Taffer Notes: This is a dumping ground for my Dying Light Fan Fiction, Latchkey Hero. The scenes (extended, deleted or otherwise) showing up here may or may not turn up eventually during Crane's and Zofia's adventures, and as of such can contain spoilers for the finished product. They are unedited, not fleshed out, so do not expect anything stellar.

The first one I wrote after Mothers Day: Eviction, because I am a sucker for scar surveys and I just had to let Zofia take a closer look. Setting is The Following.


That's what friends do..


Zofia absolutely hated owing people anything. Had always done so, ever since she could remember. She'd hated owing kids at school lunch money whenever she'd forgotten hers. She'd hated being behind on work hours, and she'd definitely hated loans. Those had been the worst. That she'd ever be indebted to the point of having her life put on the scales, that hadn't ever crossed her mind. The thought alone was just downright ridiculous, since that was a thing you saw in the movies and not something you dealt with yourself. Then Harran had happened. Rais had happened. Lena happened.

'Crane.'

If there was a ledger somewhere that tallied her dues, then he was the one that claimed most of its pages. His name was stamped all over the place, glaring and obnoxious. Paying him back to get herself out of the red seemed like a very reasonable thing to do.

So what was it with the hesitation? The finger twitching, feet itching, neck pricking and chest squeezing dithering about outside the room?

Zofia glanced at the supplies on the table. Gauze, neatly wrapped and new. Some cotton sponges to go with it, and a tall canteen of water, along with a stubby bottle of antiseptics. Not the sort you used on open wounds, but the sort you washed your hands with in a hospital. The one that'd sting like fuck even if you had the tiniest of scratches. There was even tape. What the hell would she need tape for?

She walked up to the table, pinched the bottom of her shirt forward, and swiped everything over the edge and into the little makeshift pouch. Then she turned around and marched for the door.

Crane was still out cold.

Zofia exhaled through her nose, relieved. So far so good then. He could sleep right on, it'd make things a lot easier. Though it also meant she had to do this on her own, which presented her with a unique challenge: His shirt.

Right. No problem. Doable. Somehow.

She hooked her foot into the door and flipped it shut. It settled into its frame with a soft click, leaving the rest of the house out there, and her in here, in that small upstairs room with its slanted roof and the wide, dirty window right above the unconscious man.

"Okay. So, you're going to have to thank that bloke downstairs when you wake up. His little vixen as well," she told him while she lowered herself to the floor next to him. "They helped carry you here. You're heavy, you know?"

She let the supplies clatter to the floor.

"Way too heavy."

They'd dropped him on a flat mattress, and then the woman had gone scavenging the place for a pillow and a blanket and piled it all by Kyle's head. Then she'd told Zofia that they'd be back soon, and that she shouldn't worry. He would probably be okay, but she should make sure his wounds wouldn't get infected. Then she'd taken off with her friend, a man who stood at least as tall as Crane did, but added an impressive set of shoulders to the whole deal.

Zofia sighed. Why couldn't he have played nurse?

"Let's get you comfortable first," she told the useless Crane.

"Even your head is heavy. How do you manage that?" She gingery slipped a hand under his skull, her fingers threading through his short hair. The tips of her fingers pushed into stiff muscle, and Zofia frowned down at his motionless face. Had he forgotten how relaxing worked? Shouldn't being unconscious get things unraveled a little bit? She squeezed her palms against his skull and gently as she could lifted it to get the pillow underneath.

Zofia had seen him sleep before, more than once. Though admittedly it had always been dark then, with scarcely any light to go around. Up here, with the late evening sun filtering in through the window, he looked deceptively peaceful. His eyes were closed firmly, his lips parted slightly, and while his neck still held residual tension, he'd at least dropped the heavy frown from his brow. No crinkles lined his eyes either, smiling or otherwise.

"Okay. Face first?"

She grabbed the canteen, popped the cap off, and then went for one of the sponges to soak it generously.

"You're filthy ," Zofia proclaimed as she dabbed at the dried stuff on his chin, his cheek, his nose, his forehead— his everything, really. Not a big surprise, considering he'd gone facedown when he'd fallen. She uncovered a few fresh scrapes, tiny cuts that had stopped bleeding a while ago and didn't need any more attention. But she had to be thorough, because he'd be thorough too, wouldn't he?

"You in there, somewhere? Would you mind terribly if you could just wake up? I really don't know what to do."

