#trashtetsu

The Lunatic Psyker torn his shirt off from the excess blood, disgust written all over his features of letting his clothes be soiled.  Dynamos placed around him as security turrets in case of demon ambush.  Raven trusted him to clean his wounds as Add despised things if they were out of line from his standards of cleanliness, something the Reckless Fist wished was more common among soldiers.

“You’re going to cut your blood circulation if you do that,” Raven tugged on a stray bandage.  Blood smeared when he pulled them away to replace it, wrapping a new one around Add’s arm despite the protests.

Although Add was a reputable scientist, there were things that couldn’t be taught by mere knowledge. Treating his wounds was one of them, as it was clear that Add was a rookie in properly swathing his wounds.

“Even Elsword knows the basics of bandaging, you know.” Raven scoffed playfully, his Nasod hand carefully layering his arm.

He expected a snarky reply, but Add acknowledged with a hum. He seemed more interested in his arm, glaring at it with curiosity.

The state of Add’s wounds brought the image of a man mauled by an animal or one of the cruder demons intelligent enough to hit the brawler’s weak points.  The burned marks looked unlike any organic being Raven had encountered on his journey, too even to be from an animal.

“You really overestimated yourself this time,” Raven mused.  “Did you get surrounded by demons again?”

Add grunted when his arm was pulled too tight by the bandages.  There were scratch marks on his pale face too, dried blood stuck in his hair that chipped away when he shook his head.

“How are you feeling?” Add moved his fingers before curling them into a fist to crack his knuckles, a dull smile cracked upon his lips with satisfaction.

“My head hurts,” Raven rubbed his head.  His right arm, the human one, it felt numbed like he was shocked.  “I feel like I ran into an ancient phoru.”

“Kek. It got you knocked out cold.” Add chuckled. He stared at the Reckless Fist with a smug expression, eyes glimmering with pride. “Be glad I had to save your ass, you know. You made me ruin my shirt,” he frowned. “And my face.”

While he wasn’t the type to be easily impressed, the evidence of Add’s struggles to fight off whatever attacked them did make him feel sorry from being unable to help. He gave an affirming hum, reaching out to stroke his hair to show his thanks. It messed his hair, but Add’s was already like that anyway.

“Thank you, Add.”

The brawler’s gaze shifted away from Raven’s eyes, drooping his head down.

“You better be thankful.” he muttered back.

“You really saved my back this time,” Raven chuckled.  “Everything happened so quickly.  Can you walk?”

The scars on Add reached his thighs, down to his knees and his calves, only noticeable when he stretched them out to reach for a screwdriver from his bag.  Unlike the upper part of his body, he did a better job dressing his wounds from the lower part that it didn’t deserve correction.

“Course, I can.”  Add scoffed, but snapped when he caught Raven moving his nasod arm to check for loose screws.  “Hey, I’m not done finishing the repairments yet.”

“You touched my arm?”  He shot a wary glare at the brawler, but was met with no immediate answer.  If he closed his eyes and concentrated, he would have noticed that the nasod arm was silent.  It was stinging and screaming at him hours ago, was this Add’s doing?

“I finally got to look at that arm,” Add said with what was meant to be glee, but a fearful look flashed across his face before forcing it into a toothy grin.  “You really don’t know how to take care of such a beautiful thing.  If you keep treating your arm like that, you’re going to leave cuts in me again.”

“A-again?”

“Like slicing a cake,” he said too cheerfully.

“Hold on a moment…” The Reckless Fist glanced back and forth at his arm to Add’s bandaged skin.

Now that he thought about it, this wasn’t the first time he found Add more than a little scratched. He’d always assumed the brawler shared a sentiment to be too reckless and was punished accordingly for being cocky. But if his implications were true...

“Add, did I…?”

“Ooh, always wanted to know how long it’d take for you to connect the dots,” He smirked. “Can’t believe you actually figured it out! Was thinking of telling you since you ruined my face.”

Raven looked at his hands in horror, frantically tried to collect his thoughts among the jumbled mess of emotions.  It was as much as he feared, that he would go mad because of the arm and one day lash out against his teammates, just as he did when he fought Elsword and his friends.  This time, it was only Add, no one else to pin him down or stop his arm from taking over.  He vowed to make up for all the horrid crimes he committed when he lost his consciousness against the arm back in Altera, but he failed.

“You’re not getting hung up about this, are you?”  Add asked.

“I have hurt innocent people again.”

“Innocent, am I?”  Add asked in amusement.  “You have a weird definition for that.  I’m not sure if that fox is either-”

“That’s not the point!”  Raven snarled, “I lost my mind to it again and let it use my body.”

At least he was conscious enough to feel the guilt that panged in his stomach when Add winced at him raising his voice, withdrawing and gave him a blank stare before looking down in what looked like sadness.  For whatever possessed Add to be giddy about his arm, and claiming that it was only that he was interested in, his frown said otherwise.  It didn’t match with the feigned smile. 

“Yeesh, calm down,” Add waved it off.  “If you try doing something stupid again, I’ll beat you to the pulp until you’re an inch away from death.”

“You said if I took care of my arm, this wouldn’t happen.”  Raven said.

“Maybe,” he said.  “I need to look into it and more maintenance won’t hurt.”

He might’ve accepted, had he not seen Add’s eyes glimmer at his arm. It was the same glint that he gave whenever he saw something he wanted to investigate thoroughly. Such a look sent shivers up Raven’s spine.

“I’ll consider having Eve look into it.” Raven remarked.

Add frowned. “You sure? I can assure you there’ll be cake in my laboratory…”

Was he bribing him with cake? Raven shook his head. “I’m… I’ll have Eve examine my arm, for now.”

“I-”

“No, Add. Thank you for your concerns, but I’ll handle this on my own.”

With that said, the brawler crossed his arms, eyeing at him with disapproval.

“Well, um, thanks for the bandages,” Add waved his arms with no direction.  “You still want the  cake at least?”

This time, Raven snorted out laughing, wondering if the brawler was more concerned about the cake than anything else.  Could Add even bake?  He recalled Add bragging once about inputting recipes into his dynamos, although he wasn’t sure how the weapons could maneuver to bake anything when they were flat pieces of metal.

“Sure,” he decided to humor Add.  “I can pick them up after Eve checks on my arm when we get back.”  Raven grinned, “Thanks for helping me out.”

“You’re the one causing the problem,” Add grumbled, but didn’t object when Raven slapped his human hand on Add’s shoulder.