Leyla was dimly conscious of the pressure in her bladder and the stench permeating from her.
She had not showered since her waking and the thought made her uncomfortable. She skimmed a tongue over the slippery film coating her teeth and grimaced as an unwelcome thought arose.
Had he noticed just how horrible she smelled?
The image of him sitting by her bedside in the dull morning light spooning oatmeal into her mouth bled into her memory. Leyla had been far too groggy by the early morning schedule and the lack of medication to notice his facial expression.
But now she tried to discern it.
Had his nose crinkled at her breath each time she opened her mouth?
Were her teeth yellow?
Leyla's cheeks turned the color of a firetruck. She sunk deeper into the pillow with a chagrined groan and slung a forearm over her eyes.
"He knows you stink." She said into the empty room. "He knows it."
But why hasn't he offered you a bath?
"Because you never asked for one." She reasoned carefully drawing her arm down to stare at the cracks, "he must think this is your natural state anyway. Not that he has any experience with humans."
That thought, though unrealistic, gently released the fist that was squeezing her chest anxiously.
"He doesn't know any better," she reasoned faintly, "I'm probably the first human he's crossed paths with."
Leyla lay on the bed until the pressure in her lower belly forced her into an upright position. Using her good hand she nudged herself back, shimmying out of the blanket revealing the work shirt he had dressed her in while she was sick.
It was long, the edge of it brushing just beneath her red knees and rough against her skin. A few stains discolored the fabric in different areas from feverish sweat and, upon closer inspection, Leyla suspected some urine.
She averted her eyes while muttering, "He doesn't know any better."
Swinging her good leg over the bed's edge, Leyla waited a beat then dragged her broken limb like some detached specimen across the bed and carefully lowered it onto the ground.
"You're fine." Her knuckles turned paper-white from gripping the nightstand and tentatively pushing herself upright "you're doing better than last week."
Her vision swam out of focus from the sudden rush of blood and she swayed back onto the bed with a huffed breath, sitting there until the bucket in the corner came into focus once more.
"Once you heal you can leave this place."
And where will you go?
Leyla shook her curls and carefully stood again, this time hobbling on her good foot until the bucket was before her. He had cleaned it in the morning and set a roll of toilet paper beside it.
Her eyes went to the window on a whim, ears tilting towards any sound of his approach.
Aside from the call of birds there was no other presence.
Leyla picked the bucket with her good hand and cautiously spread her leg bending at the knee. Her brows furrowed in concentration, the pink tip of her tongue poking out at her mouth corner as she adjusted the rim of the bucket between her thighs.
Metal bit into her skin raising gooseflesh.
She craned her neck down and adjusted the aim before releasing a slow exhale, willing her body to relax.
The first trickle of urine was a hot lazy spurt that trailed down her inner thigh.
Leyla cussed and flexed her pelvic floor then adjusted and aimed again. This time the sound of urine hitting metal echoed in the room and her shoulders sagged with a sigh. Her attention drifted without aim, from the ceiling to the carpet and the walls in a lull.
Until the door opened downstairs.
The sound was so startlingly loud that she snapped out of it and twisted at the hip losing all control of her bladder.
Urine sprayed on her fingers and she lost grip of the metal which clattered to the floor tipping the contents.
Leyla shrieked.
Urine pooled around her feet.
No
She leaned forward to grab at the bucket while flexing her butt cheeks, trying to clamp her bladder shut.
"No no no—" Leyla wailed, squeezing her moist knees together in a futile attempt at modesty as one hand tugged the work shirt down while the other barely grasped at the bucket just out of reach.
The footsteps halted at the rapid-fire banter of noises above; the bucket rolling, her shrieks and curses and the perpetual hiss of urine now rushing faster as if fighting against her restraint.
And then he began to ascend the steps.
Leyla's eyes cut to the open door, a certain wildness flickering. "Don't enter!"
The footsteps faltered for a moment, a hesitation in their movement.
"Don't enter please!" Her fingertips brushed the rim of the bucket and she watched in pain as it rolled further away spilling more of her urine in an arc.
When he did not reply she assumed he had heard. Maybe even smelled the pervasive stench and decided not to continue further.
But then his shadow appeared on the carpet. Growing steadily with each quiet step in the direction of her open door.
"I said don't enter." She snapped hastily reaching for the toilet roll. It was soaked and dripping. "I just– I'm changing and–"
The hunter appeared at the doorway as if forming out of nothing, and stood there watching.
In her surprise Leyla could only meet his gaze briefly, stunned and wide-eyed, her mouth open in a foolish o. The warmth between her legs began to reduce like a tap twisted shut.
His eyes moved over her, detached, professional, as though he were a butcher and she a side of beef. From the top of her crown to the tips of her toes.
