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Colt paced back and forth in his kitchen in the sweater he wears to paint and sweatpants, occasionally taking a look out the window onto the night-cast streets of Chicago. Sereno had called him, as he often did at these late hours of the night. It had been a while since he’d had a full, peaceful night to himself, but he knew what he’d signed up for when he had given Sereno his number.
He took another look outside—still no Sereno.
It was a good ten minutes before Colt heard knocking at his door. He rushed to unlock it, and Sereno let himself in with a girl’s arm wrapped around his shoulder.
“Set her down here,” Colt said, pointing to the dining table. He’d already set a plastic cover and a dissection kit on the table and a clean towel on one of the chairs in anticipation.
Sereno sat the girl on the table and let Colt lie her down slowly while he rushed to the front door again. He looked into the hallway to make sure no one had followed them before slamming it shut and locking it behind him.
“What happened to her?” Colt asked.
“She got shot in her abdomen,” Sereno replied.
“How?”
Sereno remained silent, only raising an eyebrow.
“Right.” Colt hadn’t forgotten the terms of their arrangement, but he kept hoping Sereno would eventually. He sighed and turned to the girl. She looked young, not a day over sixteen. Curly dark hair, freckles, fair skin. She may as well have been Colt’s sister. She was barely conscious, head bobbing left and right, fighting to stay awake. He put a hand on her cheek. Her skin was burning. “What’s your name, sweetie?” he asked.
“Kayla,” replied Sereno.
“I’m gonna take care of you, okay, Kayla? Just hang in there.” Colt lifted Kayla’s shirt, took the towel from the chair and wiped away the blood for a clearer view of the wound. “Is the bullet–”
“Yes.”
“Shit.” Colt took a scalpel from the dissection kit and cut the wound open wider. “Hang in there, Kayla. It’s about to get a lot worse before it gets better.” He plunged his hand into her abdomen, feeling for the bullet. Kayla let out a guttural scream, and the bleeding got worse, but after the longest ten seconds ever, he pulled it out and tossed it aside before putting both his hands on Kayla’s wound. “We’re almost done, Kayla, you’re doing amazing!” he reassured her.
Slowly, the bleeding stopped, and the cut beneath Colt’s hand closed. He wiped away the extra blood, and Kayla’s abdomen was devoid of any wound or cut. There wasn’t even a scar where Colt had just pulled a bullet out of her.
He fell onto the chair, let out an exhausted huff and waited for Kayla to sit up slowly. She pushed herself onto her elbows, then her hands, then swung her feet off the table, and finally, she cautiously pushed herself onto her feet. “It…It doesn’t hurt…not even a little!” she said, her big brown eyes rimmed with tears. “Thank you!”
She leaned down and hugged Colt from his chair, but as he raised his arms to hug her back, he let out a small wince.
“Everything alright?” asked Sereno.
“Yeah, I just banged my shoulder into a streetlight today, and it’s a little sore,” Colt said, looking up at him.
They held each other’s gaze for a second. Sereno’s sharp face was unreadable beyond the bags under his eyes and his almost hollow cheeks. He was still as a statue—almost. Though he stood with a straight back and confident posture, Colt could see him swaying ever so slightly.
“Okay then,” he ended up replying. “Time to go, Kayla.”
“Wait, what’s your name?” she asked Colt, pulling out of the hug.
“It’s-”
“Bruise,” interrupted Sereno.
“Well, Bruise, thanks again for everything, and sorry for the trouble,” Kayla said, walking backwards toward Sereno.
“It was my pleasure, Kayla. Take care,” he replied.
Kayla stepped out before Sereno, and before he followed behind her, Colt noticed a thin stream of blood dripping from beneath Sereno’s sleeve. He stood up to stop him from leaving. “Wait, Ser–”
Sereno shot him a look.
“Somnus,” Colt corrected himself. “You’re hurt too. Let me take a look at it,” he said, raising a hand to put on his shoulder.
“No.” The word came out sharp but somehow not bitter, but Colt’s hand still froze. “Not tonight.” Sereno followed Kayla out, shutting the door behind him without looking back at Colt.
Colt locked the door. He sighed deeply, pressing his hand against his abdomen as he walked to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror, and a new stain had appeared on his paint sweater. He lifted his shirt and dabbed the new wound with a towel before taking some ibuprofen and going to clean up the table before bed.
***
Sereno knocked at Colt’s door. It had only been two or three days since he’d brought Kayla, but the city never slept, and there was no rest for the wicked. They’d been lucky to have gone so long without a new patient, actually. Hopefully, Colt had gotten more rest than he had.