Nothing. She paused, leaned forward to place her ear by his mouth. A faint, warm puff of air ghosted along her skin.

"No?"

No.

"Fine. Be that way."

The soggy, dirty sponge went over her shoulder.

Zofia slid to the head of the mattress, placed her knees by his shoulders, and tried to get her arms under them. Then she pulled and she pushed and she heaved, until finally she managed to get him to sit up straight, or at least something resembling it.

Keeping one hand curled into the cloth on his back, Zofia tried to balance him as he was, and started hiking the shirt up his torso.

"Why are you so heavy. Stop being so heavy."

Great. She'd turned into a broken record.

She managed to bunch the shirt up against his shoulders, and realised with dismay that his arms were in the way. Of course they'd be. That's how shirts worked. That's how arms worked.

"Oh, screw this."

Zofia leaned her shoulder against his back to keep him from falling over again— acutely aware of all the warmth pressing down on her and the weight pushing back at her —and reached around him to his belt. Her fingers blindly groped for the hilt of the knife he carried. When she found it she spent a few heartbeats working the clasps on the sheath, and then almost dropped it as she pulled it free.

"Sorry for that, but this thing is ruined anyway," she told the unconscious Crane and then she cut through the fabric of his shirt. First she cut it along his neck, then by his arms, until the whole thing fell right off.

By the time she was done her arms were aching, and Zofia thought it was unfair that he got to take a break while she had to be awake. She really needed a nap. Today had been a long enough day already.

But there was no nap to be found, because now she was left with what had been covered by the bloodied, torn shirt.

His back was bad. Old bruises, new bruises. Black, blue and green, and some still angry and red. No blood though, no fresh cuts. She took a good gander at it anyway, a little longer than she probably should have, and by the time her left thumb had started tracing down along the side of his spine, she'd almost forgotten why she was even here. Much like his neck, the corded muscle on his back were stiff as ever. Sore too, probably, from all the pummeling they'd been getting. She could feel them plainly underneath the bruised skin, every firm ridge, and she wondered how much it all hurt. Did it get worse over time? Why had he never stopped and let someone fix him up?

All he'd have to do was ask.

Then again, what did you do for that? Ice bath? There wasn't a lot of ice to go around out here. Still, she could help. She didn't know how , but she could try. That's what friends did, right?

Right.

Zofia sighed wearily, felt her right arm and shoulder growing numb from the strain of holding him up. Yes. That was what friends did. Help.

She'd been an abyssal friend.

Her thoughts rearranged themselves and her eyes flicked to his shoulder. A patch of skin there looked wrong. Broken. Marred. Burn marks? It hadn't healed well, made it look like he'd melted. She let her thumb hike upwards and flicked it over the scarred skin.

"You're not a steak, what were you doing on the grill?"

The truth was likely less amusing. Burning houses. Acid spills. Explosions. Cool explosions? She frowned, her eyes catching on another scar, this one running parallel to his spine.

He'd been lucky there, judging by how well defined the line was. That gash must have been deep, no telling what it would have done if it had connected an inch to the right. Killed him, most like.

"Got into a fight with a Velociraptor, straight out of Jurassic Park. Just couldn't stay out of the tall grass, could you?"

Next she spotted the quarter sized patch of white skin further down, right above the line of his jeans.

"A bullet?" She asked. "Shot in the back, how lame is that? Did you run, or was he a coward? Oh, I know, neighbour's husband caught you while you were scampering out the window, right? Yeah, that's probably exactly what happened.."

Her arm wavered and he fell back, connecting with her chest and leaving her chin sticking over his shoulder while she battled to keep him upright.

"Ooof— Stop that," Zofia muttered, struggling with the weight, and with her heart's sudden decision to break into a full on gallop, not even bothering with a trot first.

Her eyes flicked right.

"Still sleeping?"

His head lolled to the side, knocked into hers.

'Ouch.' He had a thick skull.

"Apparently."

His chin rubbed against hers. The shadow his his beard scratched roughly against her skin. He remained perfectly oblivious to her discomfort, how he tickled her and scraped at her and how he burnt her up from the inside out. No, he just kept on breathing like this was a-okay, his shoulders rising and falling gently with each pull of air. She tried to mind, she really did. She wanted to get annoyed, but instead she just wondered if it was okay to just stay like this and maybe fall asleep herself.

