Wound Cleaning

Who: Adam and Rebekah
Where: Farm
When: Afternoon

Adam walked back to the farm, not hurrying, not dawdling either, his hand clamped to his shoulder to stem the bleeding as best he could. He didn't question what he had done to deserve the attack - he was to pay for the sins of his family, their mass suicide had condemned him to a life of more pain than any one man could ever live through, he knew this. It was his lot in life to simply bear it well, to not pass the sin on to his children, when he had any.

He entered the farmhouse quietly, calmly, and headed over to the sink. Running water enough to fill the bowl, he stripped to the waist, the better to clean the wound with and, that done, took a cloth and started to wipe the blood away.

Rebekah was folding wash in the other room when she heard him come in. She'd adapted well to the farmhouse, though the walls spoke to her still at night. There was plenty to do to keep her busy, at least, and after the two of them had retired to silent and separate bedrooms for the evening, she had sculptures to work on. Hell, she even cooked a good chunk of the time. The harvest was still going to be an issue, but at least maybe with the disappearance of almost everyone else, people would come around.

She stood up with the pile of kitchen towels between her hands and headed toward the sound of the water in the sink, the question of whether or not he wished her to cook tonight on her lips. What ended up coming out was a short sound of surprise at the naked back that faced her. Rebekah turned away, cheeks flaming, and started snatching up the towels she'd dropped. "What are you doing?" she asked brusquely, the trails of blood down his arm only sinking in when she looked around again.

"A girl in town stabbed me - I'm cleaning the wound," Adam told her, sounding quite unperturbed about it. He looked down at his shoulder as he continued to dab at it, the blood flow having stemmed to a trickle and started to show signs of clotting. The wound itself didn't look deep. He didn't turn round though, and he kept his arms in by his side, shielding his scars from her eyes - he didn't like what had happened last time she'd caught sight of them.

That cut through the initial shock and Rebekah's jaw dropped uselessly for a second. He'd been stabbed? One of those insane people had stabbed Adam? Adam was the least stab-worthy person of the whole damnable lot of them -- as aggravating as he was sometimes. Concern and anger overriding the fact that he was the first shirtless man she'd ever seen in person, she stalked through the kitchen and leaned around the edge of the sink to peer at the wound. "Is it deep? Let me see it? Who did it?" she asked in rapid succession, still trying to wrap her head around that.

Adam turned away from her, again more concerned about keeping his inner arms away from her eyes than the wound. It throbbed with pain, stung when he touched it, but last time she'd seen his scars, she'd made art from them, carved them into wood, called them beautiful - all of that, it was forbidden. "No, it's not deep. And I don't know - a girl, I didn't recognise her."

Rebekah wasn't paying attention to his arms anyway, she was more focused on the spot that was actively bleeding. It didn't seem to be gushing, as she leaned even more to see, eyebrows drawn together. "You need disinfectant," she informed him. He was cleaning around it, yes, but God only knew what sorts of things could've been on that blade. She turned to leave the kitchen, bare feet whispering quickly over the wood floor.

Adam waited for her to leave, and then shrugged his shirt back on, making sure that the sleeves covered his arms and fastening the buttons up the front. Small spots of blood dotted the shoulder where the cotton hit the wound, but no more than dots. It'd do, and he'd find something to wrap it to make sure that he could carry on with his work.

She came back after a trip to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Which was thankfully stocked with modern amenities. It was a working farm, after all, not entirely a replica. She had hydrogen peroxide and materials to wrap the wound with in her hands, gauze and tape. Rebekah frowned and shook her head as she saw him with his shirt back on. "No, sit," she said, pushing a chair out with her foot. "You have to disinfect and bind it, or you'll get infected. Especially around here."

Adam looked at her, seriously. "I'll shower later and clean it again then. If it is meant to be that it gets infected, then so be it - who am I to go against that? I have light work inside I can see to until the bleeding stops and of course I'll make sure the wound's bound."

"The bleeding will stop much faster if you clean and bind it now," she countered, jaw setting. "It needs pressure, not you moving around a lot and making it worse. Let me tend to it, you can keep your shirt on, just open it and move it aside." If it was an issue of comfort, she had her own, and it'd be better that way for both of them.

