Work Text:
Zayne’s fingers skimmed on your back, feeling soft skin beneath. Your breathing was slightly unsteady, contrast of your body on fire and his freezing hands caused ripples of a peculiar feeling, like a leaf falling on the surface of a puddle and sending pulsing disturbance. Here, tips of cold fingers held you firmly, felt even through material that hugged his hands tightly, stony grip keeping you in place, and slid down, down, until…
“Ow…!” You turned to look at Zayne over your shoulder, twisting to see him from your position on your stomach. Your eyes were scrunched in displeasure, accompanying your faint hiss of pain.
Zayne glanced up at you, with composure of a veteran unfeeling doctor he inquired. “Changed your mind?” His gloved hands held you firmly, latex material upset your skin, and so do you feel a little betrayed.
“N-no, I didn’t. Can’t you be a little gentler?” Zayne shifted back after he stopped touching you, noise of metal clutter filling your ears, and because whatever he was doing happened outside of your field of vision, you resigned to flopping down, returning to your previous position.
Zayne didn’t reply for a while, and you have started to think that he’s giving you a silent “no” answer, until you felt his hands on you again, this time much softer and loving, his thumb circling your skin calmingly. “You’re not afraid of needles or wanderers, but feeling a little drowsy from numbing pain is where you draw the line?” His tone relented and sounded like he was making amends with a child that he just scolded. Something sharp went in and out of your skin quickly, your side tensed and jaw clenched.
“It’s a small cut. Doesn’t even need stitches…” The needle with a string went back in as you were talking, quick and precise, and tied together the skin on your side, bit by bit.
“Are you the doctor now? If you could actually see it, you’d know that it’s deeper than just a ‘small cut’” Zayne worked with certainty, his clinical precision wasn’t swayed by an act of patching up you of all people. His hands are used to these motions, but his mind still complained every time you had to be fixed, or worse, when you were hospitalized, aftermath of getting yourself into questionable situations.
This time it was a routine mission, or as you have explained over a text: ‘Quick mission, no biggie. Grab u a bite when im done?’, which, first of all, why are you concerned about feeding him when you were the one with a severely active job, demanding you to be in top form each day, all 365 days, 366 on leap year? And secondly, your quick missions, to Zayne’s frustration, have varied between fetching coffee for your department’s supervisor, so that they will give you an extra half a day to finish your reports, and infiltrating N109 Zone for, supposedly, investigating a lead on stolen protocores, or worse – something he can’t even know about, because it’s a top secret information and the only reliable source of insight is the girl beside him, who acts like being a danger magnet is part of the charm.
To your credit, this time it really was a simple task. Just a few wanderers in an abandoned building on the outskirts of Linkon. There was some suspicious activity reported aside from wanderers themselves, information about a stale protocore warehouse was leaked to Association, and thus Alpha Unit was deployed.
Turned out the warehouse was abandoned because of a firework company going bankrupt, some of the wares still unsold and abandoned. And despite fireworks, firecrackers and other questionable explosive stuff surrendering to the will of time, becoming moist in unsupervised conditions, they, surprisingly, could still very much burn and explode. Who knew that fire type of wanderers would coincidentally appear at the least fireproof place in the whole district?
And, well, after it all went up in flames, your quick thinking saved a comrade, who almost got burned, but it left you open and vulnerable for an attack. Wanderers were dealt with swiftly, your subconsciousness spoke in a very familiar deep voice and urged you to get patched up, even for something minor. Curse your smitten heart, because who are you to deny wishes of that man, even if he isn’t even present to give you an earful?
Your leg jerks slightly at a particularly painful stab of a needle.
“I still need to head back to HQ for a report. You know me, if I get too sleepy, I’ll never finish writing anything today.”
Zayne was almost finished with the wound. He shook his head disapprovingly at your retort. You heard his scissors snap the thread and was urged to sit up, so that your physician could wrap a gauze around your middle.
“What, no heart embroidery?” your quip earned you a flick on your forehead. You placed your palm on an abused place, imitating an immense pain. “Doctor…”
“It’s Zayne,” he stood up after shrugging off latex gloves, discarded medical garment making a rubber sound when it fell on the metal tray. “My shift is over.”
You glanced at the modernly styled clock on the wall while fixing your stained work shirt. “It’s five in the afternoon. That’s very early, even for me.”
Zayne walked to a hanger next to the door to his office while unbuttoning his white lab coat. “There are no major surgeries that require my attendance today. More so, there’s an influx of interns at the hospital, which means more than enough hands, should help be required,” after hanging his coat, Zayne turns while fixing cuffs of his sleeves. “And I have a house call.”
You stare dumbly, watching him take something out of the personal locker, tucked away in a corner. Your reply comes out with a sigh. “Am I the house call?”
Zayne walks up to you with a carefully folded white shirt. He places it next to you as he speaks. “Looks like blood loss haven’t slowed your thinking. Good.” He leans in fully and takes a hold of the shirt you’ve been trying to make presentable again, fruitlessly. “Were you really going to head back to Association in this? In best scenario, someone will call an ambulance for you, and in worst – call the police for scaring pedestrians with bloody uniform,” Zayne tugs at your shirt more insistent. “Strip.”
