Westwave, Injured Iris
Mick barely hears her footsteps over the sound of potatoes sizzling in the cast-iron frypan on the stove. Her feet must he bare, the way they shuffle and drag across the linoleum like a faint, whispered hiss .
“Good morning,” Iris says, tentative and unsure, from somewhere about ten paces back.
Mick sets his spatula down and turns, ready to offer a greeting of his own, but the words die on his lips.
Iris has one of Mick’s Henleys on and nothing else. It’s so oversized, one shoulder and the jut of her collarbones stick out, even with the neckline fully buttoned. The hem falls to the top of her thighs, strong and smooth, and the contrast of her dark skin against the pale grey of the fabric is like sin. A possessive fire curls in Mick’s stomach that he stomps down at once.
“Hope you don’t mind me borrowing your shirt,” Iris continues. “The blood won’t come out of my dress.”
Swallowing thickly, Mick turns back to the potatoes and flips them in the pan, then glances back at Iris once he’s feeling more composed. “Pretty sure there’s some stuff of Lisa’s laying around,” he grunts. “Find you somethin’ to go home in.”
Iris offers him a small, timid smile. “Thanks,” she says. The way she tucks her hair behind her ear -- nervous habit, if Mick has to guess -- shows off the broken skin and deep, purple bruises on the left side of her face. Mick tries to keep his expression neutral, but Iris catches the subtle way his lips tighten in a grimace.
“It’s fine,” she tries, shaking her head.
Mick isn’t convinced. “C’mere,” he says, gesturing Iris over with a nod. As she pads over, he turns off the gas and moves the potatoes to a cool burner. Iris looks to Mick expectantly once she’s at his side, and he crowds her forward until the small of her back hits the counter.
“Up,” Mick says. When Iris hesitates, Mick raises an eyebrow. Her hands fall the the counter’s edge, and she leverages herself up to sit.
Iris waits patiently, quietly, as Mick fishes the first aid kit from under the sink, then turns on the faucet, hard stream splashing noisily into the stainless steel basin. The water is hot enough to make Mick’s skin itch, and he still washes his hands twice over to be sure they’re clean.
“Turn,” he says when he’s satisfied, shaking his hands to dry rather than rub them on the grimy dishtowel on the oven door.
Iris angles her face right to give Mick a better look at her wounds. It gives her a clear line of sight to the living room where a throw pillow and a blanket sit, rumpled, on the sofa.
“Sorry I kicked you out of your bed last night,” she says.
Mick shrugs. “Worse places I’ve slept.” He takes Iris’ chin in his hand, firm yet gentle, to maneuver her head just right so the light catches the top of her cheekbone where the worst of the damage is. Her eye is swollen half shut, but after a thorough -- and painful -- check the night before, Mick’s comfortable saying the zygomatic isn’t broken. The skin covering it is a different story.
Iris’ lip is split, too, the result of a separate blow that scuffed up her chin in the process. Her nose remains untouched, though Mick imagines it was next on the list.
Mick pushes against the bruised skin near her lip and Iris sucks in a pained breath between her teeth. He doesn’t apologize, and she doesn’t posture.
“You got a headache?” He asks instead.
“It’s fine,” Iris replies.
Not a no.
“Been pistol whipped a time or two in my day, doll,” Mick says as he pushes a blob of ointment from a tube in the first aid kit onto his fingers, then begins smoothing it over the open abrasions on Iris’ skin. “You ain’t gotta sugar coat it.”
“Oh, well, in that case, I feel like I’m dying,” Iris jokes, a little too loud for the close confines they’re pressed in. It seems to startle her, and she flinches, but Mick stays unshaken as he goes back in for more ointment.
“Woulda died for real if I hadn’t found you when I did,” he reminds her.
Iris shivers. “Thanks for coming,” she whispers.
Mick shrugs again, noncommittal. She explained it to him last night, once the blood and the tears finally dried up. It wasn’t the first time she chased a lead headfirst into danger, but after her phone caught a bullet and panic drove Barry’s number from her mind, her saving grace was Mick’s number, scrawled on a motel napkin and forgotten in her jacket pocket for almost six weeks.
Since the first and only time Mick and Iris slept together.
“Mick,” Iris says, quiet and hoarse, like his name tries desperately to cling to her throat as she pushes it past her lips.
Mick doesn’t reply, keeps his eyes downcast, staring avoidantly at the potatoes going cold on the stove, until Iris’ small, gentle hand falls to his cheek and pulls him in to connect their mouths. It’s little more than a brush of lips, both mindful of the open split that’s still tender and sore, but it makes Mick’s toes curl nonetheless. He drops his hands to Iris’ thighs and slides them up and down, thumbs tracing idle patterns against the skin he remembers so vividly touching and suddenly gets to touch again.
Iris shivers and leans in close, burying her face in the curve of Mick’s neck and soaking up the heat from his body. “Sorry I didn’t call,” she whispers.
Mick drops a kiss to the top of her head and tries not to think too hard about what he almost lost.
“S’okay.”