Then her eyes flicked down, and she saw the blood and realised that no, no it wasn't okay. She had a job to do, some debt to repay.

'Be a friend.'

So she went to work and lowered him gently back into the pillow.

The drying blood had to come off first. It took her forever to wash it all away, to dab along the gashes and not make things worse. They were bad enough as it was. That he sported a decent amount of coarse hair didn't really help, since she ended up worried she was pinching him unnecessarily. She couldn't use too much water, after all. It'd just soak the bed and that wasn't okay. He'd get catch a cold.

Zofia's brow crinkled when she'd finished phase one of her project, and she allowed herself a moment of staring out the window above him. It'd be dark soon. Maybe an hour and the sun would have vanished. Her stomach turned unpleasantly.

Thinking about night coming while Crane was out cold, worried her more than she'd have liked to admit. She'd gotten too used to him standing at the ready if things went wrong over the last two months. She needed him to tell her what to do, after all. Needed him to make sure she did the right thing if things got bad enough.

Which they wouldn't be tonight, though. Tonight they'd be fine. Perfectly fine. This place was secure. She'd be okay. He'd be okay.

Irritated by her mind trotting off on its own, Zofia turned her attention back to him. She grabbed more cotton sponges, soaked them in disinfectant, and slid closer, trying to get a decent angle on the biggest of the gashes.

It had raked off to the right down his front, a ragged line starting almost dead-centre by his collar bone and extending maybe five inches. That thing would scar, even with her careful cleaning. And if he'd not been out, that process likely would have been terribly painful. As it was he didn't even twitch as she worked her way down, one dab at a time, careful and steady.

Halfway through her eyes cut to the side, over his coarse hair, and his—what was the more professional term again? Pecs? Right? She blinked. Just below the right half of that absurdly well sculpted piece of muscle, sat a jagged white line. It arched off to the side, out of sight. There were three lines, actually, almost in parallel. The last one started just by his second or third rib from the bottom.

"Oh, I know—" Zofia let her lips twitch up in a smile. "You fought a lion. A small lion, and the lion won."

Then she noticed another dime sized one, this one on his left biceps. The smile turned to a frown and while her left hand kept absentmindedly cleaning the wound, her right one went for a hike.

"You get shot a lot?" She gently tapped her finger against the old wound. "Why would you get shot a lot? Or maybe this one's you picking a fight with a unicorn? I always figured unicorns were assholes if they were real."

Zofia bit down on her bottom lip. 'Focus,' she told herself, but her thumb traced down his arm anyway, into the hollow of his elbow and all the way down to his wrist. There was a lot of heat under all that skin. Very vivid heat. It was also deceptively soft, stretched taut over muscle and tendons, not rough like you'd expect from just looking at him.

She lifted her hand away, squeezed her eyes shut briefly, and counted to ten. When that was done, she tried herself at finishing the job and to be a better friend.

Every cut she cleaned came with distractions, since he still hadn't fallen in on himself enough to hide his stiff muscles. It didn't really help that there wasn't anything but muscle and bone on him, considering the lack of food and the abundance of physical exertions

All of that combined to paint a pretty effective diversion, and for once Zofia wished she'd have paid more attention in school, or freshened up on her human anatomy at some point... Her knowledge around it was limited to the bare minimum, just enough not to make her look stupid. She couldn't name any of the muscle groups on him, no matter her effort. Though she guessed he'd make for fine study material.

Her fingers certainly thought so, since they trailed off from the wounds and tried to teach themselves biology. They counted his ribs, because why not. They tried to find out if he was ticklish by riding his abdominal muscles, but that was pointless. They found more scars, too. More than she'd liked to count, and more than she could make up stories to.

Eventually the wounds were clean.

"Phase three," Zofia said while she threw the last sponge over her shoulder. She grabbed the gauze next, tore open the package with her teeth, and picked out the first few pads. Again she started with the gash by his collarbone and carefully folded the gauze over it, pressing down and hoping it'd stick without her having to wrap him in tape. It should at least last the night, right?

"Right," she told them both and moved on to the next one. Then the next one, and then one more before she only had the last one to cover. The most inconveniently placed one, which dove just out of reach on his right, on the other side of him.

Zofia glanced up. Still plenty of light left. She'd made good time. Once this was done she could go check on their saviours, if they'd come back by then. And she'd have to find a place to sleep for herself. She threw a look over her shoulder. Maybe right out that door. Like a stupid puppy.

