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This evening Captain is quietly sitting by the fire with his sleeves up, wringing a cloth in a metal pail of warm water and tenderly dealing with shoulder blade wounds on Luke’s back. Luke has his shirt off but not all the way down, Captain can sense he’s purposefully covering over old scratches and wounds as much as he can. He didn’t want to raise it because he obviously had his reasonings for not wanting to show them off as much… maybe it’s because Luke knew other temporary residents within Marlinspike might just walk in. Captain had no idea.
Talking of temporary residents within Marlinspike, Spirou brazenly walks in and gives a gasp before realising, nope, Captain is fully dressed (minus the hat and jacket) and he didn’t just walk in on one of his romance theories. Luke shakes his head in disbelief.
“I thought Tintin was down here!” Spirou expresses after a moment of recovery.
“No, he’s outside walking Snowy,” Captain responds, carrying on with what he was doing. “The rain has been horrendous all day and it’s only this evening it’s passed so he’s taken the opportunity. Don't you be panicking when you see the light of a torch go by later.”
Spirou now turns his attention to Luke as he comes closer.
“What happened here?” Spirou asks.
Luke is unable to twist his body around but does motion his head around a touch.
“Axe,” Luke mumbles, wincing a little as Captain presses down. “Hey, the guy wasn’t using full force when he hit me so… I’m living up to the lucky nickname again.”
“I don’t think you would be living if full force was implied…” Spirou mumbles.
Luke gives a chuckle as Spirou goes to sit down in the armchair behind Captain, though is very swiftly halted by a firm comment of ‘there’s a Smurf there’ from Captain. Spirou looks closely and sees the little blue creature sitting on the edge who gives a wave up at him.
“Everysmurf else is upstairs and I wanted different company!” The Smurf speaks.
Spirou apologises and quickly changes to the bigger seat in front of the fire and sits down.
“Uh… why are you doing this, Captain?” He obviously is alluding to the dealing with the wounds on Luke’s shoulder.
Captain can sense Spirou is still on his funny ‘Captain and Luke are dating???’ streak and gives an eye-roll and a mutter. He had no idea when or why this all started and had been hoping for the past year or whatever now that he would drop it.
“I would do this to anyone,” Captain says. “Whether that be you or Fantasio, it’s just in my nature! In fact, I’ve done this with Tintin before if the injuries haven’t been too bad. I’m sure Asterix as well would be just the same if anyone turned up here with an injury!”
Spirou nods, understanding that this is indeed a very Captain thing to be found doing. He felt a little bad for presuming the scenario but what could he say? His mind went far too quick like a small child in a mirror maze, never ended good but often hilarious to watch in action.
“I’m familiar to this behaviour from group rides,” Luke adds on. “If any of us get injured out there then someone has to play medic until we find proper help if it’s needed. Of course, the time an angry guy with an axe decides he wants to show me how an axe works is when I’m on a solo ride.”
“Worst part is you admitted you weren’t gonna end early and return here…” Captain mutters.
Luke is about to say something but yelps out when Captain puts the cloth on a specific sore spot which definitely must have been purposeful. The Smurf gives a light giggle in response to this as Luke groans and lightly curses under his breath.
“Do Smurfs bleed?” Spirou pipes up.
As that was very out of the blue Luke gives a very obvious single laugh which Spirou glares at.
“That was a genuine question!” Spirou frowns and folds his arms. “I’m not a little blue man thing, I don’t know the biology or whatever the science is!”
“Go ask Fantasio later,” Luke suggests whilst sniggering.
Spirou has a very definite stance of ‘I’m gonna!’ especially since he knows it could become a full on debate between the two of them. That’ll be fun and will maybe descend into an argument. Or Spirou will get a trademark ‘how are we still together’ glare.
Watching as Captain pats then rinses the cloth out realising it was far too watery, Spirou now has a new question on his mind.
“Why was there an angry man out in the Wild West with an axe?” He queries.
Luke shrugs then regrets doing so as it contorts the wound a little, giving a groan as the pain blows by.
“Lumberjack!” The Smurf suggests.
“Out in the Wild West?” Captain turns to the Smurf. “I’m not even sure if there’s trees to justify that as a career.” He turns back towards Luke. “Is that a thing…?”
Luke goes silent as he tries to cast his mind to the surroundings he rode about in most often. He had been so many places in his life and all enjoyed blurring together but just somewhere amongst the blur something that could be a few trees was definitely there.
“There’s definitely some trees,” Luke concludes. “Though, I don’t believe this guy mistook me for a tree and was very angry the tree was not staying still. No, I truly think he was just some guy with an axe who had a lot of emotions and that was mostly of anger. Sadly, I happened to be there minding my own business when he thought ‘Target practice!’.”
Spirou can’t help but feel sorry for Luke, it sounded like quite an unfortunate situation to end up in. The main thing was, as Luke said before, that the guy wasn’t using his full force. That could have been a lot more messy and nobody would be sitting talking with Luke now… however, Luke had insane luck very often, so, maybe they would be here sitting talking to him.
“I’m just more glad Luke had sense to come back here,” Captain sighs. “Honestly, I thought all the worry in my life was over and then everyone else chose to appear and now I have too many people to worry about!”
“Fantasio probably passed on some anxiety, sorry,” Spirou says with a smirk.
Captain mumbles something then catches a glimpse of a light outside in the dark which surely had to be Tintin returning from his evening walk. He draws Spirou’s attention to it to which Spirou gets up and swiftly leaves, he desperately wanted to talk to Tintin before it got too late in the evening! Captain watches him go then gets back to what he was doing with Luke, aiming to get this sorted sooner rather than later.
“You really didn’t need to do this, you do realise that?” Luke speaks.
“As I said it’s in my nature,” Responds Captain. “Anyone in my care needs to be in best of shape as they can be, otherwise I would feel bad and I know that’s ridiculous but it’s how I am.”
Luke mutters a ‘it’s not ridiculous’ which he didn’t intend on anyone hearing but of course the small blue man on the armchair does and gives an ‘aww’. A silence descends before aforementioned blue man adds on with a ‘you should kiss!’.
“What is it with people in this house-?!” Captain splutters then shoots a glare at Luke. “Don’t you dare do it, I can just see that glint in your eyes! You know how funny you’ll find it because of how much it’ll wind me up!” He wrings the cloth out then adds on with a growl: “You’re about to encounter an angry man with a damp cloth, cowboy, I’ll tell you that much!”