Bearclaw Valley snake oil

@Taylor - set immediately after this thread.

Though Evien had wanted to take all of the injured wolves to treat them, it hadn't been possible. Astara and the big wolf were so quick, there had been no chance of Evien catching up - not that he would've even really tried. He'd find them later, make sure they were okay.

As it would happen, the only wolf he'd ended up with was Fields. The little white wolf he'd spoken to in the moment had stayed behind, and though he felt bad for hurting his feelings, these were lives they were talking about. He'd find the other boy later to apologize and make sure he was alright, as well. 

"What happened?" he asked the golden boy when he brought him over to the patch of rosehips he'd found days ago. Evien selected one and began to chew it up, finding a fallen leaf that he could put the poultice on while he checked on Fields' ear.

Taylor's ear is torn but he has some inner ear damage and partial hearing loss
also tysm for starting this!

Evien's summer-brown heels keep bobbing out of view, or maybe its the blood in his eyes. The soreness was creeping in like the low tide but it was nothing he hadn't felt before. Dimly, he notices Evien tearing out a rosehip flower and chewing it up. He has begun to associate this scent with him, this flower specifically.
It was a testament to how often he got himself into fights.
Taylor sits down before he starts swaying on his feet. Some piece of shit. Harrassing Ico. Trepassing. He closes his eyes, anticipating the sting of the poultice. Things moved fast. Could've left earlier.
It isn't clear whether he's talking to himself, to the stranger, or to Evien. He looks up, brows knit, hands rolling out like praying in reverse. My left ear— it isn't working. His breaths are shallow, eyes glazed over with some vague, flimsy distress.

No problem <3

Ico. Was that the other boy's name? A tiny thing, and Evien was almost one hundred percent sure he'd hurt his feelings. And he hated doing that, but this was much more serious. The other guy, too - trespassing, clearly, but also harassing? Fuck that guy. It wouldn't stop Evien from tracking him down to make sure he wasn't dead, but wow. What a piece of shit.

"What an asshole," Evien remarked, assessing the damage to the golden wolf's ear. Belatedly, he wished he'd brought him to a place with water, but he didn't have any around. Instead, Evien had to suck it up and clean the ear himself, lapping his tongue gently around the wound and picking up the blood - fresh and dried - and stifling gags. It must be so dirty, so many germs crawling around in his mouth. But it was Fields, and he could deal with it for him.

Fields' breaths quickened in pace and Evien moved over to crouch in front of him. "Hey, look at me. Eyes up here," he urged, meeting green with blue. "We'll fix it, okay? You're fine. And if your ear is a little messed up, that's fine, right? Look at me. I get along fine with my leg." A small smile, then, trying to relax him. "You don't see me complaining, huh?"

A close up shot of Evien fills the whole screen. He can't bring himself to meet his eyes, and instead focuses on the deadness of his ear. At least, he reasons, the ear itself is still there.
The air is cold where the doctor had swabbed his skin clean. He knows he's being foolish and selfish and childish, but its so easy to slip into a world where you were against everyone and everyone was against you. That was all he'd known.
He's tired. Tired of squeezing in sleep that wasn't even sleep, tired of waking up after a fight and being too sore to move, tired of looking into a foggy bathroom mirror and wondering to himself where that bruise had come from. How that scar had been made. You already know all the answers, Taylor.
I don't know how Ursus'd be like without you, his smile is drenched in cynicism. Probably we'd all be dying from stepping on a dirty thorn. He folds and tucks the distress into some imaginary alligator skin suitcase, shoves it deep into a black corner of a closet.

The other boy refused to look him in the eye which, yeah, was a little disheartening, but Evien understood. Kind of. Fields wasn't the most social of wolves, either, and perhaps there was something in there about not wanting to show weakness. Even though he was clearly, at least in Evie's opinion, in distress. 

