Too far away. The apartment's too far away. Swift silently panics in his thoughts as he steps on the gas. He knew he wouldn't make it in time. But if he didn't try, he wouldn't survive. The only thing he can do now is to apply pressure on his stab wound, the other hand keeping a grip on the steering wheel. It's quite hard for him to maintain his driving, almost hitting another car in the process. Come on, Swift. Think. He would go to a hospital, but little he knows about where those are located in Los Angeles. It's such a struggle for him to keep his head straight. He keeps on disregarding his nausea caused by the rapid blood loss. What's worse is that he feels like he doesn't even know where he's going. But never mind that, he continues to drive into a residential area where he suddenly experiences a sense of recollection.
I know this street. Swift remembers almost immediately. This was the exact road Swift took to get Audrey home. He takes to the right. Even with the scarce visibility that is grouped in his eyes, he continues to drive. He just hopes that Audrey knows a thing or two about suturing. If she doesn't have the thread, a stapler would do the trick, and don't forget a bottle of rubbing alcohol too. He tries to amuse himself while trying to find Audrey's house, he remembers exactly where it is. But then, a short chuckle leaves him, thinking what would Audrey's reaction be if she sees him treating his puncture wound with a stapler. Not even a surgical one, just a regular stapler one would use to stick their paper together. He had to be honest, it is a bit sloppy and irregular, but it's necessary if it's urgent.
Swift's eyes promptly catch the familiar monochrome, gray house that is Audrey's place. Without thinking, he takes the car to swerve to the right.
Meanwhile, Audrey sat at her desk, her textbooks and notes spread out in front of her. It was a quiet evening without her aunt at home this late at night, and the only sounds she could hear were the rustling of the leaves outside her window and the occasional distant car passing by. As she delves deeper into her studies, she feels a sense of unease creeping up on her. It's as if someone was watching her. She turns around to look, but there's no one there. She shrugs it off and goes back to her books. Obviously, the silence is playing with her mind, making her feel a little anxious this time of evening.
Swift becomes aware of what he does, and steps on the brakes, not in time enough to hit a couple of trash cans outside of the house. That would surely wake up the entire neighborhood. But he didn't hope that it did, he hoped it only woke her up, if she was already sleeping, of course.
Audrey jumps, hearing the sound of a loud metal crash that follows a car engine noise out in front of her house. The sound came out of nowhere and it almost tore her heart in half hearing it. A dim set of headlights shines through her window's curtains. She bravely makes her way out of her room and heads off downstairs to confront whatever it is that fell in her front yard. She thinks as if an alien spaceship crashed in front of her house.
Swinging the car door open, Swift weakly crawls out, dropping to the curb's floor and letting a pint of his blood drip onto the ground. He kicks the car door shut before, and with every ounce of strength left, he gets up and rushes to Audrey's front porch. He collapses on the steps leading to the porch, holding his injury as firmly as possible.
A moment later, Audrey opens her front door. The sheer horror she takes in seeing Swift looking up at her while holding a bleeding shoulder is beyond unbearable. To make it worse, he has a scar under his hair, and on his forehead that's also leaking out blood. She puts up her hand to cover her mouth out of apprehension, keeping herself from screaming.
"Ryan?!" Repulsed, Audrey's jaw rattles.
"Audrey..." Swift groans weakly, climbing up the stairs slowly like a zombie. He lets out a painful cough, enough to convince Audrey to help him up.
Audrey lifts Swift's arm and puts it over her shoulder, helping him to head inside. "What happened to you?!" He didn't answer. Instead, he keeps going by taking as many breaths as he can. She escorts him through the hallway, helping him ascend a flight of stairs. As the two of them head up, Swift suddenly trips, almost losing his balance but didn't as Audrey makes sure she had a firm hold of him.
"Hey, you okay?" She asks in worry.
Swift lets out another cough, "Do I look okay?" He asks back.
"Fair enough. Come on." Audrey replies and continues to assist him climb the stairs. The two of them eventually arrive upstairs. Swift takes a moment to lie down, with Audrey falling along with him. He stands back up, helped by Audrey who finally takes him into her room, setting him down on the bed to make him feel comfortable after being in pain for so long.
