Staying Grounded [BXB]

A Stray

SEBASTIAN:

"Whoa!" Ashleigh jolts up off her chair at the big oak table, toppling it, startled from her breakfast by the aggressive thud of the back door hitting off the kitchen wall. "Sebastian, what the...?" She trails off, mouth gaping, her amber eyes flashing owlishly round as she takes in the stumbling stray I'm attempting to manoeuvre into the house. "Craig?!"

"You know him?" I grit out through clenched teeth.

Launching herself toward us, she's a split second too late in reaching for my uncooperative companion, who has narrowly avoided a collision with Dobby to crash like a boulder into my chest. I stagger, and the dog flees through my legs with a disgruntled yip. "Yikes," she grimaces.

It aggravates every protective instinct in me when she then quickly dips her lilac head in under his limp arm, siphoning off a fraction of my burden to her slight shoulders. But at this point, I have far too little faith in my own muscles bearing him alone another stride to protest it beyond the head shake she ignores.

"Not looking your beautiful best, Craig," she says, turning her face up to scrutinize his, a deep crease marring the fair skin of her brow. "What on earth have you done to yourself?"

That Ashleigh, too, immediately determines his condition to be most likely self-inflicted is somewhat cheering.

The guy's in bad shape, that's for sure. Beneath his slick coating of grime, he has a significant swell beneath his left eye and nasty bruising from his chin to his cheek. There's a ragged tear along the right shoulder of his jacket, blood staining its collar, and his death grip on my shoulder has the gashes across his knuckles oozing. I'd have been far more worried about the state of him if not for that empty bottle found by his side. As it is, my concern has now been spent dry on keeping my legs from buckling under us and enduring his highly flammable stench on the mile-long trek from the woods to the farmhouse.

He's come around some on the walk, but not enough to be trusted with his own weight, evidently. Nor enough to offer up anything other than an indecipherable mumble in place of an explanation. My guess is, he picked a fight with a tree and lost.

"He's shivering." Wide doe eyes finally return to me. "Should I get Judy?"

Absolutely not, the tick of my jaw tells her. I don't need to glance over Ashleigh's fleecy llama pj's to remind myself of the early hour. It can't yet be much after seven, and Judy arrived home from her night shift at the hospital only minutes before my dawn departure. Nursing a drunkard is not a cause I'm willing to disturb my poor Aunt's well-earned rest for. "Help me get him onto a chair, yeah?"

"We need to get him out of these clothes," she adds, not helping to placate me. "They're soaking."

As are mine, plastered to my goose-fleshed skin. Entire body tense, I focus on coercing my feet to move. Years of working one hundred and eighty-six acres of farmland have made me hardy, but it seems I've discovered my limit this morning.

At the kitchen table, it requires more restraint than I possess to lower him rather than drop him. 

He startles on impact, jerking halfway upright with a guttural 'gynnur', and the wooden chair wobbles precariously under him until Ashleigh draws it steady.

She falls to a crouch at his side, cutting me a glare. "Bit rough, Bas!"

A wry smirk tugs at the corner of my lips. "Noted." I turn my back on them, stretching out my aching limbs while crossing the long room toward the laundry alcove. "Good friend of yours, is he?"

"You with us, there, handsome?" She fusses, blanking me. "Hey, lift up. Come on."

The sight of my phone charging on the bench next to the kettle has me reaching inside my jacket pocket for his, and I make a short detour to switch them out; tucking away mine, with its cracked screen and shabby case, to power up the sleek Samsung I lifted from him. Dobby looks up at me, imploring, from his basket tucked underneath. I bend to give his floppy ears a scratch. He's drenched, too. "Poor mutt."

"Let me see the damage," Ashleigh's still cooing. "Oh, wow. Okay." She sucks in a breath. "So this is the result of throwing yourself into the path of Tinwell's fist, huh?" My hand stills on Dobby's head, but I resist turning. "An admirable motive, Craig, but not your brightest move ever."

Tinwell is a name I've heard mention of before, and never concerning anything good. The big, bad wolf of Yoverton Community School; the kind of trouble only a moron would deliberately provoke. It's more than I care to know.

I press my lips tight against a vicious curse, a passcode request lighting up the phone screen. Hardly surprising, but still. "Hey, Ash? Please tell me you know of someone you can call to rid us—"

"The hell?" A low rasp cuts me off.

Then, a soft thunk whirls me round.

And the changed scene I find at the table snaps the last thread of my patience the instant it registers. "Ashleigh!"

"Yeah, sure," she responds, barely sparing a glance, "I'll call his brother." Kneeling on the floor between Craig's legs, his soggy trainers and socks discarded to one side, his jacket unfastened, her fingers are busily working at the buttoned fly of his jeans.

Icy tap water sprays every which way in my rush to fill a glass. Snatching up the basket-full of clean washing from its shelf in the alcove, I hasten back across the kitchen. "Now would be super, thanks."

It's not until I knock the toe of my boot against her knee that Ashleigh straightens up, hands withdrawing. Two of his buttons are already popped. "Right, Bastian." She rolls her eyes. "Like he's in any fit state to arouse me, here."

"Because, yeah, that's totally where my head was at." I've known the girl from the age of thirteen, and I've lived here with her for the last three years. I love her to bits, mostly, but oh, she knows far too well how to test me. "Time you got ready for school, don't you think?"

"I'm only trying to help, and this'll go a whole lot smoother if you just let me."

"If you want to help, then make the call."

"Fine! Whatever." She finally pushes to her feet.

Craig is now looking almost alert and somewhat alarmed. I can feel his stare on the side of my face, and I slide my gaze to meet it. His eyes are striking, bloodshot though they are, irises the blue of a clear summer sky. It's a shame, really, that so little sense can be made of the rest of his features. He's first to turn away, a sudden shift, while I allow myself an extra moment to take the measure of him. Slighter in build than me, perhaps, but not by all that much. Setting the water down on the table, I drop the basket beside it with enough satisfying clout to make him flinch and delve into the neat pile, retrieving the first top and sweatpants of mine I come across.

Ashleigh proceeds to stubbornly linger, righting her toppled chair and clearing away her unfinished cereal and tea. "You could show at least a little compassion, Bas."

"Since when did you discover where the dishwasher was?" I retort. Raising my brow at her, I tap a finger on my bare wrist. "Tick-tock. You'll miss your bus."

"Yeah, yeah." She backhands me on the shoulder as she passes. "Just so you know, though, actually—" an impish grin takes over her face "—he'll be far less comfortable with you stripping him down than me."

My scowl tracks her out into the hall.

Infuriatingly, Craig doesn't seem the remotest bit relieved by her dismissal. The look he flicks me would be easy to miss, but I don't. "I need a drink," he finds his voice again, his timing perfect.

And the moment Ashleigh disappears from sight, I toss the clothes down on the chair beside him and upend the full glass of water over his head. "Get yourself changed. I'll make you a coffee."