"Alright," he said reassuringly when he realized he was the only one trying on the whole eye contact thing, returning to the poultice he'd made and peering at the wound on the ear. It was still bleeding, but not as badly as before, and it did look a lot cleaner. Of course, it would be better if he had running water to rinse it off with, but they had to work with what they had at their disposal at the moment.

Ears perked and a smile crossed his maw at the compliment, as cynical as it might have been. "Nice to know I'm needed, at least," he remarked, placing one paw on the back of Field's neck to hold him steady. "I'm about to put the poultice on. It'll sting, but it shouldn't be too bad." He smirked, challenging then. "You're not a wimp, are you?"

A sharp scoff, a look back. Fuck no, he retorts, buoyed by his smile. He feels a little less like he's just been dragged through the digestive system of a lawn mower and more like himself pre-fight (which hadn't been so hot in the first place either).
The poultice is still warm from Evien's mouth, and some of it drips down his jaw and neck. He shudders at the strange sensation, and vaguely thinks that he'd rather go without all the fuss. Then he remembers sepsis. Then he remembers gangrene and terrible keloid scars, and he makes up his mind to go through with it.
This is rosehip, right? And then with a smile, See, I'm learning.
It doesn't sting as much as he expects it to, but he still fights the instinctual urge to pull away. There was a gaping difference between pain from a fist fight and pain from a treatment that made the latter much more irritating. Probably because one had to sit perfectly still and calm through it, he reflects. Like torture, but in the opposite direction.

There we go, Evien thinks fondly at the little scoff he gets in return for his efforts. That was more like it. Part of being a doctor meant ensuring the comfort of their patients as well as physical ailments. Part of being Evien was making sure Fields wasn't too wrapped up in fear and self-loathing. The two elements went hand-in-hand, he found.

To his credit, Fields didn't flinch away when Evien pressed the chewed-up mess of herb into the wound. Instead, he asked about it, and it brought a smile to the brown wolf's face. 

"Mhm. They're not quite ripe yet, but it's the best we have. The little fruits are still green." It still produced the right antibodies, but not as much as if it were fully ripened. "They'll be ripe later this year, in the summer. They're more effective then." 

Finished, Evien stepped back and made sure that the ear was entirely coated before he padded over and settled down in front of Fields again, green eyes scanning over the other boy's face. There was still blood on his muzzle. "Do you think you can look at me now?" he urged.

Pleased with himself, the ends of those blue eyes crinkle into a true smile. It would be charming if there was no blood in his teeth, dried into a dark brown crust between his incisors. He looks handsome, in the you look like you've been through shit, tell me more, way.
He smooths his hair back, careful to avoid the poultice. What's your favorite season, then? The uncooperative ear is the furthest thing on his mind now. The last dredges of adrenaline had all but broken down in his system. It is on a post-fight buzz when Taylor can begin to relax. How characteristic.
Mhm. Evien must be tired, he thinks. Cleaner of other people's messes. Healer to a pack led by a warmonger. It sounds like a bad joke.
Eyes hooded, he studies the brown fuzz on Evien's cheek. Thanks, by the way. Really. Something twists where his stomach is, but not painfully. A pressure over his chest, untouchable.

Why was Fields even prettier beaten up and bloody and smiling, genuinely, at Evien? Perhaps the sunshine boy had ruined the medic just as the medic had done to him. And Evien wanted more. Wanted to know everything about this boy who had stolen his breath away.

Full of surprises, this one. Evien blinked at the question, then smiled in return. "I like it when it's just on the cusp between spring and summer. Not too hot, but everything's blooming, and there are baby animals everywhere." The vibrant flowers and vivid green plants and warm air and yellow sunshine. "What's yours?"

A-ha! Evien felt victorious as Fields turned his crimson-splattered face toward him. A hand reaches out to brush a gentle brown thumb across pale cheek, where a splatter of blood stained just beneath a bright blue eye. "You don't need to thank me," he assured, crouched beside the taller boy. "I like this. Helping. Helping you." Clarification. "It feels like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing."

