Saun 15, 720
“You have to be kidding me.”
“Just do it.”
Ash had been trying to tempt Zur into performing a somersault for the past half hour, but knowing Zur, his stubbornness was a wall too sturdy to penetrate.
They were a little ways from their home, out in a stretch of prairie surrounded by wilderness. Flowers of all varying sizes, colours and smells coated the ground and offered the two men a beautiful view. If only they were frolicking through it instead of mucking about with their horseplay.
“I would rather lay out in the blazing heat all day than do that,” Zur declared, kicking a mound of dirt with his toe.
“C’mon,” Ash persisted, donning a frown and innocent, wide eyes. “Don’t make me look like a fool.”
Ash had already tried to somersault himself which inevitably resulted in a sore bum and severe lightheadedness.
“You really need me for that?” Zur scoffed with a playful smile.
Ash rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, but defeat was not something he took willingly.
His posture and the glaring eyes that accompanied it were enough to make Zur give in to Ash’s wishes. He had nothing to lose, and seeing Ash like that made him smile and roll his own eyes simultaneously. There was always an adventure of some sort with him.
“Fine,” he said with the rise and fall of his shoulders. “But stand back. Let my masterful technique blow you away.”
Of course Zur hadn’t put much, if any, effort into acrobatics since he was a child and even then he was less physically acclimated than he was mentally; therefore he was in no way the master he claimed to be. The probability of his success was right down there with Ash’s whose dominating trait was strength not flexibility.
Zur put his arms above his head and stuck one foot out in front of the other. Like a pendulum readying itself to sway, Zur shifted backwards before throwing himself forward. His hands touched the soft grass before the rest of his body came next, over his head and then his knees were near his face? And his own bum was met with the tough ground.
“Ow,” Zur complained, rubbing the top of his rump. Thank god his knees hadn’t come much closer to his face or else a sore bum would have been the least of his worries.
Ash was laughing hysterically. He had one hand holding his stomach and the other up towards his eyes, wiping away tears.
“Nuh uh.”
“Nuh uh, what?” Ash asked once he had caught his breath. He moved to help his partner to a stand.
“There was no way it was that funny. You looked like one of those cartoon-ish characters an illustrator would draw for a children’s book.”
“It’s probably because I was born to model,” Ash retorted, striking a pose.
Zur snorted before reaching in for a kiss. Ash smiled at his partner’s incoming gesture and leant forward to accept. His lips held that perfect ratio of moisture- they weren’t chapped but they weren’t too wet, giving the kiss a flawless rating in the eyes of Zur. It was a quick peck only because Ash was excited for more daring gymnastics.
“Here, you stand over there and I’ll stand over here and we’ll do one at the same time and meet in the middle,” Ash explained, using hand gestures as a directive.
Zur pondered the notion, wondering where he should position himself so as not to bump heads after they finished their somersaulting.
Funny, Zur mused. He remembered the first time he had met Ash. He hadn’t been watching where it was he was going and ended up butting heads with the man quite literally. It would be a great story to tell their kids if they had any. What was even more humorous was how angry Ash had been, and how angry Zur had been too. The negative energy had fortunately been vanquished before storming anyone’s castle. And just seeing how joyful and boyish his partner looked at that very moment really made Zur want to storm his castle, if you knew what he meant.
Zur stretched out his arms and meshed his fingers, trying to crack his knuckles. Ash had no issue showing him up as the snap, crackle, and popping erupted from his fingers, and his neck, and his… toes?
“Gross,” Zur said, shaking his head in disgust. “You could acquire some chronic hand cramps from doing that.”
Ash puckered his lips and blew a raspberry. “Okay, whatever. Let’s just do this.”
Ash walked a little ways away before turning back to face Zur. How far away was he? Maybe five feet?
“Back up a little more,” he instructed before taking a few steps back as well.
Zur hummed to himself, trying to gauge the distance but not knowing how far would be far enough. He shrugged to himself and threw his hands up into the air.
“Ready?”
“You know it!” Announced Ash as he flung his arms up and over his head.
“On three. One… two…”
Zur hadn’t a moment to ready his mouth for the following number before Ash exclaimed it for him.
“Three!”
They both dove forward, heels over head with their backs arched. Zur’s arms quickly trying to tuck under himself and Ash’s shoulder connecting with the ground a little too harshly.
