milliways_bar | (no subject)

"I started with the knives, didn't I?" he snaps. Bucky makes a mental note to start carrying more knives in the future, just in case, and heads toward the lake door -- then stops walking, tears the bottom of his shirt free, and quickly wipes the rest of the zombie bits from his arm and balls the mess up in the ruined cloth.

"I can't track this stuff in there."

Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes in true shidi fashion. Honestly, is that what we're wasting time about here?

"C'mon, give it here, fussy." He's got a nice little incineration talisman right here for that, quick, easy, done, on to the actual treating of wounds and contamination.

He hands it over with a huffed breath and heads for the door again. Bucky pulls it open and starts toward the stairs, with every intention of heading up to the room he keeps here to take a shower.

The cloth burns in a brief, bright fireball, and it distracts Wei Wuxian just long enough for Buck to make decent headway.

Then there's a startled squawk of indignation from Wei Wuxian.

A talisman, bright cheery yellow and fast, whips past Bucky to plaster itself to the stairwell. With a flash, the passageway is suddenly blocked with a gleaming golden net.

A second talisman, this one written solely with spiritual energy and shoved at Bucky with no remorse, resolves into a silver string wrapped around Bucky's flesh wrist. It matches the loop tied around Wei Wuxian's left arm.

"Contamination. Infection. Infirmary."

“Shower,” he argues, stopping where he is and yanking at the binding spell around his wrist. “Getting zombie guts off me. Clean clothes.”

Edited 2021-10-14 07:13 (UTC)

Wei Wuxian produces a weighting talisman and roots himself in place, refusing to be dragged. He's getting wise to your muscled ways, Bucky-xiong.

"I know this will come as a shock to you, but well-stocked infirmaries usually also have ways to get people clean, and the Bar can get you an entire wardrobe of clothes."

He growls and throws up both hands before letting them drop in frustration. "Fine. Fine. Infirmary first. Jesus."

Wei Wuxian peers at Bucky in concern, but still deactivates the talisman keeping him in place and heads for the infirmary.

"No, Wei Wuxian. Or Wei Ying, if you like." He makes a mental note to check Bucky for a concussion.

He stalks after him, scowling, and just glad that the bleeding's slowed enough that he didn't drip on the floor while they were arguing. "Wei Ying," he acknowledges. "Got it."

Wei Wuxian is fully aware that it is downright odd for this to feel like home, but... heading to the infirmary after a fight, with someone grumpy on his heels, squabbling all the way?

Yeah, that... that feels right.

Wei Wuxian refuses to examine it too closely, for fear of breaking into tears over its sharp edges. Instead, he's just extra buoyant as he bounces into the infirmary. He is somewhat disappointed to not be immediately threatened by needles, but it's a good thing Wen Qing is getting out of the infirmary sometimes. Maybe she and her brother are off doing something fun together. That'd be excellent.

"Alright, clean, then medicine, then music." Whoop, that was his First Disciple voice, maybe he should tone it down a notch, this isn't one of the Junior crew, to be bullied into not dying of corpse poisoning. "Oh look, they do have a cleaning area... mmm. Is that a shower?" He asks, curiously, peering into the bathroom at what is, indeed, a shower head. Look, things are a bit different where he's from, and he hasn't yet seen the need to change his ways.

He's never going to be a fan of hospitals or clinics or infirmaries, and it just annoys him further to press his right hand to his chest and realize that yes, he probably does need to be here, to at least wipe the wounds down with some kind of antiseptic. Evidently zombie-inflicted injuries take a little longer to start healing than the kind he's used to.

Bucky grunts, and crosses over to the shelves on the other side of the shower, where he takes down a blue scrub top and pants in a size that's probably good enough.

"Are those things always that messy?" He strips off the ruined shirt and drops it to the floor as he steps into the shower, uncaring of the scars revealed as he does.

Wei Wuxian nods, grinning.

"You should've seen me after fighting the Turtle of Slaughter - rancid turtle guts and blood and pond scum, wonderful mix, I thought Jiang Cheng was going to throw me in the river on the way home."

Never mind that Wei Wuxian couldn't have stopped him, being more than half-dead at the time from the fight. Never mind that's the last time they both went home to an intact Lotus Pier before war descended on their heads. Details.

