacob’s tall, broad-shouldered form push through the doorway first, followed by Elliot, tiny in comparison.

“Sit,” Jacob barked, pointing at the pew closest to the door. Elliot wheezed.

“F-Fucking—I’m trying—”

“What’s going on?” John demanded. He pulled away from where he’d been talking with Joseph at the head of the church to start walking back, picking up urgency when he saw Elliot clutching her shoulder. As she shrugged out of her soaked jacket, he saw her hand pull away bright and crimson. “Is that blood?”

“Yes,” Elliot said, sitting idly while Jacob tore the neck of her shirt to free up the space around her shoulder, “but that doesn’t matter right now, what does matter is—”

“You are literally bleeding. All over—Elliot, what the fuck,” John snapped, wondering why she seemed to be so calm and collected about the apparent open cut seeping blood out of her shoulder. It was a jagged, wicked-looking thing. “What happened?”

The blonde pushed the hair from her face as Jacob inspected the wound. “Ran into our friends,” she managed out, coughing and wincing, “nasty guy with a big knife.” 

John waited for more. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Elliot mumbled, failing to elaborate and instead responding to what she seemed to think was him asking a question about her well-being. And sure, yeah, John was concerned about it, but less so with Jacob beckoning for a medkit. 

This close, he could see her eyes flickering absently, slightly dazed—and another wave of incredulity and anger swept over him.

“No, I mean—wait, are you on something?”

“I shoved a couple of painkillers in her mouth. She wouldn’t shut up while I was trying to pull her out of the truck,” Jacob explained without looking up. “I don’t think they hit anything important when they stuck you.”

“Oh,” Elliot breathed. “Nice.”

“Yeah, fucking nice!”

“John,” Joseph cautioned, having walked up to peer over his shoulder at the trouble, “you’re not being a very productive member of the situation.”

“Yeah,” Jacob said, “shut up or go have your meltdown somewhere else.”

“So loud,” she muttered, words slurring as they tumbled out of her mouth. “Can you s-stitch me or what?”

“It’s not gonna be pretty.”

No one seemed to really be taking the situation very seriously at this point, but John could not bring himself to kick up any more of a fuss considering that Elliot and Jacob, for once, were behaving themselves in the face of their temporary blood-induced truce. 

And his brother was right—it wasn’t pretty. Even with the painkillers in her system, Elliot hissed and bit out swears as he worked, trying especially hard not to look like it was really bothering her even when it was.

“Get me another p-painkiller,” Elliot said when Jacob had finished the fourth stitch and she was grinding out something vicious under her breath. John moved around to the other side of the pew to sit on her non-wounded side; her hand was gripping his arm, nails digging in through the fabric of his shirt. 

“I can get you Bliss,” John replied, his eyes not lifting from Jacob’s work. It was nearly done, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud. “Can’t take anymore oxy, Elliot.”

“Eat shit,” the blonde wheezed.

“It’s either take the Bliss or suffer,” he said flatly.

“I’ll s-suffer—”

“Stop,” Jacob snapped, “moving.”

It went like that for a little while: Elliot biting out curses, trying to stay as still as she could before Jacob finished the job, cleaning and wrapping the wound as best he could before he said something along the lines of that’s as good as it’s gonna get, and John managed to haul Elliot across the yard to the bunkhouse without getting absolutely soaked.

She’d been asleep for only an hour before the discomfort woke her again, and she finally relented to some Bliss to take the edge off—“The tiniest fucking amount, John”—which she took with no absence of complaint. 

Thirty minutes after that, she was an entirely different woman. Quiet, and no longer spitting venom.

“So tired,” Elliot murmured, shifting, the bandage job on her shoulder rustling and reminding him of how pissed off she’d just been. “Hate this stuff. Sucks.”

“I know.” John sighed, sat in a chair pulled up next to the bed. “What were you thinking? Trying to handle that guy on your own? Really idiotic, you know, even for you.”

“Stupid,” she slurred. Her fingers absently skimmed his lower lip. “Dumb idiot John.”

“No,” John replied tartly, unsure whether drugged Elliot or pissed off Elliot was worse, “you’re the dumb idiot who—”

“Love you.” She said it tiredly, patting his cheek, like it was nothing. Like she hadn’t just said the most ridiculous thing in the entire fucking world.

And it was the most ridiculous thing. Elliot didn’t like saying anything that she thought might stroke his ego, or make him feel quite pleased with himself, and that meant she went out of her way to make him work hard for the compliments she did give him. Even when affection came easier to her now—it wouldn’t have been Elliot if she wasn’t mouthing off.

John said very intelligently, “What?”

She rolled her eyes. “I love you,” she reiterated, but the words were blurring together, and John wasn’t sure that she actually knew what she was saying.

It did seem awfully dramatic—a profession of love after a traumatic experience—and it would be just like her to try and drop a bomb on him like that, out of nowhere, for fun. To fuck with him. Because she could.

“Tell me that when you’re sober,” he said at last, catching her hand with his. She frowned.

“No, you.”

“No, me, what?” John sighed as she swatted his hand away from her own, retreating under the blankets.

Elliot’s eyes flickered tiredly. With all of the determination he thought she could muster, she said, “No, you tell me that when you’re sober.”

It was his turn to roll his eyes now. “Go to sleep, El.”

“Tryin’,” she protested, and made a low noise of complaint when he brushed the hair from her face. “Won’t stop touching me.”

“Goodnight, Elliot.”

She was quiet for a minute, pulling the blanket up to her chin and not protesting when he leaned against the bed to get more comfortable.