The two had dove like seagulls and had finally come up for air. Zur was smiling wildly as he felt the blood rush to his head. Adrenaline was pumping ferociously through his veins and the back of his neck tingled with it. He glanced up at Zur, expecting to find the same expression but was not met with it.
Ash’s face was twisted in pain as he sat at a weird angle, his right leg stretched out in front of him and his left tucked up under his body. He was holding that stretched out leg for some reason and when he lifted one hand away from it, it was covered in blood.
“What the hell?” The half-blood’s eyes were ladened with concern. “What happened?”
With his bloodied hand, Ash extracted a dagger from out of his pocket.
“What are you doing with my dagger?” Zur cried, his worry quickly being replaced with anger. If he hadn’t had the damn thing, he wouldn’t have gotten hurt!
At first Ash was trying his hardest to block out the pain before he was able to say anything. “We’re out in the middle of the woods, Zur. Of course I was going to take something with me in case we ran into trouble.”
Zur was able to consider the rationality but couldn’t understand why he hadn’t taken it out of his pocket before rolling himself in a ball like he had.
“You-“
“Just come over here and help me,” Ash demanded, biting his lip by way of distracting himself from the pain he was in.
“We aren’t done talking about this,” Zur stated as he crawled to his partner.
As he drew closer, there was no mistaking Ash had been cut by the blade. There was a tear in his pants, near the outside of his leg, that retreated to brandish a deep cut about the length of his palm.
Zur subconsciously tsked and shook his head.
“Now I understand the saying ‘playing hard’,” he mused as he delicately took the ends of the tear in the fabric and yanked as hard as he could.
“What are you doing? Those are my favourite pants!”
“Ash, there’s a bloody hole in it already. I’m just trying to make it wider so I can see the damage. We don’t need anything getting in the wound. Infection is not some wive’s tale,” Zur riposted.
Ash looked a little dumbfounded so Zur continued. “You know infections, right? It arises when something foreign finds its way into the body and starts messing with the natural flow of the body’s processes… or something like that.” Zur hadn’t had much training in medicine, but was able to recall the few times he had gotten a cut and his father had to bandage it up for him.
‘Don’t want to get an infection,’ his father had stated as he poured some acidic compound on his wound. Zur had thought that the alcohol-smelling compound had been his punishment for getting hurt, but now he knew better.
Zur ruminated on the current situation. With the fabric out of the way, he had a clear view of Ash’s injury. Because his dagger had been so sharp (he hadn’t used it ever, finding no need to), while deep, the wound had not damaged the skin or surrounding area very much. He was unable to locate any large lumps of fat or strands of nerves, thank the gods.
“You have to fix it,” Ash said quietly, still biting his lip.
“Stop that,” Zur snapped as he gently patted Ash’s mouth to get him to stop biting. “I’ll do what I can, but we really should take you to a proper doctor.”
“Can’t you do it all yourself?” Ash asked, and it was then that Zur saw how small and scared his partner was.
“You don’t like doctor’s do you?”
Ash shook his head slowly, his usual cold and narrowed eyes now large and worried.
Zur sighed, his focus less on Ash’s fears and preferences and more on the fact that blood was welling up and streaming out of Ash’s leg.
He needed to stop the bleeding. Everyone knew that. What was inside the body needed to be kept inside the body, unless it was foreign like an infection. But blood was blood and that was an essential substance that kept a live being alive.
Zur took the ends of the tear again and continued to pull them apart. A loud ripping sound echoed through the clearing and reverberated off the trunks of the trees. He continued to tear until the lower part of Ash’s pants had come clean off. With the newly separated fabric, Zur began to create a makeshift tourniquet to staunch the blood.
He often misremembered what a tourniquet was from a mere cloth that covered a wound as he pressed the material against the cut and held tight.
“Put your hands here,” Zur commanded as Ash seethed from the touch. However, Ash did not argue and replaced Zur’s hands with his own.
“Now,” he began as he picked up the dagger and tucked it in his waistband near his back. He figured that was the best place to keep it as he had no pockets in his current attire. “We need to get you home. It’s closer to the infirmary and I need to make sure your wound is stable enough to transport you that far.”
Ash nodded before feigning a small smile.
“There's always an adventure of some sort with you,” Zur mumbled, reaching under Ash’s arm to lift him up.
It was this time that Zur was helping Ash to a stand rather than the other way around. Zur couldn’t help but wish it was for very different reasons.