You covered your embarrassment with a cough and started undoing the buttons of your top. “Anyways, is this your shirt you’re giving me? It’s way too big, Zayne, you’re not exactly a small boy.” You comply with his request anyways, knowing there’s no escape from your beloved when he gives in to his need to pamper you. And he’s impatient now too, looking at how he starts helping you out of your clothes, placing your tie somewhere to the side and making sure you don’t upset your freshly treated injury. Once you’re done, you take note of how solemn he suddenly became.
“Zayne?” you look up at him and find his gaze on your body. He doesn’t give you a look of heat you’re familiar with, instead showing some kind of reverence with his actions, his palm glides on your stomach, fingers tracing something, like rediscovering a fickle artifact, or tracing a path on a map. You look down. Right, your scars. In the past year you’ve been working as a hunter, you’ve collected a lot of those. They jump from place to place, yet each and every one of them are distinct, even if some overlap on the surface. Shift in his mood isn’t drastic, you felt it coming from the moment he stopped you at the lobby of Akso Hospital, eyes full of worry, and insisted to be the one to treat you.
“Don’t be upset.” Your attempt at consolation is pathetic. This battle of concern is a recurring thing between you two. He worries about your heart condition, about your missions, and whether or not you’re taking care of yourself, while you fight every day with his own tendencies to disregard his needs. He’s a doctor, he should know better, but you are the one who reminds him to eat something other than sweet tea and dry cafeteria protein bars, as well as controlling when he sleeps, if he made it to his bed.
Zayne is suddenly taking off his glasses, placing them on your discarded tie. He gets down on his knees before you. It startles you. You almost urge him to get back up before he stains his pants, yet your protest dies in your throat when he presses his face into your stomach. His lips start leaving light kisses along raised lines of scar tissue. It tickles, your abdomen clenches with an effort to kill your reflex to squirm away. Your hand instinctively moves to his hair and rakes through it, he sighs, his warm breath sends goosebumps on your skin. In a moment of clarity you realize that Zayne needs this right now, to let his worries transform into something other than his jumbled up thoughts about possibilities where you would’ve been hurt more severely, maybe not even making it back to the hospital. Back to Zayne.
After placing one last lingering kiss, he hugs you as tight as he can allow himself, and looks up at you. His eyes convey such a deep, honest feeling, that you almost look away. He breathes in, closes his eyelids and nuzzles your stomach with his cheek. It takes him a few seconds more before he gathers himself.
“I’m sorry.” He apologizes, you assume for his outburst, while he stands up. You don’t even let him properly move up, entrapping his face within your hands. He looks a little lost for a second, freezing willingly.
“No ‘I’m sorry’ between us, okay?” He looks at you, confused, so you school your face into a more serious one. “I don’t want to hear your apologies. If I hear it again, I’ll shut you up for good. Got it?” You fear that your brash attitude came off as a little insensitive, until you catch Zayne’s face twitch. He tries to shift his face back to pensive. You’re having none of it and resort to the all-time favorite trick of yours that has about 75,6% success rate.
You start kissing Zayne’s face fervently. Forehead, nose bridge which he likes to pinch a lot, his cheeks, and then, finally, when his lips helplessly mold into a smile, you kiss them too. You hear his amused chuckle, feel it’s vibration where you’re pressed together. He kisses you back, a slave to your charms. You bite his lip for good measure when you feel him pull away. Zayne is smiling again, filling you with a sense of accomplishment. Ever since you came here he didn’t betray a single upturn of his lips, keeping his positive emotions hostage, so seeing his somewhat relaxed face is a treat, sweeter than any cake you can get at the establishment you and him like to visit when his cravings get a little too extreme for a regular bubble tea run.
This short bliss is interrupted by a sound from your hunter’s watch. You catch Zayne moving to stand up fully from the corner of your eye while your attention snaps to the screen.
“Shit, Tara is outside to fetch me back to HQ.” Your explanation is followed by frantically pulling Zayne’s shirt on. It’s a little too big on you, as predicted, so you quickly move it’s sleeves upwards and button them up to stay in place. Before you can knock his glasses down while reaching for your tie, his hand intercepts yours, taking his glasses and grabbing your tie. He offers to get it on for you, you expose your neck while he ties it effortlessly.
“Give me keys to your place.” He says, making a final knot, tying it loose enough not to choke you.
“Huh? Why?” Your feet touch the ground finally and you stretch your body a little, careful not to undo the gauze. Zayne measures you with his gaze.
“Yesterday you complained that your lock is broken, leaving you to open and close your door the old-fashioned way.”
“I know that, but why do you need to go to my place to begin with?” You reach into a small tactical bag on your waist, fishing for keys. They ding when you get them out.
He opens his palm and you drop the keys on it. “I’m making us dinner, for when you will be back home.”
You freeze for half a second before smiling with a sigh. He’s still not finished pampering you. Giving him one last kiss, you open the door and wave him goodbye, stepping out.
“Alright. Then I will get home as soon as I can.”