When Life handed Bindya lemons, she said, no thank you, I am allergic to them.
When the same lemons were passed on to Brad, he looked at them confusedly and before licking them in a kittenesque manner.
Sometimes absolution, purpose and love is...
Warning: Slightly graphic image below of a face after a fight.
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"What- what happened to your face?" Luke asked, alarmed, holding the door open all the way through for Brad to stagger in.
"I was at Himath. An abusive wanker tried to force his girlfriend back home with him from there." Brad slurred.
Luke silently led Brad into the kitchen, filling a bowl with water to clean up and a glass of it for Brad to drink. Pulling a couple of kitchen towels from the roll, he set about cleaning Brad's face. His left eye was swollen purple with blood coagulating down his temple from the corner of his eye. It was going to be black and blue for a quite a few days. His neck and lips were caked with small bits of gravel mixed with mud. He had obviously fallen into the rain slicked roads for there to be so much of it on Brad's face. The eye seemed to be the worst of it, yet Luke ran his hands through Brad's hair checking for any bumps or injury indicating a concussion. His hands came away with blood.
"Can you do me a full-body scan please, RAVN?" Luke said, while dipping another towel into the now dirty bowl and set about cleaning the injury site to assess if there was a need for stitches.
"Blood-pressure elevated but within normal thresholds, core body temperature lower than normal but stabilising. No damage to the cornea or retina of the eye. Head injury clear of any foreign bodies. No gravel or mud. Would you like me to call a paramedics or access the Medi-database for treatment of periorbital hematoma?
"No, that's alright RAVN. Thank you."
"I don't think you are going to be requiring stitches but I'd still like you to stay here for the night. I'd like to keep an eye on you. That concussion is mild but I don't want to take chances." Luke disposed the towels and withdrew a bag of peas from the freezer before holding them up to Brad's face.
He winced at the flinch that Brad gave.
"What happened there? Why wasn't the security involved?"
"I went there to speak to Theresa and check up on Marissa. You know she's interning there? There was this one other girl there. She looked to be in a bad way, asking for three hundred pounds to start over from her abusive boyfriend. Wanted to keep her mum's necklace as collateral. He turned up there, apparently she was followed and tried to physically force her back with him. He back-handed her and Theresa was caught in the middle. I tried to intervene, managed to push him out onto the pavement. Caught a punch to the eye and he had a knife. It just nicked me near the corner of my eye as I tried to pull the girl away from him. Thankfully the security intervened in time."
"Brad, you are shaking. Let me get you a blanket." Luke made sure Brad had the make-shift ice pack in hand before returning with the quilt from the sofa, wrapping it around Brad's shoulder.
"She- she looked to be under-aged Luke. I don't think she was older than fifteen..maybe sixteen and he was this hulking middle-aged man."
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"Did you report him to the police?"
"Yeah, they took my statement along with the others and they promised me they'd take the girl to a women's shelter for the night before processing her tomorrow. She was nearly incoherent with fear. The bastard is absconding though. They are tracking him via his chip. He was on parole so when he's caught he is going to be put away for a very long time."
Brad got up, one hand clutching the blanket and other the bag of peas and moved to the sofa. Luke followed, with two tubes of ointment in hand. He applied the first as a thin-layer to the head wound. It worked as a sealant, and anti-bacterial, repairing the cut in four hours. The second was applied to his eye that would keep the inflammation to a minimum and negating the need to ice it for more twenty minutes after the injury.
He deposited the tubes back into the first-aid box, pushing it to the corner, before opening the fridge for a drink.
"Hey, would you like something to drink? Water? Juice?"
"Tea, please."
"Sorry, no caffeine or alcohol for you. How about some lemonade?"
"Yeah, that's okay. Thanks Luke."
Luke, with a newly opened bottled of local micro-brew in one hand and a glass in the other, came and sat with him before waking up his home tele-assitant and asking the feminine voice to put on a movie.
The wall in front of them blanked before the opening credits to Black Widow III came on. It was an old film, having come out in 2026, but Brad was fond of its vintage graphic work and the red-headed female lead. It had a certain warmth to it that movies made post-2030 lacked.
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Luke handed Brad a tall glass of lemonade before settling into watch the movie.
Black Widow followed into The adventures of Hugo Weasley, a spin-off from the widely popular Albus and Scorpius Tales franchise. The movies kept their attention without drawing them in like the 9D movies so that Luke could wake Brad up every hour to check his neural responses.
They both fell asleep around dawn, reclined on the sofa while their home assistant dimmed the lights and switched off the television. The sofas reclined to the full 180 before the air vents came on to form a cocoon of warm air around them, functioning as a blanket made of out of air. They could be adjusted to individual tastes, eliminating any arguments over optimal temperatures.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed the chapter and the little bit of world-building that I tried to do! Imagine the home-assitants and the tele-assistant to be like J.A.R.V.I.S. but a lot more sophisticated (considering its 2045!)
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If you have reservations, feedback or any advise for me, please do let me know, either via private messaging or in the comments. Many thanks!