"You're bleeding," She feels the blood against his tuxedo jacket. Audrey removes Swift's jacket, completely revealing his white dress shirt, the collarbone part of it soaked in red. "Oh my god," She recognizes what that part is. If it's as bad as she thinks...
"What?" Swift asks, after what felt like so long of not speaking. His eyes are squinty as Audrey unbuttons him from the top to see the injury a little further. Once done, the gore that is planted on Swift's collarbone skin makes her feel slightly sickened. Audrey then walks to her cabinet, pulling one open and grabbing a custom, red medical bag her aunt gave her. Opening it, she picks up a tiny medical cloth, an antiseptic cream and an anesthetic one, a suturing scissor along with the needle and of course, the thread. Swift, who watches her, is surprised that she has a complete set of suturing supplies.
"How do you have-" He asks before he's interrupted by Audrey taking a seat next to him on the bed. She also didn't forget to wear the surgical gloves from the same bag, taking precautions against infection. First, she cleans up the dried blood using the tiny cloth that's been soaked with the antiseptic. She presses the cloth around his stab wound gently. Done sterilizing and cleaning up the blood, she applies the anesthetic cream to the wound, getting a brief groan out of Swift while he wonders how she does all of this professionally.
"My aunt's a certified perioperative nurse. She teaches me about this stuff sometimes." Audrey says, staring at his stab wound. It's like she can hear his thoughts. She tries so hard not to look at the rest of Swift's torso, even though it's tempting to make her glance for a split second. She looks at the wound again, "A deep cut. Close to cutting your artery completely," She says, getting Swift to sigh in relief. "What happened to you?"
Swift lets in a deep breath, "The people you told me about..."
Audrey interrupts, "The masked robbers?" He nods gently. "I knew you were up to something when you asked me the address. Where's Tom? Did you go there all by yourself? You did, didn't you?" Swift nods again. She shakes her head as she takes away the cream, having applied enough. "I should've never told you. Otherwise, you wouldn't be like this right now."
Swift grins, "Well, then aren't I a lucky one to have you?" Audrey feels slightly amused by that, but not enough to make her remove her disappointed frown.
"And then what happened?" She says, preparing the scissors, thread, and needle.
"A fight broke out between me and them. One got me pretty good, as you can see." Swift chuckles.
"Yeah, obviously." Audrey holds up the needle and scissors, to Swift's dismay. "Can you take it?"
Swift groans, holding the side of his forehead knowing what Audrey has to do to patch him up. "Fine. Just do it. Do it, I can take it." He couldn't. He moves his head further from the wound, prompting her to hold the needle up on his wound. Audrey pushes the needle through Swift's skin, making him quiver as he feels the sharp tool near his wound. Audrey knew the anesthesia wouldn't work that instantly, but she was also aware the pain Swift's going through being stitched is a little portion of it, so either way, he'll still feel it. She pushes it through another tissue, causing Swift to shriek, which startled her.
"Sorry." Swift scratches his head.
"Don't flinch, please. This is my first time doing this in an emergency."
"Right," Swift sighs. "You do you."
In less than ten minutes, Swift half-smiles at the realization that he's all patched up. Having to go through that unpleasant sewing of his skin was well worth it. He stays idle in bed, having decided that he'll do so for a few minutes after his suturing was complete as Audrey suggested earlier. With a handheld mirror, Swift takes another look at his stitch through it. That'll certainly leave a mark. A cool one, hopefully. Audrey advised him not to meddle with the stitch, obviously to let it heal but he found it cute that she still reminded him to.
As Swift stares at his patched wound, Audrey returns to her room with a warm cup of tea prepared for him. He puts away the mirror and sits up as Audrey hands it to him. "Hope this... make you feel better." Then he eagerly accepts it. He takes a sip of the tea and to his surprise, it's better than he thought it would taste. His lips smacked together, delighted with the drink.
"This is... good. Really good," Swift says. "You made this?" Audrey nods at that. "Unbelievable." He says sarcastically.
"I learned how to brew the perfect cup of tea recently. Decided to try it out. And I'm glad you liked it." Audrey says.