Evien dances on the in-between of summer and spring and Taylor is content to watch. He thinks, briefly, of a springtime rain. The ones you could see coming from a mile away, heavy and dark and inexorable. If you were standing in its way, close enough to see how thick the mist was, you only had two choices: to find shelter or to stand there and get drenched.
He had always let the storm soak him.
I love rain. Maybe the spring or the fall. He can easily see Evien thriving in that in-between and tucking in a flower behind that velveteen ear with the pollen sticky on his hands and his ankles thick with it. The thought at first drives euphoria into him, but it quickly decays into shame. Then the doctor moves in to touch his cheek.
Taylor's mind is just his thumb on his face. The dried blood pills up and falls off as dust. The fine muscles around his eyelids twitch and flutter. A soft and muted breath. Evien, I...
...hope you'll let me return the favor. You've helped me. A lot. Thanks. It sounds as if he meant to say something else but had changed his mind in the last possible moment. He feels full of pins and needles.

In Evien's mind, Fields was all autumn. Fields of golden rye and a wide expanse of clear blue sky above, the cool breeze stinging your nose as you breathed in. Chestnuts and bonfires and apple cider as it cooled off in your hands. Crisp and chilly with spots of warmth if you searched hard enough - death turning into rebirth.

"Rain is good - it makes things grow. I get cold easy, though," he admitted with a sheepish chuckle. If he had no other option, he really didn't mind spending time in the rain, but now? It was too cold and Evien's fur was not dense enough for it. It was a wonder he hadn't frozen to death.

Fields leaned into his touch and Evien's gaze softened. Attachment was not something he thought he would struggle with, but here he was, chest warm and fluttering with something akin to hydrogen peroxide bubbling on a wound. 

He was going to say something, the doctor thought, but changed his mind last minute. The vanishing of whatever was hanging in the air at the end of his sentence felt like a loss, but Evien smiled anyway. "Just try not to get yourself beaten up too much," he offered, thumb lingering on his cheek for just a moment more before he drew away. A few moments of pause before he continued, slightly more hesitant. "Fields?" he questioned, tilting his head to the side. "Is... is Fields your real name? You don't have to tell me what your name is if it isn't. I just want to know."

Where Evien's had placed his thumb is cold in his absence. He brings his hand up to his face and touches the place it had been. You belong in the spring.
Only a blink in response, a wordless I'll try my best and something chasing that sentence looking like this: for you. It occurred to him again that he did everything in halves. Mmm. He looks to the side as if Evien can't already see him sliding back into the whirring and whining disk of constant thought and he takes a breath in and he takes a breath out until his throat feels clean enough to say it—
Kepler.
His throat constricts around the k and his lips grip the p but the rest comes in a formless syllable filled to bursting with a soft vowel buoyed by softer consonants. The vocal fry takes it away. The interference coming from an old radio, made sepia with time.
Like he felt with Merrick, that tight sense of being awake, some part of him exposed under a surgical bulb but this time warmer and electric, if electricity had any emotions to do with it at all. The weight of it off his chest. He can breathe again.

Kepler. That fit the boy in front of him infinitely better than the alias he was using, Evien thought, a smile working its way onto his lips. Thank you for trusting me. For opening up. For being you. And for all Evien was the more vocal of the two, there were still things he left unsaid, as well. If there was a surgical bulb exposing Taylor, Fields, Kepler, in that moment, Evien was more than willing to be the one who made sure it wasn't hot enough to burn.

The name hangs in the air between them a moment, and Evien decides it's his turn to speak again. "Thank you," he says simply, echoing his thoughts from before. There was more weight behind those words than just about anything he'd ever said in his entire life. 

"Can I use your name?" the boy asks then, because if this boy wanted, he'd never call him anything else besides Taylor, or Fields, or whatever he wished to be called. Kepler wasn't his to use without permission, and certainly not outside the bounds of this conversation.

