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33
DARCY
In the end, Fallon sewed up his own wounds. I’d tried, and he’d sat there and attempted to hide his grimacing like a real fucking champ, but I just truly had no clue what I was doing. After I’d burst into another round of tears over hurting him with the needle, he’d gently pried it from my hands and finished the job himself. He was so quick and efficient that I’d asked him, not without some worry, if he’d had to suture up a lot of his own wounds.
“Not too many,” he’d told me. “But I sew other things. I made all the quilts. And I sewed my shirt and jacket for our wedding.”
“I wondered where you got that outfit!” I’d cried.
“Cherry helped me with the design,” he’d said, so proud and so bashful in equal measure that I thought I’d melt into a big puddle of Fallon-loving goo. God, I was a goner for him.
After his wounds were closed, and I’d fetched him water and a little food, I made the executive decision to make camp in the kitchen overnight. I didn’t think either of us had the energy to try getting him back up again, even if it was just to get down the hallway to the bed.
So, instead, I brought more pillows, as well as the quilts that Fallon had made, and I made us a temporary bed on the kitchen floor. I didn’t think I’d sleep a wink, what with how worried I’d been about Fallon. But as soon as I was lying beside him and I felt the comforting slip of his tail around my leg, I crashed and crashed hard.
I was awoken sometime before dawn by Fallon trying to clumsily get out of our little camping bed.
“What are you doing?” I asked, vigilance instantly overtaking my grogginess. “What do you need help with?”
“Go back to sleep,” he whispered. “I am just going to milk the bracku. And then-”
“Oh no, you are not,” I said, rising from the bed and stumbling over to the place I’d left my boots. “You just tell me what to do. And I’ll do it.”
“It’s too much!” Fallon exclaimed. “Just let me-” He tried to stand, but he didn’t even make it past a sort of crouch before his injured leg gave out.
“It’s not too much,” I told him firmly. “Nothing is too much for you, you big dope. And if I need help, I can call Cherry and Silar.”
“I want to be the one to help you,” he said, so quietly that it gutted me.
“You will be,” I told him. “But first, you have to heal.”
Things went on like that for days. Which turned into weeks. Fallon’s wounds didn’t get infected, thank God, but they were deep and took time to heal. Even after the surface skin closed over, it was difficult for him to get up, to put weight on his leg, or walk. I threw myself into my new role as head rancher, and I was pretty fucking proud of how well I did, being thrown in at the deep end the way I was. For more than a week, Fallon couldn’t even get out of the house to supervise me or give me directions.
Cherry and Silar did come over a few times in the early days of Fallon’s healing, just to make sure we were doing alright and so that Silar could do some of the harder jobs like inspecting and repairing the property’s fencing. But when it came to the animals, I did just about everything, with Silar and Fallon’s instructions to guide me. I milked, fed, and watered the bracku. I worked with Sora to move them from pasture to pasture on Fallon’s property and made sure their barn was clean and dry. I learned to groom the shuldu, inspect their hooves, and to keep them happy and calm while Fallon was out of commission.
It was the hardest work I’d ever done in my life.
And I fucking loved it.
I loved being with the animals. I couldn’t believe it, but I even loved getting dirty. I loved how tired I was at the end of the day, not a depressed sort of tired, but an “I did good work today” tired. The only thing that could have made it all better was Fallon being back to his normal self.
About three weeks after the genka attack, Fallon decided he’d had enough and, despite my worried protesting, he hauled himself up to both feet. I held my breath. Though he winced a little when he put weight on his leg, he didn’t collapse.
“I am going to wash,” he said.
“Are you sure? Maybe you should rest a little more, and-”
“If you are worried about me,” he said, a not-so-innocent gleam coming into his eyes, “then perhaps you should come along. To… supervise.”
“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes but smiling all the same. “Let’s go, big guy.”
I followed closely behind Fallon, hovering like a nervous nelly. He’d recently started using a makeshift crutch for short trips to the outhouse or to have a quick wash or fang-cleaning session at the kitchen sink. This was the first time he’d walked without it. We went all the way to the little shower shed built onto the side of the house.
Fallon was already naked. There hadn’t seemed much point in making him bend and stretch his legs just to get his tight leather trousers on while he recuperated. Whenever Cherry or Silar popped by, we usually just tossed a quilt over his lap.
He stood, nude and immobile, in the centre of the shower area.
“I require assistance,” he said.