Leyla adjusted the hem of her shirt, tugging it a little lower as the ache in her belly began to subside with each passing second.
This isn't happening.
She lowered her eyes and stared wide-eyed at her bare toes, her hair sweeping across her face like a penitent's shroud.
This isn't real.
You're not standing there watching me urinate myself.
The burden on her abdomen lifted leaving a hollowness behind her body interpreted as relief.
Leyla's toes curled into the wet carpet. She twisted the hem of her shirt and began to speak yet nothing formed on her tongue. The silence was overbearing, so much so that the idea of him standing there seemed like a dream and Leyla tugged her shirt again— an infinitesimal gesture to make sure that she was real.
That all this was indeed real.
"Would you like a shower?"
Leyla's heart thumped horribly. She shifted onto her good foot and instantly regretted it as the carpet made damp schluck schluck sounds. Her eyes peered up at him uncertainty.
"Please."
There was something in his face that she couldn't quite place; it was not the twisted look of disgust one would expect but intrigue, as if he was witnessing something novel and therefore wanted to view everything to the last drop and mull over it later on.
Leyla waited for him to turn away.
His nostrils flared minutely and then he turned away and walked back to his bedroom.
Once out of sight her legs nearly cut out from beneath her and she slumped against the wall suddenly exhausted. Leyla pushed back her hair with a shaky hand listening to his footsteps in his bedroom, the vague opening and shutting of a closet as he removed stuff for her.
He saw everything.
She remained in the corner waiting for his return and when he did, there was a set of clean folded laundry resting on the crook of his arm. This time she willed herself to meet his gaze but fell short of his mouth, specifically the scar that twitched down the corner as he spoke.
"Do you need help?"
Leyla blinked in bemusement, "What?"
His head tilted in the direction of what she presumed was the bathroom. "Can you walk?"
Her mouth opened then hesitated at the image of him reaching for her urine stained body. She shook her head instead, "No, I'm good."
The hunter nodded and continued towards the bathroom leaving her to hobble and grunt behind him like a toddler just learning how to walk. She used the wall for leverage, pausing every now and then to shake off the dripping from her good foot.
And her cast.
Leyla grimaced at the thought of it being drenched. The stench would only leave if she changed it altogether. And that meant he would have to do it for her.
The bath was running by the time she reached the door. He had crouched by the side of it, head slightly turned away with creased brows as one hand was dipped into the water.
Steam rose in tufts about the air dampening her skin. Leyla stared at him for a drawn minute, then looked around the bathroom to bide time as it filled. It was a simple small space with a toothbrush and toothpaste on the counter. A bar of dark soap and exfoliating gloves hang on a hook by the wall.
"Sit."
Her attention returned to him. "What?"
The hunter's patient gaze moved towards the toilet.
Unsure of what he would do, she sidled past him and lowered herself onto the closed lid.
The hunter reached into his back pocket and removed a pocket knife. He pressed a button and the sharp edge winked in the bathroom light as it unsheathed itself. He crouched smoothly by her broken leg and with steady hands carefully lifted her heel onto his bent knee.
Leyla gripped the mouth of the toilet seat fighting the urge to withdraw her leg with its insufferable smell.
"Don't." He simply said as if hearing her thoughts.
His hand which held the blade lowered to the cast and with a quick delicate flick far too subtle for her eye to notice cut through the fabric. Leyla didn't even catch the movement until the pressure around her foot loosened and the cast began to come apart in a straight line.
He cut through with dexterous fingers working up to her knee where he stopped and flicked the knife back into his pocket. Next he worked apart the cast peeling it open like an oyster to reveal a pearl.
Except her leg was no pearl
A bruised fruit at best with withered skin.
There was a suggestion of stitches along the calf, a bit jagged and crusted with darkened blood that ran up to her knee.
Leyla stared at the foot and all she could manage was a soft whisper. "How bad was it?"
His hands stilled. "You fractured your tibia when I found you."
"Tibia?"
He ran a thoughtful thumb over her heel while he spoke, the cadence of his tone dropping to a patient one. Like a parent speaking to a child. Or an idiot. "You broke your foot."
"How long until I can walk?"
"A few weeks. I'll have to shape a few splints for your cast."
With her leg stabilized on his knee, the hunter reached behind him for the wet cloth and dipped it into the tub. Leyla watched as he cleaned her leg and wrapped it with a fresh cloth, working it around and around but not tight enough to constrict her.
She hadn't realized just how deep she was in thought until his face lifted to hers.
"Can you bathe yourself?"
"Yes."
He was still looking at her, the arc of his brow both questionable and unimpressed.
"I can try." She insisted. When his gaze dropped to her broken arm and then leg, Leyla squared her shoulders defensively, "... I can bathe myself."