Colt opened the door, and as usual, Sereno walked past him and rushed the unconscious Rowan to the makeshift operating table. Sereno found him in the streets getting dogpiled by a group of Purifiers. Those racist, so-called “humanitarians” left him with a broken ankle and nose, and massive internal bleeding that showed on his neck and arms through his dark skin. They’d even pulled out a chunk of his afro. Honestly, Sereno couldn’t tell if he was jumped because of his X-Gene or because of his melanin gene, but if he’d arrived any later, Rowan may not have made it all the way to Colt’s.
After he closed the door, Sereno leaned against the kitchen’s countertop and watched Colt work. He’d always admired how gentle he was with the patients that were brought to him, despite the late hours and the frequency at which they came. The thought occurred that maybe he was an actual doctor, but he was too young for that to be true, and his process, though it seemed methodical and precise, was too messy.
He watched Colt massage Rowan’s ankle with his fingers banded with elastoplast and Band-Aids—he’d promised he got hurt while playing volleyball. He watched the subtle limp he hid so well as he moved to look at Rowan’s neck and arms—no explanation for that one. Maybe he’d hoped that Sereno hadn’t noticed. He watched Colt move slowly, with a slight jolt when he moved his arms or his back—again, no explanations, just hoping it would go unnoticed.
Colt put his hands on Rowan’s ankle, and it slowly twisted back into place. He healed Rowan’s internal haemorrhaging and damaged scalp, then fell into the chair next to him with a huff. He waited in silence for Rowan to wake up. Though his wounds were healed, he still needed a minute. But Colt didn’t get up to check Rowan’s temperature or colour as he usually did when patients took time to wake up. Instead, he stayed in the chair, looking from afar and checking Rowan’s temperature on his leg instead of his face.
Rowan finally woke up, good as new, and thanked Bruise before stepping out. Sereno lingered behind for a moment. Colt didn’t stand from his chair this time. After staying there maybe a second longer than he should, holding Colt’s tired gaze, Sereno turned and walked away, without looking back. But before closing the door behind him, he spoke. “Take care, Bruise.”
***
A couple of nights later, Sereno went back to Colt’s place with another patient: an old man named James. He had a haemorrhage in his lower back where doctors messed up his renal surgery and blamed his X-Gene for making it “too complicated to operate”. Once again, Sereno watched Colt operate from the kitchen counter.
Colt’s limp had gotten worse. Sereno couldn’t tell if he was trying to hide it anymore or not, but he bobbed, and his breath hitched with every step he took. And he swore the colour in his skin was gone, his freckles looked like mould stains against the paleness of his skin.
Colt finished up with James, and he and Sereno left. But once they reached the street, Sereno stopped in his tracks at the door of the building.
“James?” he asked.
“What is it, son?” the man replied.
“Do you think you’ll be able to get to the safe house alone?”
“Go back to him, Somnus,” James said.
Sereno tilted his head.
“I may be losing eyesight, but I’m not blind—yet. You two have a lot to talk about.” He gave the younger man a gentle smile, then walked off. “I'd better not see you at the safe house tonight or you’ll be in trouble!”
Sereno slouched his back and released a deep sigh. He took a deep breath, then went back up to Colt’s apartment and knocked at the door.
He took longer to open than usual, but then again, if someone knocked after Sereno left, it usually meant trouble. The door slowly opened, and Sereno was greeted with the tip of a knife first. Sereno had never seen such an expression on Colt. Fear mixed with anger. It was only there for a split second before he recognised Sereno and lowered the knife.
“Somnus? What are you doing back here?” he whispered.
Sereno remained silent for a moment before he spoke. “Can I come in?”
“Of course, of course.” Colt opened the door wider to let him in before closing it behind them.
Sereno sat down in the chair Colt had been in before he and James had left, then looked up at him. The bags beneath his eyes were so much deeper than he’d noticed earlier. Sereno took his jacket off and rolled up the sleeve of the sweater he wore underneath it. There was a deep cut on his arm, badly covered in whatever cloth he’d been able to get his hands on. “Do you think you could have a look at this?” he asked.
Colt didn’t answer. Not at first. But after a few long seconds, he limped up to Sereno’s side and put a hand against his skin.
Suddenly, a series of images came flashing before Sereno’s eyes. Colourful paintings, flourishing plants, a warm chimney fire, and laughter as background noise to it all. Then it stopped on the image of a stage under a bright shining sun. Sereno waited. It usually took a moment for the hopes to truly take form. Then it finally came—or rather she finally came: Kayla. She wore a black robe and a trencher, and she wore the biggest smile on her face as she shook the hands of her professors before stopping to receive her diploma and have her picture taken. Then, with the flash of a camera, came a new image. This time it was Rowan. His afro was full and took up space. He wore a bandana over his mouth and held a pole with a burning flag on it: the Purifiers’ flag. He slammed it on the ground, and as it burst into flames, Sereno was met with an image of James. The old man sat in a big leather armchair and was covered in a blanket, reading a book by a fire.
