"Are you fucking kidding me."

Shane shut his laptop carefully and rose to his feet from the small leather couch in his shared apartment.

Normally, he'd have panicked (or at the very least been surprised) at the sight of a six-foot-tall man walking into his apartment at three AM covered in cuts and scrapes. But this was Drew, his (apparently very clumsy?) roommate of two months, and those things were decidedly normal with him.

So every week, when Drew inevitably came home injured, Shane patched him up. And vice-versa.

Shane acquired as many injuries as Drew, but the difference between the two was that Shane didn't earn his cuts from clumsiness; Shane was an undercover superhero.

Shane grabbed the industrial-sized first aid kit from its spot in their bathroom cupboard, waving at the toilet to tell Drew to sit down. The younger man did, rolling his eyes as he went.

"It's not even that bad this time," He complained. "I could probably fix it myself, if I tried."

Now it was Shane's turn to roll his eyes. "Not that bad, my ass. You're bleeding through your shirt."

"Am I?" Drew asked, feigning cluelessness.

Instead of succumbing to Drew's ridiculous responses, Shane reigned the conversation back in.

"What happened this time? Freak tornado?"

"No, ow," Drew said, as Shane dabbed alcohol onto his cuts.

"Stay still," Shane commanded, continuing with his work.

"Okay, so this time, I was in Wal-Mart, right, and I was trying to get a bag of Doritos off the shelf," Drew explained animatedly, talking with his hands. "But I didn't want the regular Doritos, I wanted the Cool Ranch, baby. So I stood on my tip-toes, and reached- but I kind of fell onto the shelf with the bean dip on it that they always keep on the chip isle for some fucking reason and cut myself on all the cans. A lot."

Drew looked up at Shane to see if he bought it. Furrowed eyebrows said no. But Drew accepted all of Shane's bullshit stories, and this one was honestly way more believable than Shane's "tripped over a hobo in the Taco Bell parking lot" explanation from last week.

"No offense Drew, but I think you're lying," Shane decided, slapping an oversized Band-Aid onto Drew's arm a bit harder than necessary.

"Drew's such a fucking liar," Drew mocked his best friend in a high-pitched voice. "That's what you sound like."

Shane laughed, and flipped him off as he exited the small bathroom, flicking off the light because he knew it'd annoy Drew.

"Hey, mister, that was uncalled for!" Drew exclaimed. "That's it! I'm going on strike! I'm not leaving this bathroom until you turn the light back on!"

"Have fun sleeping in the bathtub!" Shane called from the kitchen, laughter in his voice. Drew joined him a few seconds later.

"I was kidding," He stated plainly, perching himself on the counter as Shane turned on the coffee maker.

"Obviously."

"You know, you're weirdly cool about all the injuries I get all the time," Drew said softly as he fiddled with the salt shaker.

Shane shrugged.

"You're cool with mine; it makes sense for me to be cool with yours, too," Shane said. Drew was silent after that, and Shane wondered if it was because of the mysterious way Drew accumulated his cuts.

They eventually made their way over to the living room, where Shane sat with his salad dinner and Drew huddled under a blanket in the armchair in the corner after an unconvincing claim about not being hungry today.

Shane watched him out of the corner of his eye while watching Netflix; Drew seemed intent on the screen in front of him, but his unhappy expression and vacant eyes told Shane that Drew was hiding something from him, and Shane desperately wanted to know what it was.

But of course, that wasn't his place. Shane wouldn't drag it out of him like he might with Jessie or Lisa or Joey or one of his other friends; Drew was the kind of person who would either tell him when he's ready or bottle it up forever.

Either way, Shane didn't care. Much. At least he could pretend not knowing someone's secret didn't burn him up inside, right?

A/N: Nice reviews fuel my creativity, so drop one my way and leave some suggestions for this story while you're at it!