hadriel_logs | He who fights monsters

Entry tags:

gren,
rhys

He who fights monsters

Who: Gren (

hybridification)
What: Gren returns from fighting monsters one-armed and unarmed like the asshole that he is.
Where: Rhys' and Gren's sweet bachelor pad
When: Right after the extinction event
Warnings: Contains Gren. Also some injuries.

There are a few less monsters hanging around in the caves now.

When Gren finally makes it back to the house he shares with Rhys-- still not sure how he got roped into that one-- the aftermath of all that monster-killing has left him with a ruined shirt and even more ruined shoes. Blood this time, though, instead of egg, which is going to be a fuckload harder to get out of the leather. He almost wonders if he should just give them up as lost, but that would mean getting rid of one of the few things he still has from back home. Holly had always said they were godawful ugly, but they were his godawful ugly shoes, dammit. His shirt's pretty torn up, though, to the point where he doesn't think he can really salvage it. Not that he was ever too good at sewing to begin with, and especially not now when he's down a hand, but something got its claws in him from chest to hip on his bad side. Probably should've gotten a gun or something instead of just heading on down with nothing but his bare fists. He was fine for the first couple of monsters, but, well... obviously that didn't last.

He heads straight for the nearest bathroom to get a better look at the injuries; pulling off his shirt is a little awkward with all the congealed blood and everything, but he gets it off eventually and tosses it into the sink. He pulls at the edges of the wounds, looking at how deep they are and gritting his teeth at the sting. No squishy bits in there, at least, so that's a good thing. It would be a pain in the ass if that piece of shit monster had hit an organ or something.

The rest of his injuries are just minor scrapes and cuts, nothing concerning. All in all, he's had a lot worse and recovered from it just fine.

"Fuck." What a day, though. He can't even really be assed to bandage this shit up, he's too tired to care. "Just fuckin' sleep it off."

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Rhys has never exactly had an opinion on Gren's shoes, but he knows that he'd definitely prefer them to not be covered in blood. In general, he prefers things as blood-free as possible, which is why, when he gets home and finds a neat little trail of it leading up and through the front door and along one of the hallways leading to the bathroom, he's really not a happy camper.

True, he shares a house with a one-eyed, one-armed, trash talking alcoholic, so Rhys supposes that he should be prepared for anything, but somehow, he's just not really ready for what waits him in the bathroom.

"Wow."

He peers into the mirror over Gren's shoulder, a little more familiar with blood now that he doesn't want to immediately vomit at the sight of it, but it's still not pretty, nor does he want to even use this bathroom until it's been bleached and sterilized.

"You, uh- you should probably not be standing right now."

A pause.

"Like... physically... standing. How have you not passed out yet?"

Gren mentally prepares himself when he hears the sound of Rhys' footsteps in the house. He knows that the kid is going to make his way to the bathroom sooner rather than later, considering that he left a literal blood trail through the house, but after a hard evening of fighting monsters, Gren doesn't have a whole lot of patience for his shit.

At least he doesn't hit a horror movie high C this time when he walks in and sees all the blood. That would just be the shit topping on the shit sundae that is today-- a migraine to pair up with his bodily harm.

"I told you," he says, leaning over the sink and propping himself up with one hand, "I'm fuckin' tougher than I look."

He's dripping onto the counter but doesn't seem to notice.

"You fuckin' want something or are you just here to stare? Take a fuckin' picture, it'll last longer."

Rhys blinks, and his gaze goes from Gren's face- which is surly and unaffected as always- to the steady drops of blood that keeps dripping onto the counter- god, he just cleaned the bathroom yesterday, and here Gren is just... bleeding all over it, like a... bleeding... person.

He'd make better mental analogies if he wasn't preoccupied with his angry one-armed probably-not-human roommate being his usual snarly self except with copious amounts of bodily harm. Rhys tries to think of any of the times that he's actually utilized his middling first-aid skills and falls unfortunately short, but he's pretty sure that he could probably do a better job than the one-armed anger management case.

Rhys frowns.

"I kind of have to pee, actually."

First thing's first.

"Can I, uh- borrow the bathroom for a minute? It'll just take a second."

Gren makes an annoyed noise and pushes himself off the counter. The motion tugs on his wounded side, though, and he flinches involuntarily-- which really only pisses him off more. Stupid fucking monster, getting its stupid fucking claws in him before he could put it down. Because that's what you do with monsters.

"Fine, fuckin' whatever."

He pushes past Rhys, knocking into him with his uninjured shoulder. Really, it doesn't even matter that he's taking the bathroom, because Gren wasn't going to get himself cleaned up anyway, and he just heads back to his room and closes the door behind him. Too hard, though, because it bangs into the doorframe and doesn't stick, creaking open a few inches.

Fuck it. Fuck it, fuck this, fuck everything.

Gren sits down on the edge of his bed and just sort of flops over, throwing his arm over his face to block out the light. He doesn't even bother to get out of his clothes or give a shit about how much he's ruining the sheets.

