Page 17 of Constantly Cotton
STILL, WHENLance was done with the shower, Cotton took over, pleased to sluice the sweat and care of the evening off his skin. He dressed in basketball shorts and a tank top and went in to where Lance was finishing up.
“Is he okay?” Cotton threw his dirty clothes in his personal basket and thought achingly about all the laundry he had to do tomorrow.
“For the moment,” Lance murmured. He looked at the clothes and said, “I’ll have one of the guys come in and make a trip to the laundromat tonight. They want to help too.”
Cotton’s eyes burned, and he realized he was exhausted. “That would beawesome,” he said fervently. “I’m beat!”
“Yeah, well, what you guys were doing tonight was hard.” Lance carefully taped a new bandage over the wound on Jason’s shoulder. “I sedated him so he can sleep and maybe help fight the infection, and reirrigated both wounds. I think they should heal now, but God. That was bad. He might have gone into sepsis if you’d waited for me to get home.” He let out a breath. “I know we all trust Henry and Jackson, but I swear, I have to keep reminding myself of what could happen if we admitted him to the hospital.”
“They wouldn’t take care of him like we do,” Cotton mumbled, pulling back the sheets on Billy’s bed and climbing in. He hadn’t eaten, but then, going hungry was sort of par for the course when you were modeling, and he wasn’t particularly excited about food yet anyway.
Lancehmmd and tore off his gloves before pulling the blankets up to Jason’s chin and double-checking the IV levels. They kept “banana bags” in an ice chest next to the bed because Lance insisted keeping Jason hydrated—and having a medium to inject the antibiotics and painkillers into—was essential.
When he was done there, he walked over to where Cotton was stretched on his side and pulled the sheet up to his chin just like he had for Jason before giving a gentle kiss to his forehead. “Don’t get too attached, okay?”
“He calls me his angel,” Cotton protested.
“Well, you are. But, Cotton, he’s not like anyone you’ve ever met before.”
Cotton knew this translated into “He doesn’t know you were in porn” but decided not to buy in to that. “Sure he is. He’s like Henry and Jackson. But, you know, he hasn’t had a life in years.”
Lance straightened. “He said that?”
“Yeah. Said he hadn’t had a pretty boy in his bed in ten years, and now he was soiling the sheets.”
Lance’s snort of laughter reassured Cotton no end. “Well, at least we know all the gay guys in the flophouse won’t weird him out.”
“I thought that too,” Cotton murmured, his eyes closing.
“Get some rest, baby. I’ll have Curtis check his vitals in an hour and Randy do the laundry. If Vinnie does his vitals at midnight, you should be able to sleep for a good five hours, and you need it.”
“Okay. Thanks, Lance.”
“For what?”
“Trying to protect me. It’s nice.”
“Wasn’t done enough,” he said. “Night.” He turned out the lamp by Cotton’s bed and the overhead light, leaving only the reading lamp by Jason’s bed on but directed at the wall so Jason could get some sleep too.
“Night, Lance,” Cotton mumbled. “Night, Jason.”
“Night, angel,” Jason murmured. “Sleep tight.”
Cotton smiled, one of those secret smiles to himself that felt like hugs. “You too.”
Progress Interrupted
“NO OFFENSE,”Jason said, looking unhappily at the young man at his elbow, “but I would really rather try this without you.”
Randy, the enormously tall, gawky, red-headed teenager who had been on “duty” that morning, gave him a sympathetic grin. “Look, dude, I know you don’t want anybody watching you wee. I get it. But if you fall down in the bathroom, that’s bad mojo. You’re swimming around in your own piss on the tile. Don’t do it. Bad luck. So you need a bathroom buddy, okay? Lance made us promise.”
Oh Lord. This kid had a heart of gold, but he had size fifteen feet, and if they didn’t end up in his mouth at least three times a sentence, the kid was going nowhere.
“I swear I can go piss by myself,” he said, hoping his age and occupation would give him some oomph with this kid.
Unfortunately, age and occupation didn’t seem to be the currency of the realm.
“Dude, I know you think you can, but Lance and Henry made me promise. Cotton’s in the weight room, and dude, he really needed the break, you feel me? Billy moved in to some other dude’s place because he needs nursing, and now I guess that’s what we do, right? And Vinnie and Curtis are both at their wait-jobs. You got me until Cotton gets back. You really gonna risk a burst bladder or something ’cause you got pee-shy?”