“I didn’t choose to move it; someone moved the fridge so it would fucking fall on me.”
Jai could hear from the hallway a familiar, if slightly woozy voice.
It was the distinct wooziness that came from a very particular kind of pain relief so he wasn’t overly surprised to see Lisa wheeling a pale and sweaty Luke through the doors into the x-ray bay.
“First someone punches you, and now this. Life as a country cop is more exciting than I first would have assumed.” Jai kept his voice joking but he was a little concerned at the way Luke’s body twisted, even with the painkiller he’d obviously received.
Lisa parked him up next to the machine. “Dr. Curtis needs some film before he can relocate the shoulder. Will you need some help with this one?” She was likely referring to Luke’s sheer bulk. Moving all that muscle around wouldn’t be an easy lift. Thankfully, Luke looked conscious enough to be semi-cooperative.
Jai smiled in thanks; they really were a good staff here. “I’ll be fine. He looks stoned, but between him and me, we’ll get through. I’ll wheel him back to you in emergency. I know you’re busy down there.”
Luke’s brain seemed to be on a predictable doped-up delay. “Jai, you’re here. I didn’t want to move the fridge, but someone made it fall on me.”
That story seemed a little too complicated to be getting into straight away. Jai went over to Luke’s good side as Lisa left them to it. “Hey, mate, sorry you got hurt. Can we scoot you up onto the table?”
Even with Luke cooperating, Jai was glad he’d invested the last few years of leisure time into the gym. Over six feet of muscular body didn’t yield easily.
Jai kept the chatter going to distract them both. “The good news is that you are here seeing me. If they thought you were seriously injured you would have had a helicopter ride to the fancy hospital so you could have been poked and prodded by way more than one machine.”
Jai lowered him to the table as carefully as possible and tried to ignore the flex of muscles under his hands and the smell of this man. Getting aroused touching a hospital patient was definitely against his code of conduct. Especially when said patient was in pain and out of it.
“You’re pretty,” slurred Luke as he looked up at him. Jai didn’t let himself react to the very good-looking man complimenting him. It was just the drugs.
Jai stepped away from the table; Luke’s position was fine.
“Bet you are popular out there in the emergency room today,” Jai replied neutrally. Nothing like a dose of Proxine to make everyone love the world.
“No one else is as pretty as you. You are the hottest guy I’ve seen.”
Okay, that seemed like more than the drugs. Well, it was definitely the drugs talking—no way would could Luke say that to him in real life. It just seemed really specific, like something he might have thought of before. Whatever it was though, Jai knew Luke would hate that he had said it if he could remember it in when the drugs wore off.
“No talking for a minute, mate,” Jai said. “I’m just going over here to take some films of your shoulder.”
Luke murmured a consent and Jai hoped his own cheeks had stopped flushing by the time he had gotten taken the first x-ray needed.
Now he just had to move Luke again.
“Mate, this is going to pinch for a minute. Luckily they have you on the good drugs, so you shouldn’t feel it too much.” He tried not to look too closely down at Luke as he started moving his shoulder.
“Too long since someone cute touched me,” Luke said, his voice soft like he was talking to himself.
Seriously. As much as there was a part of Jai’s ego that thrilled at someone so attractive having such thoughts about him, he also internally winced at Luke making himself so vulnerable.
Yet he seemed so lost and alone in the moment, Jai couldn’t help giving him a few seconds of comfort. “It’s okay, Luke,” he said gently, touching his non-hurt shoulder lightly. “You are going to feel so much better in just a few hours.”
His words or his touch seemed to have calmed Luke down enough for Jai to get through getting the angled x-ray he needed and even getting Luke down into the wheelchair again.
He was worried though. Loose-lipped Luke could very well end up exposing his inner secrets to the world in a way that Jai knew he’d regret. Jai didn’t believe keeping such an important part of yourself secret was healthy long term, but he also didn’t believe anyone deserved outing themselves when they were out of their mind on painkillers.
He looked down at the way that Luke’s neck was exposed between his collar and light brown silky hair and had to resist the urge to place his palm there for comfort.
Instead, he said, “When we get back to the emergency room, I’m going to wait there with you for a while. You can close your eyes and rest.” And hopefully not talk. “And we’ll get you out there soon.”
The guy might be a bit of a dickhead, but Jai wasn’t going to have him implode his life on his watch.
• • •
Luckily, Luke was his last patient of the day, so instead of clocking off, Jai got to do the boring bedside vigil. Well, “boring” interspersed with moments of terror every time Luke looked like he might speak or answer a question. However, the drugs seemed to have numbed him to the point of borderline muteness, so there was no more incriminating statements even when Jai had to help hold him down so the shoulder could be realigned.
