“You’ll only need a bandage for bracing afterwards,” she went on. Then she turned to Shrike. “You’ve watched me dress his wound these past weeks, have you not?”
“Aye,” Shrike answered warily.
“And you’ve dressed your own wounds before?” At his nod, she further asked, “Splinted any broken bones?”
“Aye,” Shrike said again with still more hesitation. Wren knew not why. Every scar Shrike’s skin bore represented a wound he’d treated on his own, doctoring himself up for centuries before Wren ever entered his life. But Shrike did always seem to underestimate his own talents.
A faint smile flickered at the corner of her mouth. “Then I think you can well manage a bracing bandage after a bath.”
Shrike didn’t appear entirely convinced.
But Everilda simply smiled, packed up her instruments, and told the kings of Blackthorn that she would return in the evening if they didn’t require her before. With that, she left the cottage.
Shrike helped Wren down off the work-bench to sit in its chair whilst he ran the copper tap. The steam arising from the hollow basin proved a welcome sight to Wren, who remained bare save for his nightshirt draped across his lap, and who’d begun to feel a chill draught in the wake of Everilda’s departure. He’d longed for the decadent pleasure of a proper soak throughout his convalescence.
At last, Shrike returned to guide him to the bath. Rather than take Wren by the hand or arm, however, he slipped his arms beneath his knees and shoulders to gather him up altogether inhis embrace and carry him bodily to the hollow stump. Wren’s heart skipped a beat for reasons beyond his infirmity.
A sigh of sheer relief escaped Wren as he stepped into the water and slipped beneath the warm waves up to his shoulders—a well-appreciated contrast against his last memory of icy submersion. While Shrike had taken very good care of him in the daily stand-up wash, he’d missed the delicious pleasure of a proper soak. The heat alone did wonders for the ache in his side.
With Wren safely stowed in the hollow, Shrike stepped back to strip off his own shirt. Wren lolled his head along the rim of the stump to watch magnificent brawn rippling beneath dashing scars across Shrike’s bare chest and stomach—admirable scenery indeed, and a landscape he’d rendered many times over in his gyrdel-book, yet never oft enough, it seemed.
And now those muscular arms dipped into the water up to the shoulder to bathe Wren.
The scent of lavender and honey arose alongside the steam as Shrike worked up a lather against Wren’s skin. The smooth glide of familiar fingertips gently rubbing against his body granted long-awaited relief to his sore flesh. A firm reassuring grip took hold of each of his limbs in turn, and Wren felt more than content to follow where they bid as Shrike scrubbed him down. While Everilda had never manhandled Wren by any means, still there remained a certain tenderness to Shrike’s ministrations which hers had lacked.
At Shrike’s murmured instruction, Wren slipped forward and tipped his head back to dip his hair into the bath. His locks swirled around his face as Shrike worked his hands through them. He let his eyes fall shut with another sigh, more ragged and drawn out than the first, but no less appreciative. The waterfall flow from the pitcher in Shrike’s skilled hands seemed to wash away all his cares alongside the grime.
Wren could feel perfectly content, he thought, if only Shrike would join him.
~
Shrike was glad of the opportunity to treat Wren’s flesh with all the tender care and devotion it deserved. It balmed his heart’s-wound to be able to do something with his own two hands towards healing his beloved. To feel knotted muscles relax beneath his fingertips, to hear the soft sighs of relief escaping those bespeckled lips, to see the pained furrows in his brow smoothed away and a gentle smile grace his perfect mouth.
Yet after his Wren’s beloved body was soaked and scrubbed and washed clean as fresh-fallen snow, Shrike’s sense of pride became a pang as he helped Wren step out of the bath.
And the bright crimson brand of the wound that’d only just begun to scar appeared all-the-more undeniable against his pale skin.
Only when Shrike beheld a shiver ripple across Wren’s flesh did he realise he’d lost himself in staring. He hastened to snatch up a linen towel and wrap it ‘round Wren’s body. The shivers ceased as Shrike patted him dry. Wren leaned against him as he hobbled to the work-bench and looked back to Shrike to lift him up onto it. This Shrike did with ease.
But it was with considerably less ease that he beheld again the wretched wound as Wren unwrapped the towel from his waist and draped it over the tops of his thighs.
As Everilda had said, Shrike had dressed his own injuries countless times throughout the centuries. Yet all his own injuries combined felt like mere scrapes and bruises compared to the thought of his Wren’s singular wound. He couldn’t look away from it now if he were to wrap the bracing linen ‘roundWren’s waist. And now that he was forced to look he found he couldn’t look away. The mute horror of it compelled his gaze.
Then Wren’s hand arose to gesture toward it. Shrike forced himself to look up and meet Wren’s eyes.
Wren gave him a wry self-deprecating smile. “Seems I’m well on my way to catching you up.”
Shrike furrowed his brow in confusion.
“The scars,” Wren elaborated. “One to your many. Though mine is rather larger than most of yours, so perhaps it ought to count for more?”
His lilting tone bespoke a jest. Yet to hear him speak of it so lightly left Shrike feeling still more disturbed. Before Shrike could think of anything to say, much less say it, something of his churning torment must have shown in his features, for Wren’s face fell to match it.
“You don’t like it,” said Wren.
“What?” Shrike said before he’d quite understood him.
Wren’s expression grew still more pained. “The look of it.”
