Chapter Text
The last thing you expected late on a Sunday night was for Joel Miller, your dad’s best friend and business partner, to show up at your door half-conscious and soaking in his own blood. You swore at the sight of him standing there, clutching his bleeding torso, and swaying like a daisy in the wind.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he gasped, his voice thick with pain.
“Jesus Christ, Joel,” you said, urgently slinging your arm under his shoulders. He gave a pained grunt at the contact but managed to stay on his feet as you walked him further into your apartment and laid him gingerly on your sofa. You darted into the kitchen where you pulled some first-aid supplies from the corner cabinet and returned to his side. He wore multiple layers to shield him from the early spring chill, so you had to both remove his jacket and unbutton his flannel before finally peeling his stained undershirt away from his wound.
You felt the blood drain from your face as you eyed what was evidently a gunshot wound piercing his stomach. Thankfully, the bleeding had seemed to slow, but you didn’t know how long he’d been injured or how much blood he’d already lost.
“I’m calling nine-one-one,” you said firmly—but when you began to rise, he gripped your wrist.
“No, you’re not,” he said urgently, a commanding glint in his eyes. You knew better than to push—you figured he had to have done something pretty damn bad to get stuck with a bullet like this and show up at your place instead of a hospital. And you knew what Joel and your dad did for a living, and none of it was even remotely legal—so instead of trying to shuttle him off to the ER where he’d surely get interrogated by the police, you decided to ask him some questions yourself.
“You wanna tell me what the fuck happened?” you asked as you pressed a clean towel into the wound for good measure. He groaned in pain as you applied pressure to his stomach and placed a shaky hand on both of yours.
“Work,” was the only answer he offered, but it wasn’t enough. You glared up into his sweat-soaked face, tried and failed to meet his pain-glazed eyes. You could tell you were losing him, but he needed to stay awake for a little bit longer. You pressed down on his wound even harder.
“Joel, I need you to focus. How long ago were you shot?” you pushed, and his thick fingers gripped your hands painfully.
“A half hour ago, maybe. Less,” he said. Something in your chest unraveled at his words. At least now you knew he hadn’t been bleeding out for hours already.
“Okay,” you breathed, wiping your sweaty palms on your pajama pants. You knew you could handle this so long as you remained calm. You thought through next steps with a freshly steeled resolve—you were not about to let Joel bleed out on your couch, no matter how pissed off you were at the bastard.
“Okay. I have some surgical tools in my kit—I’ll grab them and get set up. I’m gonna have to remove the bullet if you want any chance of this healing without seeing a doctor, alright? Here,” you said, grabbing a half empty bottle of vodka from off the kitchen counter, and passed it to Joel. “You might want to guzzle this.”
He groaned and put his lips to the bottle, draining half of it in one go. Once you returned with your supplies, you carefully set them out and cracked your neck, staring down at his blood-stained, barely conscious form.
“You are damn lucky I’m a med student,” you mumbled as you picked up an instrument and set to work.
-
It was a long night, and the work was grueling. Thankfully, Joel was passed out for most of it—whether from the pain, blood loss, or alcohol, you couldn’t tell, but you were just grateful you didn’t have to stitch him up while he was awake to feel it.
The first thing you did once you finished was rip your blood-stained shirt and pants from your body—the smell of Joel’s blood caking your clothes and skin made you nauseous, and you were sure that if you didn’t wash yourself right then, you would probably throw up. After a quick shower, you returned to Joel’s side to find him sleeping peacefully on your second-hand leather couch, lips slightly parted, with one arm hanging off the side of the sofa. You kneeled beside him and gently took his dangling wrist in your hand to feel his pulse—strong and steady. Sighing, you folded his arm neatly across his chest before taking your spot on the armchair next to him and dozed off as the sky began to lighten.
You were lulled from sleep what felt like seconds later to Joel softly calling your name.
When he repeated himself, you jerked awake, and there he was—alive, propped up, with the color already returning to his face.
“Morning, sweetheart,” he said, his voice gruff and endearing as ever. Now that you were fully awake and he seemed like he was going to live, your anger began returning to you in quickening breaths. When you pushed yourself onto your feet so that you were looming over him, you swear you saw a glint of fear in his dark eyes.
