"What the fuck!"
With a tired groan, Spencer stirred awake. His eyes slowly fluttered open, only to be immediately met with a bright, blinding light shining in his direction, wiping away the last remnants of sleep he possessed. In a disoriented daze, he tried to lazily raise his arm to shield his eyes and block out the dazzling light. Yet, before he could bring it more than a couple of inches from his side, an excruciating pain suddenly tore through his entire body, leaving him screaming in anguish. It was then that everything came rushing back to him.
"Ahh, for fucks sakes." He seethed with clenched teeth, his arm frozen in place at his side, fearful that the smallest movement would send the pain flaring back up.
"Holy shit, dude, are you alright?"
Instantly, at the sound of the sudden male voice beside him, Spencer jolted up from the couch in alarm. Once again, he was left wanting to wail in agony as each and every muscle in his body protested against him. Yet this time, Spencer didn't scream. Instead, he forced himself to hold it in as he swiftly turned in panic toward the man who was now, somehow, in his apartment.
"Whoa, whoa–dude, calm down! It's me." The man said quickly, hands raised in defence at Spencer's hostile attitude.
It was then, as Spencer's eyes finally adjusted to the influx of light around him, that the imposing figure before him came into focus, and a wave of recognition washed over him. Despite how long it had been since they'd last met, Spencer immediately recognised the piercing green eyes, scruffy blond hair and imposing frame of the man standing awkwardly in front of him. After all, they'd spoken on the phone less than twenty-four hours ago.
"Fucking hell, Tony? Is that you? What the hell are you doing here? For god's sake, man, you almost just gave me a heart attack!"
"I gave you a heart attack? Think about how I'm feeling at the moment," Tony exclaimed, staring at Spencer and the bloodied mess around him in mounting horror. "Jesus Spencer… What the hell happened to you?"
"It's a long story," Spencer replied with a sigh, not wanting to talk about it. "Anyway, how the fuck did you even get in here? I'm pretty sure I never gave you a key."
"The door was unlocked." He said with a shrug. "But that's beside the point. We need to get you to a hospital pronto! I'm calling an ambulance."
With that said, Tony pulled out his phone and prepared to dial for an ambulance. But before he could do so, Spencer staggered forward, gripping his arm and halting his movement.
"You can't!" He shouted, voice tight in frantic worry.
"What do you mean I can't?" Tony asked, his confusion evident as he looked between Spencer's panicked expression and the hand wrapped around his arm. "Mate, you need help. You're as pale as a ghost! When I first saw you, I honestly wasn't sure if you were even alive!"
Still, despite what he said, Spencer's grip did not loosen in the slightest. If anything, it got even stronger as he began to almost hyperventilate. "Please, you can't! They said no one is allowed to know." He pleaded, the kidnapper's warning echoing sharply in his mind.
"Who said no is allowed to know?" Tony immediately questioned with narrowed eyes.
Spencer didn't reply, clamping his mouth shut as he suddenly realised he'd slipped up. Unfortunately, if he believed Tony would drop the subject at his lack of response, he was sorely mistaken.
"Spencer, you're injured." He eventually stated after a few seconds of silence, his tone serious and solemn." "So either you tell me what's going on and why you're so averse to going to the hospital, or I'm calling an ambulance right now."
"I can't!" Spencer shouted in frustration.
"Then so be it." With that, Tony yanked his arm from Spencer's grip, easily overpowering him in his current state, and dialled nine one one.
As the phone began to ring and Tony stood there silently, staring into his eyes with one eyebrow raised, Spencer didn't know what to do. He froze, scrambling for a solution and failing miserably. He knew from the stubborn look plastered across Tony's face–one he had seen far too many times over the years–that he wasn't going to drop this until he got his answers. Still, he desperately racked his brain for something, anything, he could say to quash Tony's curiosity, until it was simply too late. A female voice rang out from Tony's phone.
"Hello, nine one one, what's your emergency?"
It was then, just as Tony prepared to respond, that Spencer finally spoke. "Wait, wait, wait! Fine, I'll tell you! Just quickly hang up." He whispered in a mix of agitation and panic, gritting his teeth.
A faint smirk played on Tony's face as he hung up the phone. "I knew you would see it my way. Now, tell me what the hell is going on and come sit down. You look like you're going to pass out."
