Mine (Unedited) (Discontinued?)

Chapter 34

EJ sighed when BEN gave another yelp of pain. Honestly, he thought the kid had a greater tolerance for pain than this. He'd been trying to treat BEN's broken hand for a few hours now, and he had finally managed to set the break in his radius.

"Damn it, BEN, if you don't want me to mess your arm up more you'd stay still and stop fucking screaming," EJ snapped, the most recent shout of pain being from EJ taking a scalpel to the blond's broken wrist so he could assess the damage and rebuild the bones there.

"Well sorry if you won't use some fucking numbing!" BEN snapped back, glaring at the blue mask that hid EJ's face.

"Does my basement look like I have the equipment I need to numb your whole fucking arm?" EJ said, setting the scalpel down on the tray holding the rest of his equipment.

BEN frowned, glancing at the dark concrete surrounding them. EJ had reassured him that the place was sterile, courtesy of Slender, and wouldn't cause any infection in BEN's arm when he got to work.

"Why don't you have the equipment with you?" BEN asked, making EJ pause.

"Because while Slenderman was able to provide a sterile place for me to work, I had to get the equipment myself. Haven't gotten the money to buy the shit I need," he answered, then picked up the scalpel and began to cut into BEN's arm again before he could ask any more questions.

BEN hissed in pain, clenching the armrest with his good hand. He tried to keep himself from screaming this time, though the agony shooting through his arm with each cut of the scalpel made it difficult.

"Why can't--" BEN swallowed when EJ seemed to press harder with the blade, wanting to finish his question, and continued, "why can't you just kill a doctor or raid a hospital or something? It's not like we're tied down by the law."

EJ sighed, choosing not to answer for several long beats of silence while he worked. It wasn't until BEN stopped restraining from voicing his pain that he decided to answer to keep the kid quiet.

"Because while you guys don't give a shit about the law, I still have a conscience. Before I turned into what I am now, I was a twenty-something college student, well on his way to earning his PhD. Then I was kidnapped and experimented on and tortured until I looked like this, and all I could stomach was beer, human organs, and cinnamon. I'm not going to raid a hospital BEN, not when there are people there who could die if they don't get what they need," EJ explained, sighing in relief when he finally reached the messed up bones of the elf's wrist.

BEN went quiet at the explanation, letting the information sink in and clenching his jaw to avoid crying out in pain as EJ prepared to rebuild the bones.

BEN didn't know Jack as well as Jeff did, though that was more because BEN preferred to avoid Jeff as much as possible. The two clashed a lot, and BEN hated fighting with others, mostly because he wasn't really a fighter himself.

BEN winced when EJ tugged a bone piece free from his flesh and set it on some gauze with a few others, looking away from the sight when his stomach lurched. He wished he had gone straight home when he punched that tree, because it was clear that by waiting he had made the problem much, much worse.

Jeff crouched in a tree, his hand clamped over his mouth to muffle the sound of his breathing as well as to hide the grin. He hadn't pulled a prank in a long time, and while stealing roses from Offender's garden wasn't really a prank, the turnout was the same.

He'd been running for a good twenty minutes, glad that Slender's brothers didn't share some of his abilities. He knew Offender would eventually find him, especially since the man himself was storming underneath the tree Jeff was hiding in at that very moment.