“Sorry, mate,” he said after the doctor had left them alone. At least professional courtesy, first responder to first responder, meant they had been dealt with quickly, and were in one of the hospital’s small examination rooms instead of out on the emergency room floor.
“Issss okay,” came Luke’s slurring reply.
Finally, the doctor announced that they could go home. Luke’s constable had left a message with staff that he was to be called for Luke’s discharge. Luckily, Jai had called and convinced him that he owed Luke a favor and as a hospital employee could do a better job getting Luke situated. Luke might have been a man of few words now, but who knew what would start coming out of his mouth as the drugs wore through his system?
Country courtesy being what it is, no one questioned that he would take Luke back to Luke’s residence behind the police station and keep an eye on him for any signs of concussion. This apparently was what you did out here.
“I didn’t see any signs that we should be worried about anything apart from the shoulder, but until the drugs completely wear off, I don’t think he should be alone,” were Dr. Curtis’s parting words to Jai.
Jai pushed one of the wheelchairs out to his car, which the health department had provided a few days ago. The fact that Luke hadn’t even protested his mode of transport showed how out of it the man was. The truth was, guiding him to slowly swing his legs into the car, after Jai had shoved back the seat as far as it would go to accommodated his height, tugged a little at Jai’s emotions.
Luke’s shoulder had been badly dislocated, though he would hopefully not need surgery. For now, his arm was in a sling tight across his body, and he was looking at least a week off work and then back to light duties, though Jai wasn’t sure how much of the doctor’s advice Luke had taken in.
• • •
Four hours later, Jai was situated on Luke’s old leather couch reading on his phone and keeping an ear out for any movement from the upstairs bedroom. There had been a point in his life where he couldn’t have imagined sitting, with permission, in a cop’s house right at the back of a police station.
Well, with permission could be considered a bit of a stretch, seeing how Jai had had to fish Luke’s keys out of his pockets, as the guy had been concentrating on keeping himself upright and swearing about the pain he’d been in. Jai had got him upstairs with only a few wobbles and had been hoping that Luke would sleep through the night once he’d gotten his head to the pillow.
He’d heard Luke mention he’d been here for years though the place didn’t look very lived in. There was a treadmill next to the kitchen, no art anywhere, and he supposed Luke considered that any decorative pillows on a couch were gay.
At least the couch itself was comfortable, if a little shabby, Jai thought as he fell asleep.
• • •
“Fuck.” The sound of swearing and a stumble on the stairs woke Jai, from his dozing sleep. The faint light in the living room told him it was dawn.
The language from the doorway told him who was entering.
Luke stumbled in, his face sleep creased and his mouth was still pain tightened. He was wearing his undershirt and uniform pants from yesterday. Jai hadn’t wanted to deal with the minefield that undressing him would have opened last night.
“Shit, that hurts,” Luke barked. “What are you doing here?”
That last question had a very cop tone. Jai shoved himself to a sitting position and wiped the sleep out of his eyes.
“Someone needed to stick around and make sure that the drugs weren’t hiding a brain bleed,” Jai replied. “It was me or your constable, and I thought I’d be the safer option.”
The shadow of a wince passed over Luke’s perfect features. It was enough for Jai to see that the man did actually remember something of what he had said last night.
That vague sense of shame that clung to Luke was enough for Jai, to discount his unfriendliness and get up to help him into the armchair opposite. Now the man was not his patient or drugged out of his brain he could at least enjoy the feeling of the hard muscle under his hands as he used them to guide the injured man down.
“Do you want a water or a tea?” he offered gently after he had gotten Luke situated semi-comfortably.
“I want to not have been the stupid bastard who got a fridge knocked on him,” came the reply, with less pissed-off energy than before.
“Time travel is a bit beyond me,” Jai smiled. “So I can only offer drinks and some tablets for the pain.”
“My shoulder feels like someone took a baseball bat to it, and I’ve been in the job long enough that I actually know how that feels, but I’m not taking any drugs that are going to have me completely embarrass myself again.”
Jai knew how hard it would have been for Luke to even indirectly reference what had happened, so he kept on doing what he was doing, clicking on the kettle before bringing glasses of water for them both back into the room.
“They only gave you the opiates last night because they were going to have to reset your shoulder and didn’t want you screaming the place down while they did so.” Jai tried to keep his voice in reassuring tones. “Absolutely no need to be embarrassed. I was the only one around you, and I’m a dude who once peed in a closet while I was high.”
Luke sort of smirked at that, but it didn’t slow down the rate of his questions. “The x-rays might be your job, but keeping me company afterwards and bringing me home definitely isn’t.”
“Maybe I just wanted you to call me pretty again.” Jai winked.
“Fuck you.” Even though Luke was blushing, for the first time this morning his shoulders relaxed.