Hearing his smug tone, Spencer wanted to argue, but he knew Tony was right, with his legs already feeling incredibly weak and his vision starting to turn unfocused and blurry once again. So, with an inaudible mutter, he collapsed back onto the couch, uncaring about the pools of dried blood that lay below him. He was soon joined by Tony, who didn't appear to share his cavalier attitude towards the blood-stained couch, staring at the stains in quiet trepidation before reluctantly lowering himself onto the very edge.
"So…" Tony said after a moment of awkward silence. "What's going on, man?"
At that, for reasons unknown, maybe due to the slightly delirious state he found himself in from blood loss, Spencer broke out into a manic cackle. "What's wrong?" He asked rhetorically between wheezes. "What isn't fucking wrong!"
Swiftly, the sound of maddening laughter changed to that of uncontrollable weeping as Spencer lost control over his emotions and started to completely unwind, the events of the previous day finally catching up to him. It was only with Tony's hand accidentally touching and landing on his shoulder, the same one that had been shot, that Spencer's crying came to an end as he let out a suppressed groan.
"Whoa! Sorry, man, are you okay?" Tony worryingly asked as he all but threw his arm off of Spencer's shoulder.
"Yeah, I'm alright," Spencer replied with a smile, or at least his best attempt at one. "Shoulder's just incredibly sore. Who knew getting shot in the shoulder would hurt so much?" He joked with a wince, not realising what he had just said, not until he turned towards Tony and saw the look of shock and bafflement he wore.
"Did you... Did you just say you've been shot?"
"Yeah, but I'm fine. It was only in the shoulder." However, before Spencer could even try to downplay the extent of his injuries, Tony had already jumped up off the couch and had started to pace the floor rapidly.
"Fucking hell, man!"
"Quiet down, I'm fine," Spencer said dismissively. "It was already starting to heal last night. As long as I don't move my arm too much, it'll be fine."
Tony just looked on incredulously at Spencer as if he had just grown a second head. "Spencer, dude, you've been fucking shot. You need to go to the hospital now!" He stated as calmly and slowly as he could, as if he were talking to a five-year-old.
"No hospital! You said as long as I told you what the hell happened, you wouldn't call an ambulance."
"And yet you still haven't told me!" Tony argued back.
"I will, just please, mate, no hospital. I can't risk it." Seeing that Tony still didn't look convinced, Spencer continued. "Look, I've got a med kit somewhere in one of the bottom cupboards in the kitchen. Why don't you come help patch me up while I tell you everything, alright?"
For a moment, Tony said nothing. He just stared into Spencer's eyes, his expression sombre and unreadable, leaving Spencer unsure of what he was thinking. However, just as worry began to creep into his mind that Tony might ignore his plea and call for another ambulance, Tony let out a long, exhausted sigh. It was then that he slowly rose from the couch before heading into the kitchen.
"Fine." He muttered before the sound of cupboards and drawers banging open echoed from the kitchen.
Seeing that he had agreed, Spencer let out the long sigh of relief he had been holding as he closed his eyes and relaxed, as best he could, into the backrest of the couch. He allowed himself to simply drift in and out of consciousness as tiredness spread throughout his body despite having just woken up less than five minutes prior. Unfortunately, such rest didn't last for long. Only a few minutes later, he felt the sofa cushion shift underneath him and heard the sound of a zipper beside him, snapping him out of his stupor.
Opening his eyes, Spencer proceeded to watch as Tony pulled out from the now open med kit in his hands an array of different items. Scissors, bandages, disinfectant wipes, tweezers, the list went on, each item carefully placed upon the coffee table in front of them. It was only once every item had been placed and Spencer's coffee table looked as if it belonged in a surgery room rather than his own living room, that Tony turned back to face him.
"Alright." He said with no slight amount of trepidation. "I guess we should deal with the bullet wound first. Unless, of course, you have an even more serious injury you haven't mentioned, like a chopped off leg or something."
"Ha ha, you're hilarious," Spencer replied, straight-faced as he began to peel off the black compression shirt he was still wearing, a task that wound up being far more challenging than initially expected.
It turned out that over the past few hours he'd slept, the blood that liberally coated his body had dried, turning into a kind of adhesive. As a result, the shirt clung to him stubbornly like a second skin, refusing to budge and forcing a pained wince onto his face with every futile tug. In the end, they were forced to cut it into a pile of ribbons just to free him from its confines.
