A Master To His Action-hero Trainee Says, "Your Movements Are Sloppy. You Lack Awareness Of Your Body

A master to his action-hero trainee says, "Your movements are sloppy. You lack awareness of your body when you fight. Your hands move and yet you do not hold them in your mind's eye. Come. We will remedy this."

And then the master paints his trainee's fingernails and orders the trainee to complete a series of complicated tasks without smudging the nail polish.

No. 29

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When Villain comes back with an the ice pack, he finds Hero on the floor. Crying.

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Villain squeezed the pack in his hand and kept his eyes on the sink. He should just toss it. He should just leave.

Leave. He should’ve left the apartment as soon as he uncovered Hero’s identity, but rent isn’t cheap and he’s well-practiced at turning a blind eye to the things he needs to. His method of avoiding Hero had worked for months: don’t be in the living room when Hero returns, don’t ask about the bandages and bruises, don’t speak unless it’s about the house.

The ice pack burned his fingers as he glanced down at the floor, at anything but Hero. Blood flecked the bathmat and spilled along the tile and grout. Muddy footprints led to—perhaps he should mop.

Villain never recalled a mess like this before. Hero kept things clean. He wondered how many nights he had washed up blood. How many nights had he hunched over, clutching at his bloody stomach, and scrubbed dirt out of the living room carpet?

Villain looked at the sink again, then upwards at the mirror. The glass reflected his body, leaning like a apparition against the door frame, pale, lingering. Leave. He squeezed the ice pack harder. His heat had melted some of the frost; water dripped down his fingers. The ice pack fell. Onto the floor. Onto the dirt.

He should clean.

He should leave.

He kneeled into the blood and yanked the med kit from Hero’s trembling hands. With precision, with knowledge he should’ve never revealed, he set down what he needed in a neat row and grabbed Hero’s arm, readying a washcloth over his grimy skin.

“You don’t have to.” Hero muttered.

“I do. You’re leaving a mess,” Villain explained, rubbing ash out of Hero’s torn fingertips, “and it’s better if you’re not bleeding on the furniture.”

As he worked, he took a quick glance at Hero’s face. Hero curled his lip in attempt to stave off his grief, but his jaw quivered and his throat bobbed with an oncoming cry. Swallowing, he canted his head back into the wall. The clinical light of the bathroom clung to the sheen beneath his eyes and despite his swallowing and blinking, more tears slipped down his cheeks.

Another sob wracked through his chest, but as Hero attempted to shield his face with his arm, he carried Villain’s ministrations with it. Villain tugged back the arm and wrestled it back in place. Stunned, Hero’s crying stopped for a moment. He stared down at Villain with glassy eyes.

“Why are you doing this?”

“You’re getting dirt everywhere.”

Hero squinted down at his forearm, where Villain was dabbing the debris out of his wounds. His motions were meticulous, ginger in their slowness, and the pain ached but never turned sharp when he brushed over his split skin.

“You could get infected. And then you’d get sepsis, and then you’d die, and then there’d be no one to pay your half of the rent.” Villain blathered on, binding the largest cuts with gauze and medical tape. “Wound care is very important, especially when you always come home injured. What if you got tetanus or some disease?”

To which, Hero cried once more. Villain spluttered and dropped Hero’s arm.

“I knew you cared,” Hero sobbed, halfway hysterical.

“Stop.” Villain panicked. He took a clean disinfectant pad and scrubbed at Hero’s cheeks. “Stop crying. What the hell are you doing?”

“You always cook breakfast for me on the mornings after I get really beat up,” Hero cried and flailed out an arm, catching Villain’s bicep. “And you do the heavy housework when I’m hurt, even when it’s my turn to do it. It’s so nice. And you’ve—you’ve never been scared of me.” He gasped, short of breath from sobbing and speaking in the same breath. “And you never ask what I do. You never judge me even though I come home l-like this.”

“That’s normal human decency.” Villain focused on the cut on the bridge of Hero nose and wiped soot from beneath Hero’s eye. Hero blinked slowly as he cleaned, but instead of flinching away, he sunk lower into the wall, leaning bonelessly into the hold Villain had at the side of his jaw.

“It’s not. It’s not.” Hero readjusted his hand on Villain’s arm, his fingers picking at his shirtsleeve. “No one stays. No one helps.” The thought seemed to make Hero cry harder. Salt streams followed the tilt of his face as he tucked his cheek into Villain’s palm and wept. “Why doesn’t anybody stay?”

“Were you drugged?” Villain asked, quelling the urge to rip his hand away. It’s too intimate, too raw to have Hero’s tears running warm across his fingers. “Did you hit your head?” He dropped the cloth and reached around the back of Hero’s head to check for bumps. “You’re normally not this emotional.”

Hero’s upcoming sob turned into a low, pitching breath as Villain’s fingers brushed through the hair at his temple. “I got caught. They—I didn’t think I was going to make it out.” Guilt curdled in Villain’s sternum and Hero’s scalp seemed to turn scorching where he held it. “Backup never came. They left me.” He hiccuped, “they left me there. And then. Then they-.”

“You can’t tell me this.” Villain tugged Hero forward and cut off his words with a fierce hug. “Keep your secrets. I know whatever you do is important to you and that you need to keep quiet.” Don’t tell me what they did. I can’t bear to know what they did. “You’re in shock. You wouldn’t be like this otherwise.”

As Villain’s arms wrapped around him, Hero clutched at Villain, bumping his chin into the top of Villain’s head. He grasped at the curves of Villain’s shoulder blades. “They left me there,” he mumbled, “they left me.”

Villain leaned back, trying to slip out of the hug, but Hero fell as he shuffled away. His face knocked against Villain’s collar bone and Villain bumped into the cabinet behind them, slouching to catch their combined weight. Groaning, he steadied a hand over Hero’s spine.

“I need to clean the rest of your wounds.” He said, breathless. Their little tumble had exposed a collection of horizontal lacerations along Hero’s lower back and he averted his gaze, swallowing down a wave of nausea. Guilt licked up his throat and he stifled a gasp into Hero’s temple. “Come on,” Villain urged, “you need to rest.” He combed a weary hand through Hero’s hair, pleading. “we need to sleep.”

Hero sagged against Villain for a moment more. For a moment more, he was heat and sickening reality against Villain. For a moment more, Villain sunk into the cold tile, accepting Hero’s weight, accepting the gravity of his actions.

And then, Hero rose.

Hero rose and Villain tended to him. With a practiced hand, he bound the rest of his wounds. With an unpracticed hand, he left Hero’s back for last and shook as he cleaned up his raw, raised skin. When he finished, he tidied up the medical supplies and picked up the melted ice pack from the floor.

“I’ll get you a new ice pack,” he whispered and even quiet, the sound felt grating in the silence that had come to surround them, “and I’ll clean this all up. Go to bed. I’ll drop some ibuprofen off once I’m done.”

Before Hero turned to leave, he glanced at the blood stains on Villain’s shirt.

“I’m doing laundry this week.”

“Alright,” Villain sighed, “but do it on Thursday. We need to watch our water bill this month.”

hate when people aren't around i literally miss you..............

saw some ppl full chest using the argument that "seeing so much human suffering is unnatural" and it's like do you know what's even more unnatural??? seeing so much human suffering and doing nothing about it bc you've been coddled your whole life and think lives outside of the global north don't mean anything. that's extremely unnatural to me . but a lot of you are shameless enough to be doing it rn.