"Once came out of a fight covered in spit, just drenched, couldn't get a single inn to let me stay the night until I'd jumped in the pond, it was winter..." He rambles, shivering dramatically as he heads over to the section Wen Qing has very obviously organized (it's so good to see her neat script on the bottles, yes these spark joy). He's not a doctor, but he was an excellent First Disciple - he knows his first aid, even if he's fairly crap at applying it to himself.

"Turtle of slaughter? What the fuck kind of animals do you have in your world?" He doesn't wait for an answer, ducking under the spray and kicking out of the rest of his destroyed clothing before reaching for the soap dispenser.

This is going to take a lot of soap. Good thing it's full. It's also a good thing that Shuri's already fixed the waterproofing issue after the last test run with the arm.

"The normal kind! And then there's the monsters, but monsters are weird all over." Wei Wuxian protests. "I've seen the skeletons of your 'dinosaurs', don't even try to say there weren't monsters."

"Why would I say that?" He hisses a series of curses in multiple languages as he scrubs ruthlessly at the cuts, trying to make sure that every bit of zombie dirt's eradicated.

"I'm sure we've got them, it's just that they're not common. I think. Probably." Maybe. Hell, who knows?

"Mmmhmm." Wei Wuxian does not sound convinced, but he'll admit he's never seen any monsters when he's gone to visit baba in France. Not that he's gone looking for them, but still. He's sure lots of people in his where and when go through their lives without truly seeing anything out of the ordinary.

...

Well, maybe not in his generation, the Sunshot campaign pretty much put paid to that, but... like, other generations. Surely.

He's collected a few salves that he knows work in this sort of situation, and decides that if they later need an actual tonic, he'll go find Wen Qing for it rather than trying to guess. He does leave a note to her about which ones he's used, for her inventory.

Look, he remembers (most of) his time in the Burial Mounds. He learned very quickly not to mess with Wen Qing's supplies without thorough documentation. Then he raids the bandage cabinets, coming away with the stuff he understands and leaving the rest for... whoever wants those, so odd.

So medicine, bandages... ah.

"Tea or soup, Bucky-xiong?"

"Tea or soup?" he echoes, clearly nonplussed. "What?"

Bucky rinses off the last of the third round of soap, shuts off the water, slings his wet hair back from his face and dries off before he pulls on the cotton exam shorts he'd picked up with everything else. No point in getting blood all over the scrubs if he can avoid it - even if the bleeding is almost stopped, finally.

He dumps everything into what looks to be a nearby laundry hamper, picks up the clothes, and pads over to join Wei Ying. "Find anything useful?"

Wei Wuxian blinks, wordless for once at all of the skin. And people call him shameless. He scrapes his composure together, resolutely.

"Something warming would be good, so - tea or soup?" He asks again, chin up resolutely. "I don't think it's so bad as to need one of Wen Qing's tonics, so we should be able to manage without her." He waves a hand at his pile of supplies, neatly(ish) stacked.

"I remember good soup's a thing where you're from," Bucky observes, and sets the scrubs down beside the supply pile in favor of picking up one of the bandages and using it like a piece of gauze to dab at the cuts on his body. It looks as though the rabbit's knife-clawed forepaws managed to slice down his chest and upper abdomen, while the back paws caught his right thigh.

"Wen Qing's your needle-wielding friend, right?"

Edited 2021-10-14 23:45 (UTC)

"She is brilliant, Milliways is lucky to have her." Wei Wuxian declares, with the unspoken addition that anyone who wants to say otherwise is looking for a black eye. He has a quiet word with one of the waitrats that hang around the infirmary, before heading back and grabbing one of the jars of salve with a determined air.

"You'll need this - do you want me to put it on, or do you want to do it yourself? Since Wen Qing isn't here, you get options."

He opens and closes the fingers of his left hand with thoughtful consideration as he studies the jar.

"How breakable is it?"

"It's not indestructible, if that's what you're asking. It'll break if it falls, for sure." Wei Wuxian judges.

Bucky sighs. "You better open it, then," he concedes. Grudgingly; very, very grudgingly. "The pressure control in my fingers isn't fully tuned yet."

Wei Wuxian blinks at Bucky again, wordlessly, this time in disbelief.

"I do need to introduce you to Wen Qing, she'll never harass me for being reckless ever again." He finally manages, taking the jar and opening it. "Do you want me to apply it as well?"

Bucky gives him an exasperated look. "It's just the fine motor control," he points out. "Nothing that affects the ability to use it for fighting."

He looks at the jar and reaches to dip his right index finger into it. "It's just smearing it on, right? Think I can handle that."