If he were human then Taylor would've known that he was named after a retired space telescope and thought it was funny that he shared his name with a now-useless mass of metal and technology was drifting through space with a wild and blind eye. How fitting, he would think. How cruel.
Down on earth, he hears a thank you from miles and miles away. He presses the secret to Evien. Taylor is no doctor, but even he knows that the first rule of being one is: do no harm. How different they were. How unknowable to each other they should seem.
A long pause. Yeah. 
The single Kepler split into two. One Kepler only existed in the moments before this conversation. He was afraid and running from a brother than wanted to pick him apart anaestheticless. The other Kepler had stopped running. He had settled in a home just waking up from the winter with someone who cared about him and who he cared about too.
Let's try this.
That voice, that face, those hands, finally being buried. Auf Wiedersehen.

If he were human, Evien would remind the golden boy that that telescope was a marvel of technology - intricately designed to find planets in orbit around other stars. Seeking other life. It had a purpose, it was important. He would encourage Kepler to think about the advancements in technology that telescope would have opened the door for, what purpose it had served. That it was important.

Evien was more than happy to offer this boy a home. Safe, warm, secure. This place, in Ursus, might not have been ideal for it, no, but there was always a safe haven for Kepler, Fields, Taylor - whatever he wished to be called - to go to. 

"Kepler." The name felt foreign on his tongue, like a twist on his own surname of Kastner. But it was so much better for the boy before him than Fields, than Taylor. It felt more real, more raw, and it just fit. "I like your name."

You have a home here, with me. Perhaps unconventional, perhaps not ideal - all Evien had to offer was himself. Was he enough?

Kepler was an atrophied name— kept hunched and crouched in the backrooms of his skull. The first time he had heard it was when he was born. The second time, when his brother ground burning wood to his side and he had fought back (the scar was still there, a hairless jagged circle, puckered). The third time, in Evien's mouth.
A long silence passes. His fists are clenched. For a moment, it would be easy to mistake the expression on his face and think that he was going to cry, but instead, he presses his face to the doctor's shoulder, eyes closed.
Into his summer-brown skin, he mouths something incomprehensible, something in-between Evien and idiot and thank you.
His breaths drag and shudder, brows drawn together tight in a sobbing without tears. A lot of the times, you didn't need to say I love you. Perhaps Taylor knew that better than anyone else.

The silence was palpable, but it wasn't a bad thing. The gears were turning in the other boy's mind, Evien could tell. Emotions warred on that beautiful face and the doctor was surprised when he was faced with a blond head on his shoulders. 

He longed to run his fingers through those sunny strands, but he refrained, instead just wrapping his arms around the other boy and resting his cheek on Kepler's shoulder. A hug, warm and inviting and freeing, all at once. His hugs had never felt like this back home, Evien recalled - his father and grandfather both were not physical, and his mother's hugs felt more like a vice. This one was comforting and gentle, and wanted. More than anything.

Perhaps it was just in the moment, but Evien pulled back briefly to press a chaste kiss to the other boy's cheek, just a press of nose and lips, before pulling away again. His entire body felt warm, embarrassed and vulnerable, but he didn't feel judged.

thank you for the lovely thread

They sit there for a while, cheek-to-cheek. Holding Evien like this is a constant reminder that they are both alive and breathing and moving. Blood swells in his ears with the crescendo of unheard music.
In his dreams, he put Evien's hand to his mouth. He had memorised how in the sunlight, his eyes were flushed with more yellow than anything else. How his brown hair was struck into strands of spun gold, wild and tousled. In his dreams, he twisted them gently around his finger.
The warmth is almost overwhelming. He holds the heat in his cupped hands like he's been doing with every emotion recently. He had not known that he could change. He had thought that he would live out the rest of his days hollow and in fear. His dreams were only dreams, until he saw his brother.
It feels wrong to think about his past now. He remembers he had said it doesn't matter. Just you.
The kiss fills his head with something unnameable. Something to get drunk on. He hugs him, all palm against palm, chin against shoulder, fingers worked together— and then Taylor, Kepler, was facing him.

In his dreams, he was something to drown in.