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They’re both a little bit battered by the end of the show. Punk has it worse, probably - he lost the tournament, he doesn’t get to bring home this new upstart belt that Joe still kind of resents. Joe won, he carried his world title back through the curtain, but he’s spent the last twenty minutes (the duration of time it took for Punk to lose) scrubbing blood from his body, wiping out the deep gash in his hand and wrapping it up with gauze tightly enough to stop its full, disconcerting flow. Standing over the little sink in the bathrooms, still shirtless, transferring blood off his body and onto the white porcelain and the wet white towel.
He’s clean (clean enough) and steady now, he’s recovered from the shock and sting of seeing himself bleed - he’s not used to it, not like some guys, not like Punk. And besides, it’s not a controllable injury, not like the little prick of the blade, it’s an inch-long split in the flesh of his hand that would probably need stitches if it were any longer or deeper. He didn’t do it on purpose, it just happened, and he had to scramble and wrap his dirty wrist tape back around the raw gush of blood and claw his title back from three hungry men.
But he did it. He’s done now. He can relax.
“Heard you got your hand sliced open,” Punk says by way of a greeting. He comes into the room too quickly, all wound up, still sweaty like he just ran a dry towel over his body and tossed a t-shirt on. He smells like the ring and his own offensively strong animal odor (Joe breathes in deeply once, twice, just to make sure); his hair hangs down wet in his eyes, too-short front pieces escaping from a sloppily executed bun. He looks wild.
“Hey, Punker.” Joe is aware of the title belt half-peeking from his bag; he can’t make a move to hide it without letting Punk know, fatally, that he feels a bit bad for him. “Yeah, I did.” He holds up the hand, the gauze pad kept in place by fresh ring tape. It pulls and stings a bit from the movement, but he does a good job acting like it doesn’t. “Guardrail.”
“Those fucking guardrails,” Punk says, and then, after a too-short pause: “Can I see it?”
“Uh,” Joe says. “No, I just wrapped it up. It’s all clean now, don’t—” He snatches his hand away from the halfhearted grabby hands Punk is making, wandering wiggly fingers in the direction of his hard-won bandage. “Quit,” he hisses, also halfheartedly - he knows he’s probably going to end up showing Punk, but if he makes it too easy it’ll go to his head, and his head is plenty big enough already.
“Aw, come on.” One of Punk’s hands lands on Joe’s forearm and stays there, incorrigible - barely moving, just brushing his fingertips against the bandage. He gives Joe a sloppy, uneven smile, like he thinks he’s being cute (Joe can’t say he’s not). “Cheer me up.”
Joe shakes his head. “It’s gonna start bleeding again.” He can, in fact, feel the scab sticking to the gauze. Still, the words sound weak, even to him.
“Just for a second,” Punk says. “I’ll help you wrap it back up.” He blinks at Joe, still smiling, still looking like he wants to do something that’ll get him in trouble. His dirty nails have started to worm their way just slightly underneath the bandage.
Joe catches Punk’s wrist with his good hand. “Okay,” he says. “Sure. But you have to keep your dirty fingers out of it.”
Punk lets his hand drop so very quickly, delight on his face - it’s bad, it’s really terrible how much pleasure it gives Joe to see that. It makes him want to give Punk whatever he wants.
The tape comes apart easily. Joe’s used to pulling this stuff off his hands, after all. All his hard work wrapping it up is shed in moments, just so Punk can have a look, just because Punk looked so happy when Joe told him he could. Joe bites his tongue and only winces a bit when the gauze unsticks - red-brown and hardened into the wound, detaching itself with the uneasy pull of a billion tiny fibers - and then it’s all revealed, the channel carved into the palm of his hand, the ragged open layers of pink-red flesh. Joe has to avert his eyes.
Punk is staring.
His eyes are very wide - hungry, Joe might say - staring down at the wound, at Joe’s callused hand held out between them. Joe’s own gaze is drawn back to it on the magnetic strength of Punk’s; he’s curious as to what Punk sees there that doesn’t turn his stomach, what source of beauty or allure he could possibly find. The jagged edges of his broken skin, slightly clammy already from being washed and then from sweating against the bandage, are whitish and swollen with their dampness. Inside them are the moist red inside bits of Joe’s body, the stuff that lets him grip and touch and pull and lift, the stuff that lets him wrestle. He has to admit it’s frightening for it to be out in the open like this, so obviously made less than whole. It actually hasn’t started bleeding again - apart from a bit of clear ooze, the layers of his flesh are remarkably visible. The colors are stunning and nauseating and Joe has to look away again.
Naturally, he looks at Punk. Punk, whose eyes are still glued to Joe’s hand, Joe’s wound. Sometimes Punk gets fixated on something like this - usually it’s a bruise, once a black eye, a few times something more serious that really doesn’t need Punk prodding at it - and Joe can’t ever tell him no, not definitively, he always caves eventually. It makes him feel so funny. Extremely observed, with Punk staring at the evidence of his vulnerability. The weight of Punk’s attention is heavy and borderline uncomfortable, and Joe likes it, he wants more of it.
Punk startles him just then by taking Joe’s hand in both of his. He pulls it towards him gently, like he’s trying to get a better look - head bowed over it, thumb rubbing the callus on the heel of Joe’s hand. Joe almost expects him to dip down and kiss it. Like a gentleman with a lady or a devotee with a relic. The way Punk acts, splaying his hands over Joe’s bruises, brushing his fingertips gently over the hot swollen flesh of an infection he once had, it’s not that far off from worship - odd, covetous, proprietary worship. His stringy blonde hair is hanging down in his face now, obscuring an emotion Joe couldn’t possibly begin to decode anyway. His rough thumbs stroke the skin on Joe’s hand, the roughness on the side of his palm, the tender bit right around where the lips of this wound begin to split. Joe imagines Punk taking two fingers, two ring-filthy chipped-polish fingers, and rubbing them so gently against the damp opening of the wound. He imagines this is what Punk wants to do, but he’s being good. Joe asked him not to. (Joe wants him to. Joe wants him to explain bodily what he sees in the wound in which Joe can only see his own body made vulnerable. He thinks he wouldn’t mind it so much, being vulnerable to Punk.)
Joe is on the edge of, maybe, saying something to Punk - I told you don’t touch it, or, you can touch it if you want to, or, he doesn’t know what - when Punk drops his hand. Like a spell has been broken, he flips his hair out of his face and smiles at Joe again. It looks a bit more normal now, but he’s still got the look in his eye, the odd hunger. “Thanks,” he says. “That did cheer me up.”
Joe shrugs. Takes his hand back from where it’s now lying, unaccompanied, on the table. “Sure.” He looks at the carnage of gauze and tape strewn across the surface, all far past sterility by now. He could use another set of hands. “You gonna help me wrap it back up like you said you would?”
“Yeah,” Punk nods, quickly and eagerly. Still hungry for something he won’t explain.
Joe won’t ask, but he’ll watch Punk watch him pump antibacterial soap into the cut again, watch him rub it gently in and wash it gently away, watch him dab it dry. He’ll watch Punk perch on the sink and tear the corner off a gauze pad wrapper for him like a good little nurse, like he would never dream of impeding the healing process. He’ll chatter back when Punk chatters to him, dumb funny bullshit like normal, probably still trying to distract himself from the tournament loss.
He’ll feel Punk’s attention on him as he wraps his hand back up and he’ll wonder what the draw is, and then he’ll come right past wondering and into wishing. Maybe someday he’ll ask.