"Healing well," he says. His voice is steady. His stomach is not. "I'll leave these on. They can come off in a couple of days."
He sits back. Checks his supplies. He's treated the ribs, the shoulder, the forehead, the abrasions and contusions and minor cuts. There's one wound left and he's been avoiding it and he can't avoid it any longer.
The gash on Zazyrus's hip.
He noticed it last night, beneath the other injuries, a deep slash left by claws that runs from just above the hipbone down and across, disappearing beneath the waistband of Zazyrus's pants. He'd flagged it mentally, noted the placement, decided to address it today when the light was better and the initial wounds were clean. The light is better now. The initial wounds are clean. He has no more reasons to delay.
He's treated hundreds of bodies. He's seen every configuration of flesh and muscle and bone that exists in the pits. This is no different.
He reaches for the waistband of Zazyrus's pants and his fingers brush the skin just above it, the taut plane of his lower abdomen where the muscle cuts in sharply toward his hips.
And Zazyrus grabs his wrist.
Lethe goes still. Completely, instantly still, the way he's trained himself to go still when a creature reacts. No sudden movements. No pulling away. His hand hangs in the air where Zazyrus caught it, his fingers inches from the beast's hip, and Zazyrus's grip is firm. Not painful. His clawed fingers wrap around Lethe's wrist with a controlled pressure that is very clearly a warning, not an attack. He could break the bones. Lethe can feel that in the strength of his hand, the raw, restrained power of it, and he doesn't break them. He holds.
Lethe's heart slams against his ribs. His breath catches in his throat and holds there, trapped, and for a long suspended moment he doesn't move and Zazyrus doesn't move and the cage is silent except for the sound of their breathing.
He swallows. Lifts his eyes.
Zazyrus is looking at him. Not with rage. Not with the blank, predatory assessment Lethe has been receiving since yesterday. There is something else in his expression now, something guarded and taut, and his nostrils are flared and his jaw is tight and his black eyes are burning into Lethe's with an intensity that steals the air from the cage.
Lethe holds his gaze. He doesn't look away. He doesn't flinch.
"I need to clean the wound," he says. His voice comes out quieter than he intends but it doesn't shake. "It's deep, Zazyrus. If I don't clean it and sew it shut, it'll turn septic. You know what sepsis does. It'll eat through the muscle and into the bone and you'll lose the leg or you'll die, and I don't think either of us wants that."
He holds himself still in Zazyrus's grip and lets the words land. He can feel the beast's pulse in the fingers wrapped around his wrist, slow and heavy and strong, and his own pulse hammering against those fingers in counterpoint, quick and obvious and impossible to hide.
A beat. Two. The silence stretches.
Zazyrus's grip loosens. Slowly. Deliberately. His clawed fingers release Lethe's wrist one by one, a controlled uncurling that is its own kind of language, and his hand lowers to rest on his own thigh. His expression doesn't change. His eyes don't leave Lethe's face.
Permission. Grudging, guarded, conditional. But permission all the same.
"Thank you," Lethe says, and means it.
He reaches again. This time Zazyrus doesn't stop him. Lethe hooks his fingers into the waistband of his pants and pulls it down, carefully, over the hip, exposing the wound and the skin around it.
The gash runs from Zazyrus's hipbone down across the hollow where his hip meets his thigh, and the skin around it is darkand marked and taut over muscle that is dense and hard. The waistband pulls lower, revealing the cut of his hip in full, the deep V of muscle that frames his lower abdomen, and the thick, powerful curve of his upper thigh. Lethe can see the edge of his glute where the fabric pulls, the heavy swell of it, and the markings that trace the ridge of his hipbone in patterns that follow the contour of muscle and disappear further down.
His mouth goes dry.
He stares at the wound. Just the wound. He forces his eyes to the wound and keeps them there and begins cleaning it with hands that are steady because they have to be, because if his hands aren't steady the stitches won't be even and if the stitches aren't even the wound won't heal properly and this is about healing, this is about the work, this is about the gash and the threat of infection and nothing else.
The skin beneath his fingers is hot. The muscle twitches when he touches the edge of the wound and Lethe's breath catches and he covers it with a cough that fools no one, least of all himself. He's close. He has to be close to work on this area, his face level with Zazyrus's hip, and he can smell him again, that warm, animal scent that isn't unpleasant, and the heat radiating off his body is extraordinary and Lethe's hands are steady and his stomach is tight and he is not thinking about the shape of this body under his hands. He is not.
He threads the needle. "This is a deep one," he says, and his voice is professional, controlled, perhaps a half-tone too high but serviceable. "It's going to take more stitches than the others. Try to hold still."
He sets the first stitch. Zazyrus's abdomen contracts, the muscles clenching hard under the skin, and Lethe's free hand presses flat against his hip to steady him and the contact is firm and broad and his palm spans the curve of Zazyrus's hipbone and the heat of it burns through his skin.
Stop. Stop it. Focus.
He stitches. One, two, three. His narration has gone quieter, thinner, the words coming automatically while the rest of his mind splits between the precision of the work and the growing, terrible awareness of the body beneath his hands. Four, five. The wound is closing cleanly. Six. His thumb shifts against Zazyrus's hip and he feels the ridge of the marking there, the raised texture of it, and his thumb traces it without permission and he catches himself and stops and his face burns.
Seven stitches. He ties off the thread. Cuts it. Applies salve. Bandages.
"Done," he says, and his voice is not quite steady on the word. He pulls Zazyrus's waistband back into place, his fingers careful not to linger, and sits back on his heels and busies himself with his satchel because he needs something to do with his hands that isn't touching Zazyrus's skin.
He can feel the beast's eyes on him. He doesn't look up. If he looks up, Zazyrus will see the color in his face and the heat in his eyes and whatever is happening in Lethe's expression right now that he doesn't have the composure to control. So he packs his supplies with methodical precision, tin first, then thread, then needles, and he keeps his head down and his breathing even and he does not think about the cut of Zazyrus's hips or the weight of his hand on Lethe's wrist or the way the muscle felt under his palm.