Then the sun went down. The sky was dark in the moon’s absence, which made it harder to hide from their fears. But that doesn’t stop most people from trying. Most people. Not Colt. Immediately, Sereno was brought to his apartment. Colt was in his paint sweater and sweatpants, but blood had gotten between the paint stains, and he could no longer tell what colour the sweater actually was anymore. He sat on his couch, wheezing with each breath—from sickness? Injury?—his eyes were bloodshot, his face was covered in scars, and his lips were chapped and bleeding. As Sereno lowered his gaze onto the rest of his body, he noticed that his fingers were completely mangled despite the straps and bandages, his arms and legs bent at the wrong places and in the wrong directions. He was completely broken. Then the front door opened, and Sereno watched himself walk in alone. He watched himself take a few steps forward, then stopped when he was across the room from Colt. He watched himself look Colt up and down, then, after a few seconds of silence, he listened to his own voice say: “You served me well. Pity, though, had you told me of your condition, I would have found someone else to help me. Our partnership ends here. You’d do well to take better care of yourself, Bruise.” Then he watched himself walk out of the apartment and shut the door without looking back.
Sereno’s eyes stayed on the door. For what felt like a whole minute, all he could hear was his own blood pumping in his ears. Then he heard sniffling from behind him. He turned to see Colt, still stuck in the same position on his couch, tears running down his face. Then he coughed. And something red spilled from his mouth, and the warm scent of copper pulled him out of Colt’s mind.
He was back in the chair, and Colt hadn’t started healing his wound yet; he just looked at him with wide eyes. Sereno’s own eyes also widened. He put a hand on Colt’s.
“Bruise—“ he interrupted himself. “Colt. Roll up your pants.”
Colt pulled his hands away and looked down at the ground like a child being scolded. He didn’t listen to Sereno, though. He just stood there, terrified.
“Colt, please,” Sereno said. “I need to see.”
Colt tapped his toes against the floor and bit his lip. His eyes started to water, but finally, he obliged. He rolled his pants up and showed Sereno his legs. They were covered in bruises and cuts of different sizes—some were especially worrying in size and colour—and his ankle was swollen where he’d healed Rowan’s.
A lump formed in Sereno’s throat. “Roll up your sleeves.”
Slowly, Colt rolled up his sleeves. Again covered in cuts and bruises and swelling from his fingertips to his shoulders.
Sereno took a deep breath. “Colt.”
Colt turned his face away.
“Take your shirt off.”
Again, it took Colt several seconds before pulling his sweater off, then taking off the black t-shirt he wore beneath it. His chest and abdomen were a canvas of wounds and scars, like the rest of his body. But then he recognised the hematoma on his neck that he had healed on Rowan, only it was smaller on Colt. And lower, near where his stomach was, was a bullet wound. Once again, smaller, and it seemed to have healed, if only a bit, but it was still there, and still red.
“Turn around.”
Colt slowly turned, showing Sereno his back.
Right in front of him was the cut that Colt had healed from James’s lower back. Still fresh, still bleeding. “I was going to take care of that,” Colt said.
“No, you won’t,” Sereno replied, immediately. It almost felt foolish to have to say it, but it wasn’t obvious to Colt in the same way it was to him. Nothing on Colt’s body said “care”. Or at least it wasn’t the same care he gave everyone else. Sereno stood up. “Tell me the truth,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Colt asked, not looking back at him.
“Your powers,” he replied. “Tell me the truth about how they work.”
Colt hesitated a second, as though his body wasn’t laid almost completely bare and raw in front of Sereno. “Okay,” he ended up saying, his voice almost a whisper as he turned to face him. “When I heal someone, they’re as good as new…But I take on a smaller version of their injury or sickness.” Then he chuckled. It was an empty, humourless sound. “It’s really just an inconvenience most of the time, but it takes much longer to heal than a normal wound would. I guess I just never healed this many people in a row,” he said, gesturing at his body.
Sereno just stood there. Silent. Throat about to burst. But he held his tears. After a few seconds to recollect himself, he spoke. “I’m taking care of that back wound.”
“What? No, you’re still hurt. Let me finish–”
“It can wait,” Sereno said. It came out sharp, but somehow not bitter. “Lay down on the table, Colt.”
Colt sighed. His body all but fell face down on the table where he’d treated so many others, and his eyes closed. Sereno took some healing supplies from Colt’s medicine cabinet, set them on the table, and got to work. And somehow, through the sting and the pain of the rubbing alcohol and the needle, Colt fell asleep under Sereno’s hands.