Ric Soto


Ric's feeling frustrated and the shirt wrapped around his arm is soaked with his own damn blood at this point. He tries not to pay too much attention to the stinging. He's also trying not to pay too much attention to the dismissive way in which Vanessa ordered him away. However, the lack of distraction is causing him to focus on exactly the things he shouldn't focus on. He's trying to remember the stuff they taught him before the infection spread all over the globe. Things about dealing with anger. Counting to ten, breathing, 'responding and not reacting'. It all seems silly now.

He decides to leave the entrance for what it is. Zombies aren't geniuses, they probably won't manage to sneak up on them. And anyway, his arm is hurting now, he needs someone to fix him up, someone to stitch him back together.

He makes a mental list of people he would feel comfortable with. The list is ridiculously short. In fact, Avery's name is the only one that pops up. He doesn't trust the rest of them. So he walks up the stairs to find Daryl in the doorway of the bathroom. Over his shoulder he sees the new girl and Avery. He nods at the small group. "When you guys are done here," he says, trying hard not to sound annoyed at his exclusion. "I was wondering if you'd..." He's looking past Daryl and at Avery. "If you wouldn't mind taking a look at my arm? I'd disinfect it myself but it'd probably be better for someone else to." Asking for help isn't his forte and he feels a little awkward because of it. His eyes fall on the new girl - she must be okay then, if they're all just standing here, chatting. She must not be infected, right? He eyes her with a little suspicion but keeps quiet otherwise.

Ric Soto


He doesn't really notice when the new girl pulls her hood down. His attention is on Avery and whether she'll want to help him. So when the girl suddenly tells him she'll have a look at it, Ric raises an eyebrow. He scrutinizes her face - she doesn't look like she did before. She's not shaking, not bloody, not terrified. It doesn't matter though - she's new and young. He's not letting a stranger take care of him. He's about to tell her no, tell her it's probably a better idea if someone else takes a look. (And that someone else is Avery because he isn't letting Hotshot Daryl get the pleasure of having Ric owe him something).

The new girl, however, isn't playing around. She starts rummaging through her bag and then commands him to sit down and take it off. He looks at the chair and then back at her. Part of him feels like telling her to back off. He's not a puppet, he's not some experiment she can use to widen her knowledge or whatever her plan is. He listens to the other part though; the part of his head that's grinning because of her phrasing. Ric doesn't say a thing: he walks to the chair and sits down. "Do you want me to take everything off?" he asks, smiling a half-smile.

He fumbles at the shirt until it comes loose and falls to the ground with a dull 'thud'. He glances at the wound - it's not to deep, he estimates, but it's deep enough to hurt and bleed. "I'm Ric," he adds suddenly, tearing his eyes away from his arm and on the new girl's face. "Do you know what you're doing or were you just trying to impress me?" He says it as if it's a joke but it's not. He needs to know to what degree she's qualified to be prodding at his body. He won't judge her for her age, not when he feels like he's being constantly pushed out because he's not a dinosaur. But he will judge her for her competency (or lack of it).

Ric Soto


Lee's stern look is enough reason for Ric to sheepishly press his lips together. It probably wasn't appropriate to make jokes after everything they've all been through. (Still, he does think that they could all use a little humor in their lives). He doesn't have a lot of time to ponder all this though. Soon after explicitly addressing his comment about impressing him, she tells him that she has some medical knowledge. "Good to hear," he says. "I wouldn't want-" His sentence is interrupted by Lee pouring disinfectant on his wound and it hurts. He yelps loudly, but after the initial surprise is over, he shuts his mouth and tries to look as though it doesn't hurt this much. He doesn't want to look weak.

"That's - that's really painful," he says through clenched teeth. He's becoming increasingly more aware of the presence of Avery and Daryl. This is great - here he is, shrieking and complaining like a kid. That'll make them take him seriously.

Lee doesn't look too affected by his reaction, though. She's concentrating on the wound. He focuses on her face and wonders how long it's been since she talked to other people before they barged into her life. She introduces herself and he nods in acknowledgement.

"Stitches?" he repeats. He feels the need to brush it off and say that it's just a scratch, he'll be fine. Thing is, this sort of thing isn't his area of expertise by any means. He was a biochemistry student, yeah, but that's more chemistry than biology. Lee doesn't exactly try to comfort him about this stitches-thing: she tells him straightforwardly that it's real-doctor-stuff, that she's not technically qualified and that he should pick a fake-doctor to do the real-doctor stuff. He blinks. Avery chimes in and gives Lee something that he identifies as a confidence boost. You can do it, Lee! Sew his flesh together! Ric sighs internally. If it needs to be done, he supposes that Lee better do it. After all, she has a little more medical knowledge than the rest of them.

He turns his head to fully look Lee in the eyes. He's a little pale because hey, if the disinfectant hurt, this won't be a walk in the park. Stitches are typically done in hospitals; the area is usually numbed and the materials are completely sterilized. The latter can probably be achieved, but he suspects that it's not going to be fun having someone sew his skin together without any anesthesia whatsoever. She can probably see this in his eyes, but he takes a breath and says: "You know what you're doing though, right?" Right? "If so, let's do it. Get it over with."

Ric Soto


"Ha," he says quietly, after her comparison of the stitching to getting about six piercings. "I'm not a piercings kind of guy, you see."

She starts soon after that and he's clenching his teeth together and tries (really, really tries) to look as though it doesn't hurt. Not necessarily for Lee's sake, but just for the sake of maintaining some sort of strong image of himself. If they think he's really good with pain, they'll probably think better of him. Or something like that.

At some point, Lee asks him how this happened. "I fell." A pause and then: "No, I didn't fall. Just kidding. I -" (The needle pierces his skin again). "We were fighting the Infected off. The zombies. They were with a whole group but we managed to kill them and leave before more came along. Don't worry, there's no zombie-blood in the wound or anything. It cut me with a weapon." His forehead is shining with sweat. He's trying not to visualize the zombies or think about them at all. He's just telling a story, that's all. So he looks at Lee and manages to force a smile on his face, as if the fight wasn't horrifying, or as if he wasn't in a haze of fury when it happened. (He's smiling as if he never gets into hazes of fury at all).

His eyes shift to Daryl and Avery. "They're good to have alongside you in a fight," he continues, not smiling any longer. He's serious. He might not like Daryl that much, but he can't deny that the three of them did good earlier today. They did good, together.