Rhys- well, you know, he pees. He even manages to do it without really focusing on the blood that's spattered everywhere in the bathroom, like any respectable guy would do. When he's done, he washes his hands and eyes at the cabinet where he's stockpiled a few first aid supplies.

Then, he feels a short wave of guilt. After all, Gren saved him, back with the hunters when they were both new, and then Gren was willing to dig up graves if Rhys was inside of one. Sure, he has anger problems and he yells a lot, but really, that kind of reminds him of home anyway. They're friends, sort of. And after all this, Rhys kind of owes him.

God, this is going to suck.

A minute or two later, Rhys shows up at Gren's door, knocking very lightly as if hopeful that Gren will be asleep and he'll have to come back another time, when there's less blood overall and he's a little more prepared at dealing with it. Rhys has a first aid kit in his robot hand and a rubber glove in his human hand as he peers through the crack, tentative.

"...I have bandages and stuff, you know. Friends don't let friends bleed to death."

There's nothing that Rhys can do quietly enough for Gren not to hear him. He hears him take a freaking leak, and then rummage around in the cabinet, and then walk to the door and do those tiny little knocks on it; he hears his heartbeat and his breathing as clear as anything, like the door might as well not have been there.

He makes another annoyed noise. "I ain't gonna fuckin' bleed to death."

True enough, though he could leave a lot of blood trails and ruin a lot of bedsheets in the process. Which is something that he'll probably also eventually have to deal with, so there's probably some merit in letting Rhys come in and actually patch his stupid ass up, if only so that he doesn't ruin his own stuff.

Fuck. He hates it when other people are sensible.

"You don't have to fuckin' stand out there, I ain't gonna bite you."

"It's not a bite that I'm worried about."

Says the guy who's watched Gren literally punch something to a pulp. But Rhys enters anyway, moving toward where his surly roommate is and opening up the small first aid kit he's managed to sequester away. He can definitely do this and not faint at the sight of blood. That's possible.

Rhys sets everything up as well as he can before actually taking a look at Gren's side, feeling a shuddering wave of weakness come over him, but- no, he already promised himself that he wouldn't pass out. This is what friends are for, and Rhys is pretty sure that if he can make it through this then he deserves like, a friend medal or an award or at the very least, Gren's continued protection. It's the least he could do, really.

"Okay. So... I'm just gonna... put this on you. Could you sit up for a second?"

He's only not worried about Gren's bite because he hasn't seen Gren's real teeth yet. Get a look at his mouthful of fucked-up dentistry and he'd be singing a different tune. But that's neither here nor there-- Rhys walks in despite the fact that he knows his roommate has a poor temper and superhuman strength. Gren lowers his arm slightly and looks at him sidelong, narrowing his eyes at the first aid kit.

"Do you even know what the fuck you're doing?"

Okay, to be fair, Gren never knew what the fuck he was doing on account of the fact that he's a giant mess 24/7, so he really has no right to be asking that at all. There's also the fact that 'I'm going to put this on you' is a real vague way to refer to any kind of medical procedure, especially one that's supposed to treat somebody who's been practically gored, and Gren doesn't trust Rhys to have a clue on a good day.

He sits up anyway, though, because he's a schmuck. He has to push at the mattress with his arm to get himself all the way there when his injuries disagree with the movement.

"Yes. Definitely."

Rhys straightens up a little and hopes that he sounds confident as Gren sits up. But god, he really is bleeding a lot and Rhys kind of thinks that he needs stitches or staples or whatever, but he's definitely not qualified to do them. So he nods and swallows hard and just powers through this bandaging session, like any good friend should.

"A hundred percent. I am confident in my abilities."

He's not looking, actually. He's squeezing his eyes shut as he's trying to apply the bandages and consequently, Rhys misses the wound by a good two inches.

He squints his eyes open to apply the tape and realizes his error, arching an eyebrow up toward Gren to see if he noticed before just... slowly sliding the gauze down to where it should be, over the bloody slash marks on his side. Much better.

Gren does generally notice when somebody starts feeling up his torso, even if it's accidentally, so when Rhys misses his target it doesn't escape him. He looks down and-- yeah, the kid didn't even have his eyes open when he tried to put that on. It's like he was playing pin the tail on the donkey, except Gren's the ass and the tail's a bandage and he's still bleeding all over the damn place.

He gets it on the second try, which is better than nothing.

"You're gonna have to fuckin' look at it."

It's just a little blood and bodily harm, Rhys, get over it. It's not like you're peeling somebody's face off of a bandit's face or anything.

"I'm looking at it!"

It's a huffed protest, because he is most definitely not looking at it, but bless him, he's trying. He hasn't really gotten to the face-peeling part of his timeline quite yet so excuse him for not quite having a pair when it comes to copious amounts of bodily fluids.

He does better though, once the worst of it is bandaged up and he manages to get the rest of it with some form of accuracy. Take that, Gren.

