defenderofdesmoines | MCA #9

Okay, so, Diego looked a little worse for the wear. But at least the bleeding had stopped and he brought food?

He walked in, trying to be as casual as possible while holding a crushed box of donuts and looking like he had been in a firefight.

"Heeeeeeeey."

"Hey - oh my God, what happened?"

Okay, the casual thing had lasted about a whole second and a half before Annie was leaping up off the couch and hurrying over to him, so that was something?

"It's Danny and Steve's fault." Yep, just lay the blame where it belonged right away.

"How in the hell is this Danny and Steve's fault?" Annie demanded, taking in his injuries. "Are you bleeding?"

No, he had bled, Annie, it was past tense so it was fine.

"No, the bleeding stopped." Not helping, Diego. "And you remember that time me, Danny and Steve got chased in the ice cream truck? Turns out those guys have a really good memory."

"I thought you were seeing Five?" Annie needed to calm down, but like, seriously, he looked awful. Worse than when they'd fought bears! Also that was not an explanation, like, at all. "Diego, your shoulder."

It didn't matter if it was past tense blood!

"Five was there," he said, looking down at his shoulder. "Yeah, I got shot just a little bit."

Only just a bit!

"I brought you donuts?"

The look Annie gave him was equal parts worry and exasperation. "You got shot?" So like, at least now if she ever did end up apologizing to her neighbors for the noise, there would be some non-dirty yelling she could account for. "How do you get shot a little bit?"

The donuts could wait. (Look how much she cared about you, Diego! She was ignoring the donuts for now!)

"It's a graze," he said, surprised he was the calm one for once. He moved to put the donuts down because he had earned those, damn it. "Five said it was fine; a couple stitches at most."

Yeah, that was who you wanted to listen to for medical advice.

"Oh, I didn't know Five's a doctor," Annie snapped, though it was pretty clearly out of concern. "Do we need to go to a hospital? Take off your shirt, I'm getting the first aid kit. Oh my God, can you lift your arms enough to take your shirt off?"

Annie needed to calm down and choose an activity, here.

Well Five could have been a doctor. He was apparently old enough to have gone through medical school and he did pretty accurately stab that guy in the neck...

"Yeah, I think I can, it's just the one arm," he said, unhooking the now mostly-empty knife harness. "We're not going to the hospital."

That's where needles lived.

"Did you use all your knives?" Annie, go get that first aid kit and stop yelling at him.

Annie finally did as her narrative told, though she was clearly very reluctant to leave him long enough to go retrieve it. "Look, if you need stitches, we have to go to a hospital."

Or maybe the clinic? The most notice she'd taken of the clinic had been when she had memorized its location in case she needed to take someone there for alcohol poisoning the night of her party, because Annie was responsibly irresponsible, thank you.

"No, no hospital," Diego said as he pulled his shirt off. At least it looked like the gunshot was only real damage aside from some nicks from the flying glass. It would look a lot better once the blood had been cleaned up.

Still, there was a wound where the bullet grazed him and it was wide enough where the skin wasn't going to be held together with a simple band-aid. "Do you have glue or anything?"

Annie, who had reappeared with that first aid kit and a bottle of rubbing alcohol, had calmed down a little. Enough that she was able to give him a wide-eyed, concerned look, but did not actually shout the answer to his question. "We are not gluing your skin back together."

All she had was Modge Podge in the back of a closet, anyway, leftover from a day when she'd ambitiously decided to try to start being a crafty person and then immediately abandoned that idea within hours.

"Tape?" he tried.

Look, if he really had to he would get stitches. However there was no guarantee he wouldn't throw up and pass out once a needle came in view.

"Diego, no," Annie sighed, pouring some rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball. "Let me look at it. What happened? The ice cream truck guys shot at you?"

She didn't know a ton about normal-people injuries, but it didn't look like he was going to bleed out or anything, so he was allowed to talk without getting shouted at for now. For now.

"Not much to tell. Five and I were talking and I guess the guys recognized me from a couple months ago," he said, holding his arm still so she could work. He did feel bad that she was so worried, but wasn't exactly sure what to say that would make this any better.

"They came in and said I should leave with them and I politely disagreed," he continued. "So a fight broke out and Five and I handled it."

Mostly Five handled it.

"Is Five okay?" she checked, very carefully wiping away the blood and gently dabbing at the edges of the wound. "Sorry if this hurts."

It was probably going to hurt a lot worse to close him up, however that was going to happen. (She might have a needle and thread somewhere around here? But that seemed like an incredibly stupid idea.)

"Five's fine. I think he's staying at my place tonight," Diego said, trying to be manly and not make a face at the sting. "There's something up though. The way he fought tonight...it was not like when we were kids."

As angry-worried as she was, Annie was also very proud of Diego for initiating contact with Five and for letting him stay there, because that was very nice of him.

"How so?" she wondered, getting close to the bullet wound (calling it a graze did not help, no) and illuminating one of her hands for extra light, just to see if there was glass in it or anything. "I mean, if he's as old as he says he is, he probably does a lot of stuff different than he used to."

That time Diego couldn't hide his wince, but he did manage to keep his arm still.

"Yeah, I guess," he said. "I don't know, it was very...brutal."

Something was holding him back from going into detail about it. Maybe it was a weird protection thing since Annie was a superhero and Five quite possibly killed the guy who shot him.

(There was a chance that guy survived, right? Right?)

Annie set aside the cotton ball she was using, plucking up a fresh one and dousing it in rubbing alcohol before starting to gently tend to a couple of those nicks. "Brutal how?" she asked quietly, glancing up at him. "Like - like those guys aren't going to bother you again?"

She had an idea about how to treat the gunshot wound, thanks to how she was using her hand for light, but since it wasn't bleeding she was going to give it a second. Maybe he'd come around on the hospital thing in that time.

He would absolutely not come around to it.

"Uh I doubt they're not going to bother me again." If anything they were more pissed off. "It was brutal in a stab a guy in the neck with a butter knife, break another guy's neck sort of way?"

Don't arrest his brother, Annie. He didn't understand how to dispose of bad guys in a CBS-friendly way like Danny and Steve.

"Holy shit." Annie actually stopped what she was doing to look at him with a whole new kind of concern. "A butter knife?"

That was actually sort of impressive, Five. Also, gross, but in an impressive way? "And that's - not how it was when you were kids?"

"I mean, he was always loner." It had not been surprising when Five told Diego to stay put while he went off by himself. "But, no, he was not doing stuff like that."

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