“You’d done me a favor and to be honest, you didn’t seem the type who would want a lot of people to see you looking vulnerable. So I thought I’d hang around and get you home.” Jai didn’t think Luke looked satisfied with his answer, so he continued. “It’s okay, mate. I’ll get you situated with some painkillers, and don’t worry, they definitely didn’t give any exciting ones today, and set you up for the day then I’ll get out of your hair and we never have to talk about it again.”
Luke didn’t look as reassured by Jai walking out the door as Jai expected. “You’d really never mention what happened yesterday again to me or anybody else?”
Jai walked over closer and sat down so Luke could see how serious he was. “I would never ever mention anything of what happened to anyone. What you said, you said while you a patient of mine. I take patient confidentiality seriously, even with other medical staff. Apart from that, I don’t believe in making someone’s sexuality a topic of gossip.” Jai broke the intensity of the look between them and smiled. “Anyway, what is said on Proxine doesn’t count; you could have just as easily been talking to the picture of the queen than me.”
He had given Luke an out, so to speak. The man could climb back to his hiding place in the closet and know Jai wouldn’t challenge it.
Luke though didn’t retreat in the way Jai expected. “I was speaking to you. The things I said I meant, just without the drugs they would have stayed more safely in my head.”
Jai hadn’t expected that level of honesty. However, it looked as though Luke felt relief in that disclosure. Maybe there weren’t many people he shared this part of himself with. His behavior up until now was certainly not that of an out and proud man, or even a man who lived any part of his life with freedom.
“What you said is still safe,” Jai reiterated. “I’ve had a few things in my life that I’ve needed to hide, so I take other people’s secrets very seriously. What I said before about being high wasn’t a one-off, though the pissing in the closet only happened once. I was a drug addict for quite a while. I’m well and truly a recovered drug addict now, but believe me when I say I understand the concept of discretion and anonymity.”
Now he’d put that out there, he just had to trust that Luke wouldn’t turn on him. The shame that he’d seen in Luke’s eyes was something Jai had seen turn dangerous more than once. He just had to hope his instincts about the gorgeous cop were right. That he was a good man, underneath the loathing and weight of secrecy.
But after seeing something of Luke’s secret life involuntarily disclosed, Jai felt the need to offer something in return. To let Luke feel the playing field had been leveled. To remove some of that raw vulnerability.
Luke shook his head as if to remove the intensity of their conversation from where it was lodged. “Well, if you were a party boy,” he said, “give me a hint. How do the hell do you make your headache better the day after a high?”
Jai laughed, relieved at the friendliness in the tone and liking the kind of man who could come out and say that. “My favorite trick was taking more of the same drug, but I guess that is out.” Luke’s emphatic nod made him grin again. “Drink that tea and I’ll think about some coffee. That and some of the more approved, less lip-loosening painkillers will get you through the day today.”
After he had made the coffee and found enough ingredients for some scrambled eggs and toast, he came back to the lounge room to find Luke tipped back in his chair, eyes closed.
“Hey, mate,” Jai said. “I’d bring breakfast in for you here, but I think with that sling you’ll find it easier to eat at the table.”
Luke managed to get himself out of the lounge chair, solo this time. Jai figured it wasn’t the first time the guy had rocked a sling. Yeah, somehow the sling only added to the guy’s attractiveness. Unfortunately, the “tough, wounded” look worked for him.
After they were both at the table, Luke looked at him, curiosity in his eyes. “Is it the former addict thing that makes the students’ partying so hard?”
Jai was surprised by the question, surprised that this was what Luke was thinking about today. “Partly,” he replied. “I mean, the lack of sleep would drive anyone up the wall, but yeah, some of what really bothers me about it is the part of me that wants to join them, that wants to show them how it is really done.”
Luke nodded slowly, and they finished their meal in relative silence.
Jai could see from how he hunched, increasingly protective over his arm, that the pain was getting worse. The painkillers he took with breakfast would be kicking in by now, so Jai set him up on the couch with a pillow, remote, glass of water, and his phone.
“I’m going to leave you to get some sleep.” Jai said. “You’ve got my number, so give me a call if you need anything, otherwise I’ll let you get some rest.”
“Thanks,” Luke replied. “Thanks for everything.”
There was genuine gratitude in his expression even as the exhaustion and stress of the last dozen or so hours caught up with him.
Jai figured a day of rest would do him good. Luckily for both of them it was a Saturday, so he was looking forward to his own bed.
“Hey, Luke.” Jai was almost out the door, but he couldn’t resist the last word. “One day you might even be able to tell me I’m hot without a body full of opiate.”
It might have been living dangerously, but after the stress of the night, it felt good to feel free enough to throw that gauntlet down.