He nodded and rose pointing out where her items were. "Soap, towel and change of clothes."
After he exited she waited a beat, searching the gap between the door and floor for his retreating shadow but it simply lingered there like a stain.
Her throat bopped with each swallow as she began to unbutton the top with her good hand and carefully scoot onto the edge of the toilet seat while reaching for the lip of the tub. The water was still hot, thick plumes of air brushing her bare skin.
She had lost a good amount of weight and her skin had paled significantly.
So sickly pale my dear, the elder's voice crooned in her ear, is this the life you have chosen? Was all that I ever gave you worthy of tossing aside for pain, uncertainty and starvation?
The water rose steadily up her body as she sank lower and lower still. It was hot and Leyla shifted with a sigh, the movement causing water to lap against her jawline.
She sank further until it hovered right below her nostrils, her broken foot resting on the edge of the tub.
Her eyes instinctively went back to the doorway where the darkness remained.
Only when she had settled in completely did the man's shadow move away.
She let her mind wander about, striving not to focus on the sound of him possibly walking in and out of her bedroom; the movement of a bed screeching heavily on the ground then a pause.
Leyla bit her inner cheeks as she heard him slide something across the floor. It swished about in a damp hush. A pause.
The dripping of something into a bucket and more measured slidings. The motion repeated itself over and over and she wondered just how many liters of water or IV fluid she had ingested.
By the time he was done she still hadn't reached for the bar of soap and the water was cooling.
It was the return of his shadow beneath the door that gave her a glimpse into her own state of immobility.
Leyla stared at the shadow for a long, dismal moment. Then spoke tentatively.
"Mister?"
The shadow shifted noiselessly.
"Do you mind helping me wash my hair?"
There was a lull in which she thought he hadn't heard her, and she began to speak again when the doorknob turned.
Leyla's gaze immediately swept to her body on nude display beneath the clear water.
She hastily drew her forearm around her breasts and tried to twist at the navel but it was pointless, the fine dark hairs along the V of her pubic area was visible.
The man stepped in with casual grace. His eyes remained on her face, searching, and she began to feel a sliver of relief for his consideration until he eyes lowered to her arm coyly resting over her chest.
She looked away and cleared her throat. "... my hair."
He picked a few bottles from the cabinet and she barely read the labels as he set them beside the tub, rolling his sleeves to reveal tanned forearms lined with muscle.
"Lean back." He commanded quietly and she obeyed, twisting her body such that her back was now against the wall which faced him. The width of the tub made it awkward for her bad leg now propped awkwardly on the wall.
Leyla stared up at the underside of his jaw noticing the shadow and small nicks lining his throat. His large hands dwarfed her head like an orange. He cupped a handful of warm water and poured it over her curls.
He smelled nice, she realized, and his long rough fingers worked through her hair reverently. He squirted shampoo and massaged it into her scalp, blunt nails tracing her skin back and forth.
Many times she tried not to stare but it was hard.
She focused on the ceiling and his jaw.
The wall and his earlobe.
Each time she gravitated back to his visage hovering above her and the careful drift of breath over her own forehead.
"Have you ever washed someone's hair?"
The question blurted out unexpectedly. Perhaps to fill the silence or help her not focus too much on the gliding fingers along her nape, gripping gently enough to lift her head off the tub as he rinsed her.
"No."
He settled her head back onto the tub and began to massage the conditioner on, combing through her matted strands with his fingers. She watched her curls loop around his fingers, watched how he twirled one in particular before letting it land with a wet slap on her cheek.
Her mouth twitched upward.
"You're good at it."
Only one person had ever washed her hair, the nursemaid back at the harvest farm. Leyla could vaguely remember a heavyset woman bent at the waist with her large breasts cushioning either side of her head as she scrubbed through her hair.
The movement of his fingers did not resemble the old woman's. No, there was something thoughtful in how he handled her hair, that same novel expression now manifested in his touch that slid down her neck.
Her eyes had slipped shut unconsciously.
The balls of his thumb pressed with just enough pressure to dimple her skin as he slid along the breadth of her shoulders feeling the tension in her delts.
Leyla's heart skipped a dangerous beat.
His hands redirected themselves up into her hair. One paused along the way and redirected itself across her neck in a smooth gliding motion as if cutting a line there, and gently cradled her jaw. The other free hand cupped water and poured it over her hair rinsing out the conditioner.
The hold on her jaw was unyielding but gentle.
Her eyes dared to open and froze as she stared into his brown eyes. His breath fanned her face as the hand running through her hair changed course, slowly sliding down her neck then shoulder.
She began to speak but realized his grip had clamped her jaw shut.
Her heart was thundering now as his straying palm slid beneath the water's surface using her chest as a guide lower until it stopped over her breast feeling her wildly beating heart.
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