"Alright, stay perfectly still. This is probably going to sting, but I'm pretty sure the first thing we need to do is disinfect the area."
"You're pretty sure?" Spencer questioned.
"Yeah, pretty sure. If that's not good enough for you, I know some people we could call who are a lot more knowledgeable. Their number's nine one one." With that, and without giving Spencer any chance to offer a retort, he brought the small disinfectant wipe in his hand down and began to scrub it against Spencer's bruised and bloodied skin.
"Motherfucker!" Spencer screamed, forced to clamp his fist over his mouth in order to stifle the sound. He'd expected a certain amount of pain, but he was unprepared for just how badly it stung.
For a couple of minutes, neither of them said a word. Tony focused on cleaning the gaping wound, still leaking a trickle of blood, while Spencer held back the multitude of whimpers that hung on the tip of his tongue. This went on until finally, after one last swipe, Tony finished, discarding the collection of bloody wipes he had used onto the table and allowing Spencer to relax and unclench his aching muscles.
"Alright. I think that should be good enough." Tony remarked, letting out a long breath before glancing back to Spencer. "Now, I'm afraid to ask, but is the, uh, bullet still inside your shoulder?"
Spencer didn't even need to answer, his expression apparently having told Tony all that he needed to know as he let loose an exasperated sigh a few seconds later. "Of course it bloody is. And how do you expect me to get it out?"
"Use the tweezers." Once again, Spencer watched as Tony just stared at him in complete bewilderment in response, as if unsure he had heard correctly. He had.
"You're fucking insane." Tony eventually muttered. Yet despite his words, Spencer watched as he picked up the tweezers from the coffee table, along with the TV remote beside it, which he promptly threw in his direction.
"What's this for? Are you getting bored or something? You want me to put something on?" Spencer asked, only half joking as he looked in confusion at the remote.
Tony just rolled his eyes in response. "It's for you to bite on," He explained. "So you don't wind up biting your own hand off like you almost did a minute ago."
At that, Spencer looked down at his hand and saw the deep, prominent teeth marks he'd left–some of them bleeding from the sheer force he'd used. "You've got a point." He chuckled before bringing the remote to his mouth, biting it between his teeth.
"Alright, you ready, man?" Tony asked, appearing just as nervous as Spencer currently felt.
Spencer simply nodded his head in reply, and with that, Tony brought the pair of stainless steel tweezers in his hand towards his wound.
The instant the ice-cold steel penetrated his wound, Spencer's brain all but shut down from the shock. Every muscle and nerve tensed and spasmed at the bolt of electricity that spread throughout his body. Then came the pain. And before Spencer could even react, his jaws snapped shut around the remote, hard enough that the sound of cracking plastic could be heard alongside a harrowing wail he didn't even realise he was making.
Five whole minutes. That was how long it took. Five minutes of the worst pain Spencer had ever experienced. Five minutes of bloodcurdling screams ringing out throughout the apartment, with the remote having been crushed to pieces before the second minute had even begun. Throughout it all, Spencer drifted in and out of consciousness, the pain overwhelming him as Tony all but dragged the bullet out, striking every nerve ending as he did so. Spencer hadn't thought it was possible for the bullet to hurt more coming out than it did going in, but it did, and it wasn't even close. The only saving grace was that such agonising torment didn't last forever, eventually coming to an end.
"Done," Tony uttered in pure relief, looking just as exhausted and drained as Spencer currently felt.
Dropping the bloody bullet grasped between the tweezers onto the table, Tony collapsed into the couch, no longer appearing to care about the bloody stains he rested upon. For a while, neither of them said a word. Silence reigned, with only Spencer's heavy breathing able to be heard as he slowly started to recover. It was only after ten minutes had passed, and the excruciating pain Spencer felt had become just a mild throb, that Tony sat back up and turned towards him.
"Right, well that's enough lazing about. I guess I'd better bandage up your wound. How're you feeling?"
"Just peachy." Spencer joked, his voice completely hoarse compared to what it once was.
"Always the comedian," Tony smirked. He grabbed the stack of bandages that sat on the coffee table and began to slowly wrap it around Spencer's arm, being as gentle as he possibly could, something Spencer was beyond thankful for.
"So," Tony started the moment he finished. "Are you finally going to explain to me what the hell exactly happened?"