your body is a weapon → brad simpson | ✓

twenty six

"What brings you here?" Tristan sing-songs as he opens the door. I figured they had a first aid kit here so I was stood outside their house in some joggers and a plain shirt, a coat wrapped around my cold body.

"She's here for me," I hear Brad say and he pulls Tristan away from the door by his shoulder. "Go check on the food so that it doesn't burn."

I look over Brad's face. His eye was swollen slightly, a cut on his lip and I could see his knuckles were cut open, too.

"You really came to clean up my booboos?" He teases me with a slight smirk, and I roll my eyes at him. "Come on in, you look freezing."

"Thanks," I say, shrugging off my coat as he closes the door. He takes my coat from me and hangs it on the coatrack. "Have you got a med kit?"

"Yeah, it's upstairs," he says, guiding me up the stairs to the bathroom. He reaches into one of the cupboards and grabs the green box, handing it to me. "What are you gonna do to me, Doctor?"

I roll my eyes, "can you sit on the bath or something? I can't reach your face."

He nods, sitting on the edge of the bath so that his head is just below mine. I open up the med kit on the counter and pull out some anti-septic wipes.

"I'm sorry if this stings, but it'll help clean your cuts," I tell him and he nods. I step closer to him, standing between his legs before pressing a wipe against the cut on his lip first. He flinches against the feeling before going back to his original position. "Sorry!"

"It's fine," he mumbles, trying his best not to react to the sting of the wipe. Once I'm sure I've cleaned the cut on his lip, I throw the wipe away and get a new, clean one and start on the cuts on his knuckles. "Will they need to be bandaged up?"

"Maybe we can put a plaster on it," I say, looking in the med kit and pulling out them with a small smile. "We have Peppa Pig ones, or Dora the Explorer ones."

He chuckles as he rolls his eye at me. "Obviously Dora." I smile, grabbing a couple of plasters and putting them on his cuts.

"There we go," I say. "All clean and bandaged up." He pushes himself off of the bath while I close up the med kit and pass it back to him so he can put it up on the top shelf.

"You didn't need to come," he reminds me, letting him take my hand in his as he guides me downstairs.

"I didn't want you to get any infected cuts," I shake my head at him. "But are you sure you're fine?"

"I pinky swear," he says, sticking his pinky out and I loop mine around his. "The only people you should be worried about are the guys on the receiving end of my punches."

I sigh. "I'm surprised your gang leader lets his members get in fights with each other. Doesn't it cause bad conflict?"

"What happens at the race tracks, stays at the race tracks, baby," James grins as we walk into the kitchen. I smile back at him and in moments, my hand is ripped from Brad's grasp and James has his arms around me. "I missed you!"

"You saw me yesterday," I say to him, a small laugh escaping my lips as he frowns at me.

"Still too long," he tells me before taking me to the barstools by his kitchen island for me to sit at. "Tristan made some extra pasta and sauce for you."

"Tristan is our unofficial house chef," Brad comments as he sits next to me. Tristan turns around, wriggling his eyebrows as he tosses the pasta into the air and catches it in his pan.

"I make the best pasta in the whole of the UK!" Tristan says, attempting an Italian accent and I smile, looking over at Brad who rolls his eyes at his housemate.

"Do you need a ride home?" Brad asks me, his head turning my way. "I can take you back after you've eaten."

"If that's okay with you."

"Of course," he smiles.

We wait patiently for the food to be finished, having a general chatter about how the race went and how the fight ended up going down between some of the boys. Connor comes into the kitchen once dinner is being served.

"Thought I smelt something nice," he comments, sitting next to James. "Hey, Jamie."

"Hi," I reply. Out of all of the boys, I'd not really spoken to Connor that much. I wasn't particularly close with Tristan, either, but he was so charismatic that it felt like we'd known each other for ages. Connor was an introvert, I knew that for sure.

"Put some music on, will you?" Tristan asks James who springs up instantly and turns on the speaker that they have before connecting it to his iPhone before sitting back down.

Some indie music plays in the background as we all eat our dinners. Connor made some conversation with the other two boys while Brad and I spoke between each other.

"Did you like your present, then?" He asks me, a small smile on his face. He had finished his dinner already but I was still finishing mine off.

"It was so cute," I admit, a smile spreading onto my face slowly. He smiles back at me, his hand covering my hand that wasn't holding my fork.

"I'm glad you liked it," he shrugs. "I knew you'd kill me if I spent anymore money on you."

"You're lucky you're still breathing after you gave me that tenner," I joke. "I'm grateful that people wanna buy me presents but I don't really need anything. I've got clothes, a home, food. I don't need much more."

"You're so selfless sometimes," he says, leaning back against his chair. "I really envy that."

+

Brad and I were laying next to each other on the sofa, watching a film before I leave to go home later. The other three boys had all disappeared upstairs to do their own thing, but I wasn't complaining.

"How are you feeling?" Brad asks, his arms slung over my shoulders as he lays behind me.

"I'm feeling alright," I say, turning to look at him. The film was getting boring anyway, so I didn't mind facing away from it for a few moments.

"Good," he says before I can ask him how he is. His eye was still swollen, but I could tell that it had deflated a little bit since I'd first gotten here. "I just wanted to check, since I never really thought that you've learnt so much over this weekend that you might be overwhelmed."

I found it kind how he considered how I feel. "I'm coping fine, don't worry. I can handle whatever you want to throw at me."

"I know that you can theoretically, but I bet you've never experience anything like this before. I want to make sure it's not too much."

"I'll admit I was scared at first," I tell him, tilting my head slightly. "When I was first figuring things out, I didn't understand everything entirely. I thought you were in a gang that targeted random civilians. And although it might not be the best way to go ahead with something, there's good intentions behind everything you've done."

He nods. "I wouldn't hurt someone innocent, not if it were up to me."

"I know," I smile at him, lifting my hand to his cheek and rubbing the pad of my thumb across his cheek. "But I think getting to understand what you do, what your thought process is, I'm not scared anymore. Not of you, anyway."

"So you're scared of something?"

"I mean, a huge gang is pretty scary," I laugh and he smiles at me. "I guess I'm scared that you could get hurt by being in the gang."

"I'm not gonna get hurt," he assures me with a smile. "I can't leave my only friend out in this terrible world alone. I promise."

I roll my eyes at him with a smile tugging at my lips. "Good, I don't know what I'd do without you."

Ever since Brad and I have became really good friends, being alone really felt like a foreign feeling. I had someone to talk to about shows I watch—even though he clearly didn't understand or care for what I was talking about, he still listened—and I had someone to talk to when my dad wasn't home for days on end. It was a nice feeling to have a friend again.

"I don't know what I'd do without you either, Jamie."

edited.