( Where Rey falls naturally into comfortable silence, Kylo sits on pins and needles, tension thick as soup and gathered in the taut line of his shoulders and the clenched, hard shape of his fists. It has little to do with physical pain. The sensation of water washing away blood and dirt and sweat and whatever else has compounded around the gaping hole in his thigh is undoubtedly uncomfortable, but it isn't the worst injury that he's suffered, and the sting and dull throb that have set in as extensions of the appendage, seemingly, have nothing on the way that his face and shoulder had felt as if they'd been separate entities from his body when she'd torn the blue beam of her saber down the length and width of both of them. Pain, as he had commented previously, is instructive, and as such he finds merit in every twinge, every bubble of blood, every splash of red that mingles with the pale clarity of the water.
So it isn't the tremble in his thigh as he bites the inside of his cheek in an effort to keep perfectly still, settles his eyes hard on the glint of the fire rather than the slope of her neck as she bends over to inspect her work but rather her presence in general that leaves him feeling so at odds. The last time he needed assistance with an injury bestowed had been after Hux had escorted him - he refuses to think of it any other way, given the way that ginger bastard's lip had curled after Kylo for days following - from the collapse of Starkiller, and his recovery at the time had been a difficult endeavor, to say the least. But Rey is not a droid that he can mangle, and she isn't a med officer that he can just ignore or intimidate into promptness and efficiency just by breathing. The ties between them run too deep for that, and her distaste for him and her anger with him had been too palpable prior to retrieving supplies from the Falcon for Kylo to just forget it.
Her decision to see to him now, personally, is an odd choice, and prickles under his skin and along the back of his neck as he watches her slather bacta over his skin with dirty fingertips and the smell of stale sweat hanging around the both of them. Her fingers are not careful around the mean hole that Ji has carved into him, but they are not purposefully rough in any way either. Rey's touch reminds him of his own, perfunctory but cognizant, the touch of routine, and he can see in the indifference she trains her expression in the small amount of pleasure that she takes in undoubtedly causing him some amount of pain, however small, as if it were an adequate punishment for the things that he had done in an effort to keep them both alive.
He frowns, first at the bridge of her nose and then at the motion of her hands, the back and forth hard pull of a swathe of bandages encircling the meat of his thigh. It's the closest that anyone has ever been, the closest that he has ever let anyone, in a very long time, and after a couple of passes of the bandage over his skin, Kylo bumps her hands away in an effort to take on the task himself. )
I think I can handle it from here. ( His voice feels rough with momentary disuse, choked and blackened by the smoke that pours ever upward, disappearing into the darkness of the evening. Dark eyes made amber by the light of the fire, Kylo lets his gaze skip from her hands up to her face and down to where he knows her own injury stains her side. His own skin buzzes faintly. The question he asks is rhetorical. ) Sort yourself out?
no subject
So it isn't the tremble in his thigh as he bites the inside of his cheek in an effort to keep perfectly still, settles his eyes hard on the glint of the fire rather than the slope of her neck as she bends over to inspect her work but rather her presence in general that leaves him feeling so at odds. The last time he needed assistance with an injury bestowed had been after Hux had escorted him - he refuses to think of it any other way, given the way that ginger bastard's lip had curled after Kylo for days following - from the collapse of Starkiller, and his recovery at the time had been a difficult endeavor, to say the least. But Rey is not a droid that he can mangle, and she isn't a med officer that he can just ignore or intimidate into promptness and efficiency just by breathing. The ties between them run too deep for that, and her distaste for him and her anger with him had been too palpable prior to retrieving supplies from the Falcon for Kylo to just forget it.
Her decision to see to him now, personally, is an odd choice, and prickles under his skin and along the back of his neck as he watches her slather bacta over his skin with dirty fingertips and the smell of stale sweat hanging around the both of them. Her fingers are not careful around the mean hole that Ji has carved into him, but they are not purposefully rough in any way either. Rey's touch reminds him of his own, perfunctory but cognizant, the touch of routine, and he can see in the indifference she trains her expression in the small amount of pleasure that she takes in undoubtedly causing him some amount of pain, however small, as if it were an adequate punishment for the things that he had done in an effort to keep them both alive.
He frowns, first at the bridge of her nose and then at the motion of her hands, the back and forth hard pull of a swathe of bandages encircling the meat of his thigh. It's the closest that anyone has ever been, the closest that he has ever let anyone, in a very long time, and after a couple of passes of the bandage over his skin, Kylo bumps her hands away in an effort to take on the task himself. )
I think I can handle it from here. ( His voice feels rough with momentary disuse, choked and blackened by the smoke that pours ever upward, disappearing into the darkness of the evening. Dark eyes made amber by the light of the fire, Kylo lets his gaze skip from her hands up to her face and down to where he knows her own injury stains her side. His own skin buzzes faintly. The question he asks is rhetorical. ) Sort yourself out?