"No disinfectant though - you may use water, but nothing more," he told her, willing to meet her half way on that at least. It was only what he would have done himself, after all.

Rebekah opened her mouth to argue, but was intelligent enough to see that that was as far as she was getting. And at least he was letting her do something. "Fine, sit," she said, setting the peroxide aside. She moved to the sink to get a clean rag and wet it down with hot water.

Adam sat, positioning himself on one of the wooden kitchen chairs. He unbuttoned his shirt again and let it drop from his shoulders, though he was careful to keep his lower arms covered - which made the position seem a little more awkward to him, but he knew he would be less comfortable with his scars on display. He said nothing more, though he wanted her carefully and with a slight air of uncertainty. He was never quite sure what to think around her.

She came back with the soaked rag and another towel. With the shock over of all that empty skin, and a task at hand, she could focus on what she was doing. The back of her artist's mind, however, was making observations on the breadth of his shoulders and his collarbones and tucking the details away. Putting the dry towel under the wound so as not to soak him, she slowly squeezed hot water out of the rag and down into the wound without touching it, in an attempt to flush it out. She didn't seem to have anything to say either, not even to ask exactly what happened.

Adam sat silently, letting her work, his interest apparently on the windowsill just over her shoulder. He didn't want to disturb her, and he didn't want to admit that her close proximity made him twitchy. He remembered the times that he'd cared for her, when she had been ill, yet that was different to this. He still didn't entirely know how to categorise her, it kept him a step back, always on guard and alert.

Rebekah repeated the process a few more times, back and forth between him and the sink, and was pleased to see that at the end the water trickling down under where he'd been stabbed wasn't even very pink anymore. That was good. Her pale blue eyes avoided his face, focused in on her own hands and his shoulder. She'd managed not to touch his skin directly, but wasn't sure she'd get away with that on binding it. She stood there for a second and decided it would probably be okay just being covered and taped. He wasn't gushing or anything. She dried him off better with a fresh towel, then folded some gauze over to press against the wound. She glanced at him ever so briefly, though what she was looking for she couldn't say. Rebekah went about covering it and taping it firmly down, flinching only a little as she had to make direct contact and the buzzy-pain flashed up her arms.

Adam looked at her as he felt the flinch, moving back as he did so, shucking his shirt back up and on properly, doing it up. "Thanks - you okay?" he asked her, eyeing her.

"Fine," she said quietly, eyes moving away from his as she busied herself cleaning up. She had more towels to wash now, but that was all right. "What do you want for supper?" It wasn't quite time yet, but real cooking took preparation that she was more than willing to do right now if it meant re-asserting distance.

"Food is food," Adam told her. She knew he didn't eat meat, just as much as she knew he was willing to help with the preparation and he preferred meals to be chosen for their nutritional value than for what he 'wanted' - that wasn't the aim of life. He didn't need entertaining by his food.

Sometimes that insistence on non-preference really got under her skin, but Rebekah didn't argue. Food was food, yes, but it wasn't a sin to prefer canned beans over canned corn one night. At least not in her book. She opened one of the cabinets without responding and started looking through what they had. Their supply was going to get sparse in the coming days, she felt sure, so it was probably intelligent to start rationing now. Not that she ate much anyway.

Adam stood, walking over to take his spare jacket from the peg on the kitchen wall. Pulling it on, he glanced over at her. "I'm going to go check on the cows," he told her. Right now he could do with some space, and she didn't look like she needed, or wanted, any help. He would respect that.

"All right," she said, her back still to him as she rooted around amongst the cans. He could just go ... do that, and she'd cook for the both of them, and they could go on moving in their separate circles in the house. As she searched, her fingers brushed over the pulled-up corner of a label. She tore it off without thinking and surreptitiously stuck it in her mouth.

Adam caught the action and frowned a little, thinking it strange, but he chose to say nothing, simply filing it away as odd for now as he headed out of the house, still aware of the dull ache in his shoulder. He'd have to be careful with it, but he couldn't let it keep him from his work.