Showering under Clay's loud voice wasn't ideal. I was constantly trying to concentrate on the words he was saying, but the water and the distance completely muffled all of them, leaving me no other choice but to be stuck with blurry background screams.

Nothing stopped me from enjoying the hot water though. I still managed to give myself a relaxing scalp massage with the masculine smelling shampoo which luckily had some quality this time.

Wrapping myself up in a towel, I couldn't believe the conversation between George and Clay was still going.

"Well I didn't ask you to!" Clay raised his voice at George as I entered the room.

I couldn't hear what George's answer was, but apparently it made Clay even more frustrated.

"Listen, you ignore our calls and texts all the time, get in contact with us whenever you feel like it or whenever you're awake, which is like - never," his voice got a bit calmer as he saw me in the room, "and yet still have the nerve to blame us for not answering while I was in the hospital getting stitched up!"

I had no idea what was going on. Why would they fight for 20 minutes over a missed call? I thought George would be relieved knowing that everything was okay.

"Whatever George. I still think it's your fault and you overreacted as always." And with that words leaving his mouth, they ended the call. On bad terms obviously.

"What happened?" I was so invested in their conversation that couldn't even get dressed, standing there with a towel.

"Nick's coming." Clay huffed, falling back to the bed and regretting it immediately, "Fuck, that hurt."

"Wait what? Why?" I couldn't even focus on the second part of his sentence which stated clearly that he was in pain, from how absurd the beginning of it was.

"George panicked and forced Nick to buy a ticket and fly here to check on us. They thought something serious happened and that's why we didn't pick up." As he explained, the guilt built up more and more inside me.

"I shouldn't have texted Nick. Ugh.." I sighed, annoyed with myself. Just a single stupid act caused so many problems.

"George literally has my sister's and my mother's numbers," Clay's voice still held a bit of aggression from the previous conversation with George, "if he's dumb enough to force someone to fly over states without even bothering to call others for some details, then it's his fault."

"He was worried, Clay. My brain didn't function properly when I texted Nick without even thinking about the consequences. Imagine how scared George would be.. like continents away."

His expressions softened a little from my words. The brow wrinkle disappeared as he sighed once again, grabbing a pillow and putting it under his head in a way that he could rest without getting hurt.

"He was like "lucky you, I didn't get a ticket myself"," Clay's version of George's accent was so funny that I couldn't take his words seriously, "As if he could get a ticket randomly and just fly here without getting involved in a shit ton of paperwork."

I laughed, taking a sit on the corner of the bed, "It's kinda sweet how worried he got if you think about it." I smiled, but judging by his face he found my words disgusting.

I did eventually get a laugh out of him by making a few stupid remarks about how annoyed Nick is going to be when he arrives and finds out none of us are even dead. And I also made him smile by highlighting the idea of reuniting with Nick after such a tough break.

We spoke for about half an hour and could go on forever if Clay didn't point out the fact that I was still in a towel. I didn't feel comfortable changing infront of him though, thinking that it would be unnecessary in this case.

So I left him alone for a few minutes and changed in a different room, using the opportunity to wash my hands thoroughly (even though I just showered) to go back and change his bandage.

"Your skin's gonna fall off, stop." He noticed that I was taking extra time to sanitize my hands. I was cleaning them with rubbing alcohol at the moment.

"I have to. Otherwise your skin will fall off from an infection." I think my words scared him, as he didn't even respond.

Getting everything I needed, I walked towards the bed. I figured kneeling on the bed while he leaned back to the headboard a bit would be the ideal position to do this.

I expected Clay to wince at least when I peeled the bandage. It was stuck to the wound which I imagined would be painful to remove, but he sat there emotionless, following the movements of my hands with his eyes.

"This may sting a little bit - I'm not sure." I warned before cleaning the wound with a soapy water mixture.

"Okay." He wasn't amused at all.

But when I gently rubbed the skin surrounding the cut with a cotton ball, I caught his hand curling into a fist on his thigh. It felt horrible knowing that I was the one inflicting the pain, however I also realized that not only there were the painful stitches I was working with, but the badly bruised skin too.

"I'm so sorry, only the ointment left." I pouted, getting the medicine tube and squeezing some on my fingers.

Clay nodded, still focused on my hands as if it was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen.

My fingertips were cold from how nervous I was, and maybe that was the reason why he let go of a relaxed sigh as my skin got in contact directly with his wound.

"Feels good." He spoke as I rubbed the substance on and around the stitches.

"Doesn't it hurt?" I asked, genuinely confused.

"That's the point."

I swear I was about to punch his forehead from how cocky his voice was, but controlled myself and decided to go with it and annoy him.

"Next time Nick's gonna do this. And I'll make sure to inform him about your pain kink."

It's always so easy to shut him up.