"Like it? I love it." Swift admires, leaving Audrey flustered. All of a sudden, he notices how silent the house is. There was no one else that came to his aid except for her. "Hey, how come your aunt's not home right now?"
"As I said, she's a nurse. She's on a double shift tonight. She said she wouldn't be home until tomorrow morning. 8 AM, if I remember? Let's hope so. You'll be gone before eight, right?" She confidently asks.
"What do you mean? I'll be gone before it's midnight." Swift replies, taking her confidence away.
"Oh, right..." Audrey says disappointingly. She forgot that he wasn't planning to stay for the night, even though that would be the smart course of action.
"What is it?" Swift asks, noticing the gloom on Audrey's face. "Were you thinking I was going to stay here overnight?" Her gloom disappears, turning into a face of embarrassment. If she were to say yes, she knew he would think she was... odd, even though that would be her honest answer. So, she goes and comes up with another question to avoid it.
"Hey, Ryan?" Audrey goes to get Swift's attention, but he already did. "What did you exactly do against those guys?" She asks, getting Swift to put down his tea.
"I did what you told me to. They weren't very welcome to a potential new member, this I tell you," He jokes. "Made it out of there with a bang... Literally," Audrey nods to that. He still hasn't realized that she has been looking at him up and down, eyes going to the side. "Barely alive... And I'm glad that you did this for me." He motions to his stitched wound.
Audrey makes a slight smile to it, "Well, I'm glad that you remembered where my house was." Right when they least expect it, a sudden lightning strike startles them both. The soothing and drizzly sound of rain that follows, begins to pour throughout the city. Swift makes a deep huff, knowing by now, he would've been soaked by the rain if he didn't recall Audrey's house. "See?" She makes a little giggle.
"Yeah, me too." Swift smiles back at her. Then, another silent moment passes by the two. Audrey tries to bring another conversation up, but she doesn't know what. All she's doing now is being stuck in the quietness with Swift next to her, leaning his back against the bed's headboard. It was one of those perfect moments that Audrey and Swift just can't get rid of. She didn't know what it is, but something about it felt so... tranquil. Maybe it was the peacefulness of the silence or the fact that no one else was home beside them.
Swift sounds, breaking the silence, "Um... I should probably be going now." He places his half-empty tea cup on the nightstand.
Audrey's head turns to him so quickly, "Where?"
"Where else? Home, Audrey." He sits up, on the bedside's edge when she stops him.
"You can't go now!" She says.
"Why?"
"Because... it's raining! And you still have that wound!" Audrey continues, notably pausing when she almost couldn't think of an excuse to make him not leave.
"You've taken care of that for me, remember?" Swift asks. "I thank you for that. Now, would you please-" He was ready to stand up, but Audrey puts her hand on his shirt, stopping him.
"No. Stay." She says and Swift feels a touch on his hand.
"As much as I want to, I should be going. Carter and Tom are probably worried about me by now." Swift argues. Audrey pauses, not as worried as I am. "Why do you keep insisting on me staying?"
Audrey starts to think, pausing again. She didn't want to say it, at least not this soon, but she had to, just as an attempt to convince him to stay. She's been asking herself, would Swift feel the same? Would he return these feelings? Now it felt like it didn't matter. This might be the only opportunity she'll ever get.
Gazing into the riveting blue eyes that belonged to Swift, Audrey makes a move, quickly forwarding her face towards his, and his eyes grow wide when he feels both of their lips colliding in an instant. He's purely shocked, looking down at Audrey whose eyes are closed. Despite how much he's caught off guard by this, he didn't resist. Now he sees it all, why she is begging him constantly to stay. All of the medications and painkillers Audrey gave put him back to health immediately to ease the pain, but nothing from that felt as succulent as his kiss with her. In less than a moment, Swift starts to enjoy it and shuts his eyes to feel it, returning the kiss.
"Stay," Audrey says, parting their lips before colliding them again. "Please."
Now Swift's starting to change his mind. Forget leaving. Not because Audrey advised him to, he wanted to. He wants to spend the night with her, and he will. He continues thinking while they still have their kiss unbroken, with Swift beginning to place a hand on her cheek, cupping it.
"Okay... Okay," He whispers right as their kiss grows more passionate.
"I'll stay."