“Hi, F-Foxglove!” Techie looked up from the greenhouse’s rows of crops, stopping to wipe at his nose and managing to get dirt on his face. Months of working amongst nature with his new gang had given his cheeks a rosy glow, and he’d even managed to put on enough weight to form a little pouch over his tummy, no longer skin and bones.
“I’m d-doing a lot better. I owe you my l-life,” he smiled.Techie tried very hard to focus on anything other than what she was going to do with all those medical tools. It made him uneasy to remember the cold, unyielding metal under his back as he’d screamed and screamed for help all the while… Nobody had come.
“Th-they’re good to me, Foxglove. Really!” He pauses for a moment too long after reassuring her of this fact. Damn. He’d given himself away. With a grimace and a sigh, Techie admits, “Well, I do get some trouble. B-But only a little, nothing to worry about!” Is he trying to convince Foxglove or himself? It’s unclear even to him.
She knew that he was uneasy around medical related things. She remembered from when he first arrived in her compound, wounded, shivering, and terrified.
Foxglove made sure to be gentle, and as quick as possible. His statement made her pause however.
Still holding his wounded hand, tweezers at the ready, she looked up at him.
“What is happening? Who’s causing you problems?”, she inquired, a bit of anger creeping into her voice.
Color rises high on his cheeks. “N-No, it’s- not. Um. Nothing b-big.” Techie learned early on to lie back and passively take whatever is thrown at him lest they escalate and he (or worse, others) ends up hurt.
Truthfully, some of her workers think he’s weird and make fun of him. Worse still are the ones that resent the kindness she’s shown him; taking it to mean he’s privileged or somehow superior to them. Techie shrinks back the slightest bit.
“Techie…”, Foxglove began. She softened her tone when he pulled away a little.
“If someone is causing you problems I need to know who and what they are doing. I don’t tolerate shitheads in my numbers.”
Foxglove always came across as a quiet, even tempered person. Though she was doing her best to maintain that right now, for Techie’s sake, it was clear why she was in charge.
It was similar to the plant that she took her name from; beautiful but deadly.
Another angle of this situation was that she had become rather protective of this timid man.
After a tense, pensative silence, Techie sighs and says, “A woman with a l-lot of piercings and a man with a th-thick beard. They s-see me around and they’ll… um. Spit on me. Mock m-my stutter. My eyes…”
He cringes at the memories and buries his face in his hands (one bandaged and the other bare.) “I’m a f-fucking grown man. I can’t have others fighting my b-battles! What does it say about me that a little schoolyard bullying m-makes me feel like shit?”
TechieHux 