“You,” the word sparking off your tongue like an accusation. “You arrogant fucker,” you said, your lip curling. “How dare you show up half-dead on my doorstep like that, scaring me out of my goddamn wits.” Your words were biting, but he didn’t shrink away—if anything, he seemed to let your anger wash over him, as though he were teetering on the verge of shame.
“Do you have any idea how scary that was?” you continued, and he let you. “There was a moment where I thought you might die in my living room.”
“I wasn’t gonna die,” he cut in softly, but you were having none of it.
“You would’ve if I hadn’t saved you. And don’t interrupt me,” you snapped, and to your surprise, he shut up. It felt good to get it all off your chest—you were so angry at him. You were worried, too, but the anger was easier to put into words.
“I swear to god, Joel, I aged ten years since last night. Don’t you ever,” you said, leaning your face down until it was inches from his own, “ever pull a stunt like that again. Got that?”
He nodded solemnly. “Yes, ma’am.”
You turned to walk off, perhaps take some time to cool off in the other room, but he called after you: “Wait.”
You paused and looked back at him. The look in his eyes was pained, and you knew it wasn’t because of his injury. You turned back to him, arms crossed defensively over your chest.
“C’mere,” he said. You don’t remember deciding to do as he said. You just did. When you were once again kneeling at the foot of the couch, his face only inches from your own, you could feel the worry in his eyes reflected in your own. He picked up your hand and placed it between both of his own. They were strikingly warm, and you shivered as the heat enveloped your own cold fingers.
“Thank you for patchin’ me up. And—I’m sorry,” he said, squeezing your hand. “I shouldn’t have put that on you. But thank you for takin’ care of me anyway,” he said, and lifted one of his hands off of yours to place his palm on your cheek. You felt your breath hitch at the contact and did your best to hide the heat that rose in your face as his grateful eyes bore into your own.
There had been moments like this, lately, between you and Joel. You’d known him for years, ever since he and your dad started working together during your sophomore year of college, but more recently, things had started to shift between the two of you—at least on your end. And while him relying on you like this was definitely a first, you often caught yourself daydreaming during class about the tension between the two of you—the way you seemed to always find an excuse to adjust his jacket for him or touch his arm, or the rush you felt every time he called you “sweetheart.”
You assume it has something to do with the fact that you’re the only one in the world who knows about what he and your dad do for a living. “Contractors,” they called themselves, but they weren’t hired to do construction. No—they worked an entirely different job, one that required a different set of “tools,” a natural affinity for working around the law, and a truckload of discretion. Something about being the only person “in the know” about his real job tied you to Joel in a much more intricate way than you could ever explain.
You placed your free hand over his as he cradled your face, and then entwined your fingers with his so that you could pull his hand down.
“You want breakfast?” you asked as you rose, turning away to hide the color in your face.
Joel groaned as he shifted himself on the couch. “Actually, sweetheart, I was thinking I’d better head out—your dad’s waiting around for me to show up with a report, so I’d best be going…”
“Are you kidding?” you said, concealing your disappointment of not having breakfast together behind another bout of outrage. “Joel, you need to rest—you took a bullet to the stomach and then underwent a risky surgery performed by an amateur in a goddamn living room.”
“Amateur?” he scoffed. “You’re a pre-professional.”
“Point still stands.”
He sighed. “I’ll rest when I get home—after I fill your old man in,” he said, and began the process of pushing himself up from the couch. You rushed over to help him stand, but he shook his head.
“I got it, darlin’,” he said, and you flushed at the new pet name. He clambered over to the door and you followed behind him, jacket in hand, and helped him into it before dusting off his shoulders. Both of your gazes fell on the hand-sized bloodstain on the front, and you grimaced.
“It’ll wash out, right?” he asked, and you snorted. Then, he leaned in and you froze completely, letting him slide an arm around your waist and plant a soft kiss on your cheek.
“I’ll see you later, sweetheart,” he said, smiling tiredly at you before closing the door behind him.