"How's it feeling?"

Gren, it turns out, is a horrible patient. He's fidgety and impatient and has a tendency to pull away whenever anything hurts, which is pretty much anything that Rhys tries to do, and he's not exactly keeping a sweet disposition throughout. It's like having to bandage up a snappish dog, except that Gren's slightly less likely to actually get his teeth into Rhys' hand.

"It feels like I've got a couple of fuckin' holes in my side, what the fuck did you think?"

Having it bandaged is better than the alternative, though. And at least he's not ruining his sheets anymore, or leaving blood trails through the house that Rhys will probably have to clean up.

"It doesn't feel better?"

Rhys is no stranger to major trauma, having had an arm and an eye removed and a giant implant in his temporal lobe. But he's never been quite cut up like Gren is now and so he's not quite sure how something like that is treated or what would make it less painful.

Painkillers, probably. Those tend to be universal, but they don't have any here. So- distraction, maybe?

"Alright, alright- take your mind off it. Tell me a story. How did you lose you arm?"

Gren would've given his right arm for some barmecidal ambrosia-- oh wait, he already did.

And then Rhys brings up his missing arm and Gren stiffens a little.

"You want a fuckin' story about my fuckin' arm?"

Tactful, that wasn't. He'd only lost it a a little while before he'd wound up in this shitty cave of wonders, for the second time in his life, so it's a little bit of a sore subject.

"Fine, I'll fuckin' tell you. Once upon a goddamn time, there was a guy mindin' his own fuckin' business at a bar. Then, in walks the big bad fuckin' wolf, and he starts going after the guy's friend over some dead girl. Now, the guy's thinkin', 'I know Woody, and he might be a fuckin' piece of shit but he's not real into chopping off hookers' heads and leaving 'em on somebody's front porch', so he takes fuckin' exception to this asshole trying to arrest his buddy."

This is not a nice story, Rhys. And if that wasn't readily apparent by the content, it should be by the way Gren's voice keeps getting more and more pissed as he goes on.

"So the guy starts giving him a piece of his fuckin' mind, and the wolf don't really like that too much, so he decks the guy to get him to shut the fuck up. Well, they start fuckin' havin' it out after that, but the wolf gets a few cheap shots in and takes the guy down."

He might be glossing over a thing or two, but it's his story and he can tell it like he wants.

"Now, the guy's on the ground, and everybody's tellin' the wolf that he's had enough, but that ain't good enough for him. He has to put this guy in his fuckin' place. So he grabs the guy's arm and tears it out of its fuckin' socket, then throws it across the room and tells him to fetch."

Gren's hand had creeped over to his shoulder while he was talking, gripping the ruined joint. Without a shirt on, there's nothing hiding the ugly mess of scar tissue and uneven stitch job; Holly had done the best she could, but she wasn't a medic and neither of them had had the cash to pay for someone who knew what they were doing.

"How's that for a fuckin' story, Rhys? You like that?" he says, then abruptly stands up. "Fuck."

It's... a little difficult to follow the story. Rhys has to make mental notes of who Gren is referring to in third person and that the friend is Woody and- something about the heads of dead sex workers, and really the entire thing is a little unpleasant, but he did ask.

Doesn't seem like it's a great way to make smalltalk either, because Gren just keeps getting more and more irritated about it, but at least it's distracting enough that he can clean up the rest of the blood and bandage the smaller areas of slash marks without Gren noticing too much.

Gren stands and pulls himself out of Rhys' attentive hands and Rhys frowns, wiping his hand on his pant leg.

"So... in this story, you're the guy, right? And you had your arm ripped off in a bar fight? God, that's- that's pretty intense."

Most of Gren's injuries are taken care of, though his knuckles are still pretty busted up-- not that it's an uncommon injury for him to have. He's used to busted knuckles, they barely even register as being a thing anymore.

"It's fuckin' bullshit is what it is," he says, practically snarling. "I didn't do anything the fuck wrong, but it's fuckin' fine because Bigby's the fuckin' sheriff and I'm just some asshole in a bar that it's okay for him to fuckin' beat on."

He turns and opens up a drawer in a dresser, digging out a bottle. He cracks it open and takes a long pull, screw the fact that he's got giant holes in him and shouldn't be drinking while he could still bleed out.

"He fuckin' maimed me, and nobody even gave him a goddamn slap on the wrist for it. Who tears off somebody's arm in a bar fight? Who the fuck does that?"

"Oh, you got beat up by a cop."

Rhys nods sagely, even though he really has no actual experience in matters like these. But Gren is already moving away and drinking, so Rhys just watches him for a moment before realizing that this might be his cue to leave.

He moves to stand as well, debating on whether or not he should say something about the rampant alcoholism, but in the end he decides to leave it. It's better for everyone that way.

"I don't know, where I come from, people have been murdered or thrown out of airlocks to die a slow death in space for way less than being a dick to a cop."

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