"I'm not going to check your legs, you know." Zofia flicked her eyes to his belt.

"No, Sir. Not going to happen."

It wouldn't be that difficult, come to think of it. Just get the belt open, find buttons, grab pant legs and pull. Get his shoes off first though. Maybe let him keep his socks.

"No," she repeated, grabbed the blanket and threw it over thighs before picking up more gauze.

She had to lean over him, had to brace herself against the wall as she tried to cover the wound.

"And I'm not going to shave you and I'm not going to bathe you or anything like that, so you really ought to consider waking up. Fuck. Stop being so tall and complicated with all your angles and wide chest and all that firm you ."

She couldn't reach the edge of the wound properly. There was an easy enough fix for that, but even as she repositioned herself and swung one leg up and over him, Zofia froze midway.

"Hell, no—" she said and stopped herself from straddling him, her eyes staring straight down, caught somewhere in the no-mans land between his navel and his belt buckle. No-womans land? She swallowed.

"Hell. No."

There was an impossible warmth hanging between them, and Zofia liked to think she was imagining it. It was the sun heating up the stale air, not him. Couldn't be Crane. Or her. No human produced that much heat. Ever. She exhaled sharply.

The muscles on his abdomen twitched in response.

"Hell no?"

At the sound of his voice, Zofia's heart evacuated up her throat. A warm hand settled against her leg still hovering midair, and tugged it into the general direction of down.

'Oh boy,' she thought as her knee connected with the mattress. 'Oh double boy,' she added when she managed to work her eyes upwards and caught a lazy smile on him. Her neck flared. Her ears burnt.

No. Tired. A tired smile. Certainly not heavy and watching her and what-was-he-doing-with-his-hand-where-was-it-going? Zofia slapped his arm down. He puffed out a chuckle, his stomach tensing and his body shifting under her. The movement made her squirm into the opposite direction, but then he propped himself up on his elbows and followed her, reducing the precious bit of free space between them to a whisper of cloth on cloth. Or cloth on warm skin, as things so were. The blanket bunched up too, rode against her backside.

Heat lanced right between her legs, and Zofia did the only thing she could think of: She lifted the gauze, thrust it upwards under his nose and let out a tiny, embarrassing noise that hitched halfway up her throat. He looked at the gauze, then down at the wound she'd not gotten around to fixing, and back at her.

"What? Don't let me stop you. You were doing fine." He looked down his front. "I think."

Did he have to sound so sceptical? And what was that grin for? That was a grin, right? Might have been wince, too.

She frowned at him, made herself believe it was anger stoking embers in her stomach, that it had nothing to do with the hand still lightly resting on her leg. It had slipped down to her knee when she'd knocked her fist into it. Not squeezing or holding, just sitting there, and she really didn't want to be okay with that.

Crane fixed his stare on her, his light brown eyes more alert than anyone was allowed to be after having been knocked out long as he'd been. They wandered her shoulders. Took a gander between them, a little slower and with some glint of embarrassment or expectation or maybe both. Embaration. Eventually they came back up. Friendly. Smiling. And then just a little bit cheeky.

"I—uh—" His eyebrows rocked up into his forehead. "I've got angles?"

"Wha— what? How long have you been awake?"

Crane smirked, lifted a hand to his face and rubbed his stubbly chin. He sat up, and she leaned back, except she really couldn't get far since he'd pulled his legs up behind her. Caught between a rock and a hard place. Caught between a- her head spun. The hand tugged her knee forward, and Zofia was pulled off balance. She slid down into his lap, her hand still lamely holding on to the gauze, and there was that noise again.

She did her bloody best not to look at him, went to stare at his shoulder, since that's what'd she'd gotten so good at, but the shoulder was all square and neat and strong and she remembered how her chin had rested on it a short while ago and how comfortable that had been.

"Hell, no…" she whispered to herself more than him, let herself fall to the right, yanked her leg up over him, and landed in a horribly clumsy roll.

Then she threw the gauze at him, tucked her wildly red face down against her chest, and fled through the door, not once looking back.

A tiny voice screamed at the back of her head, declared this the worst exit ever, and demanded she'd go back there and finish what she'd started. But she didn't know what it was she'd started and where this was going, and she really didn't want to find out.

Being friends with that man was beginning to get difficult.