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A 14 year old Maxwell Gotch was struggling underneath the weight of another boy, and, for the first time in years, finally felt alive.
His hands bruised and bleeding, sweat adorning his face far better than any form of regal expression, it was hard not to grin, even as his opponent lifted him and slammed him down into the mat, pain radiating sharply from his left shoulder.
He stays there for a moment, having effectively lost, wreathed in the afterglow of a good fight, a gentlemanly fight, before the weight of reality all but slammed him into the mat once more as he wheezes, the feeling of something being quite dislocated within him becoming apparent.
Blood rushing to his ears, he scrambles slightly to get up, still (of course) remembering to shake his opponent's hand before rushing out of the building. Sure, if he didn’t get this resolved soon he’d be all but disowned, but the man had won fair and square, and he would not dishonor another Revington man, even in the face of a dislocated arm!
(He was fairly sure it was his arm- given that he was slammed down, and that was where the pain seemed to be centralized, it was the most logical explanation.)
Crossing the grounds of Revington, careful to be silent around anyone watching for those breaking curfew, he managed to find what he was looking for, that being a specific dormitory block, housed conveniently beside the main infirmary.
Staggering up, he takes a small moment to breathe and fix his hair before bracing his right hand against the glass, carefully sliding the window up. After a beat of hesitation, the old window yielded, Maxwell wincing at how his blood smeared on the panes, and the small sound of protest the window made upon opening. Both problems for another time.
Clambering in as gracefully as possible, but, still making a bit of a racket upon his landing, he entered the room, sliding the window back closed as he did so. Turning to face the main room, he barely manages to swallow a scream as a knife is lifted to his throat.
“Who the hell is intruding upon my- oh! Maxwell, hello!”
Standing there, having to wipe the remnants of his usual sickness away from his jaw, was Wealwell- a handkerchief in one hand, a paring knife in the other. Maxwell jumps a bit at the volume of his voice, and quickly pushes his brother's wrist to the side.
“Keep your voice down, Wealwell-”
“Hm? Oh, brother, you're injured- and covered with oil! How stra-”
Maxwell just groans, cutting off Wealwell’s incoming words with a quick shushing, lowering his voice before speaking again.
“I think my arm is dislocated, Wealwell. I don’t- know how to fix that, but if I go to the infirmary, they’ll surely tell father of it, and I can’t- he’ll-”
The rush of the fight had fully left him at this point, and it struck Maxwell just how ruined he’d be if Father heard of any of this- the injury, the fighting, him being a rowdy . He’d pull him out of Revington, disown him, send him to some far off Canyon in some nowhere town-
With a disgustingly audible pop, and a flash of pain, Maxwell’s racing thoughts were interrupted, him realizing that Wealwell was being oddly silent far too late.
Swallowing a yelp of pain, he staggers instead, sitting heavily on Wealwell’s bed as the shock of the moment fades.
Glancing at his shoulder, still dully aching, he found it back in place.
“First off,” Wealwell said, huffing quietly. “You didn’t dislocate your arm. What I helpfully put back into place was your shoulder. Second, you’re getting oil on my bed.”
Maxwell, still thoroughly at a loss of words, allows Wealwell to put a towel around his shoulders, and, laughing quietly, Wealwell sits on the bed beside him.
“I’ve never actually done that before! Whew. I didn’t even have to stand for it either.”
“You..” Maxwell trails off, glancing back at his shoulder. “What?”
“Well, you were being weird, Maxwell,” Wealwell complains, shrugging. “And you said it was dislocated, so I just fixed it. I even had time to put down the knife! Honestly, it was impressive of me.”
Maxwell blinks at him for a few moments, before awkwardly pulling the towel a bit closer around himself, as if it could possibly hide the evidence of what he was doing only a few minutes before from Wealwell.
“You clearly aren’t in a state to go back to your dorm, so I guess you’ll just be staying here. Not like I care, I practice standing all night! Keeps me far above the rest of the amateurs here.”
Maxwell just nods, despite the absurdity of everything that had conspired, and clears his throat.
“Right. I’ll- uhm. Stay here. I suppose.”
Wealwell just hums along, pulling another towel out of seemingly nowhere and handing it to him, standing up.
“Anyway- I have to get back to practicing, brother. Sleep well.”
Walking off into another room of his dorm, the entire place still unlit, Wealwell left Maxwell to his own thoughts, seemingly implying that he at least could assume where Max had gone to get the dislocated shoulder, and that he wouldn’t tell their father about it.
Lifting the towel to wipe the sweat and blood out of his hair, he catches sight of himself in One of Wealwell’s mirrors- lanky, his middle part more than disrupted, his hands shaking, if only slightly.
But, not visibly injured. Not in any way that couldn’t be hidden from teachers, or other students who’d be willing to sell him out to his father at the slightest motivation.
Wealwell wasn’t his only brother at Revington right now, far from it- their father had enrolled all of them in the school at one point or another, but, his choice to sneak into his room was more a matter of simplicity than anything, and a part of him had already felt resigned to the idea that he’d send a telegram about the incident to their father by the morning.
But, he hadn’t. For some inane reason, he just treated this all as normal- helped him, even if the help was a bit abrupt and painful. Quite wilfully ignored the evidence that Maxwell wasn’t injured doing something he was meant to be doing.
Steadying his hands to lay the towel out on the end of the bed, he lies down on top of it, feeling the dull pain of his shoulder start to fade, if only slightly, and comes to a simple conclusion.
Wealwell was solid.