Mei X Owen - Blog Posts

Mei froze mid-rant, her fingers tightening just a little around the bandage she was wrapping around his leg. Her eyes narrowed into dangerous little slits. "Oh-ho, crispy, is it?" she echoed, voice deceptively light. "Just a little crispy? Owen, you look like a marshmallow that someone dropped into a campfire and then tried to convince everyone was still edible!" Ok, so maybe she was exaggerating a little, but she was just trying to get her point across.

She huffed, pressing the bandage down with just enough extra force to make him wince. "And elbow grease and a scrubbing brush?! Oh wow, thank you, Mr. Domestic, for your deep and insightful cleaning wisdom! I’ll be sure to remember that while I’m on my hands and knees scraping your poor life choices out of the floorboards!"

Her frustration hitched when he grinned at her—grinned!—like this was all some big joke. Like she wasn’t currently battling the very real urge to smack him upside the head with the nearest throw pillow. "Owen, I swear to everything good and sparkly--If you make one more joke—" And then he called himself a big, glazed doughnut.

For a moment, silence. Then, a deep, slow inhale through her nose. "Oh, you did not just—" The glare she gave him was like none other she'd ever given.

But just as quickly as it flared, her anger deflated. She sighed, shoulders slumping, as she secured the last of the bandages with a little more gentleness. "You know I hate this, right?" Her voice had lost its sharp edges, replaced by something quieter—something raw. "I hate seeing you like this. I hate that you act like your pain is just… a funny little inconvenience. I hate that you think I only care because of the mess or because I have to clean you up." She tied off the bandage with a little flourish and then sat back on her heels, arms crossing. "I care, you big, dumb, freshly burnt doughnut because you matter. Because you being okay matters."

She sniffed, then nudged his uninjured leg with her foot. "And because I like stealing your medical supplies, but that’s beside the point." A pause. Then, grudgingly, "... You are kind of a glazed doughnut, though."

Owen sighed, though the attempt was somewhat stifled by a sharp intake of breath as Mei pressed a bit too firmly on the singed flesh of his thigh. "Explosion battlefield? Now that's just colourful," he mumbled, trying to inject a lightness into his tone that he wasn't entirely feeling. He knew Mei worried, and he appreciated it, even if her worrying took the form of theatrical frustration and a concerning knowledge of bloodstain removal techniques.

He watched her, amused despite the discomfort, as she ranted about cotton and floorboards. "Relax, Mei. It's nothing a little elbow grease and a good scrubbing brush can't fix." He even managed a small, lopsided grin. He knew she hated that he dismissed things so easily, especially when those "things" involved explosions and blood, but it was his default setting. Panic rarely solved problems.

When she called him a doughnut, he chuckled. "A big, glazed doughnut," he corrected, then immediately regretted it as her glare intensified. He understood her frustration, truly. He knew seeing him hurt bothered her more than she let on.

"I know, Mei," he said softly, his eyes meeting hers. "But I'm alright. Just a little… crispy. Besides," he added, attempting to lighten the mood again, "who else would you steal medical supplies from if I wasn't constantly providing a reason to?"

"Oh, Owen!" Mei gasped, her voice full of exasperated affection as she practically bounced across the room, light as a sunbeam. "You always say things like that so casually—like 'Oh, I just tripped and accidentally fell into a whole battlefield!'”

She dropped to her knees beside him, her small hands fluttering over the wound like worried butterflies. "That is not a 'small' explosion! And this is not just a disagreement—this is your poor leg being very upset with you!" Mei pouted, puffing out her cheeks before sighing dramatically. "Owen, do you know how hard it is to get bloodstains out of cotton? It's, like, level ten difficult. And I don't even wanna talk about the floorboards!"

But even as she huffed and fussed, her fingers were already reaching for the first aid kit, which she definitely didn’t steal from his bathroom last time. "Honestly, you make my heart work overtime! Now sit still, you big doughnut." She shot him a glare as she dabbed at the wound, not as gently as usual "Y'know what else isn’t easy? Watching you come home all battered up like this again and again and again!”

Closed starter for @littledaydreamers based on this

The crimson liquid stained the pristine white cotton, blooming like an angry flower against the soft fabric. Owen sighed, a rumble that vibrated against the floorboards of his impeccably clean apartment. He hated blood. Not because of the violence it implied, no, Owen was intimately familiar with that particular dance. He hated it because every drop on his clothes or floor meant a lecture was coming.

He knew she was there, he felt her eyes on him before he even bothered looking up. Sitting on the edge of the plush sofa, his massive frame dwarfing the delicate cushions. “Just a disagreement," he mumbled, trying to minimize the jagged gash across his thigh. "A disagreement that required knives and a… small explosion.”