salute [h.s]

chapter 15 - distressing dentistry & cathartic confessions

"Do you think you're ready for this, Red?"

Piper eyed Luke warily, her eyes zeroing in on the set of dental pliers that he had just set down on the table. She gulped around the nervous lump in her throat as she nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be."

She wasn't quite sure whether she trusted him yet, but she was running out of options. Niall vouched for Luke, said he was trained in dentistry. But then again, Niall said he was trained in medicine and, while he was proficient based on what he had done for her the night before, he wasn't licensed. She doubted that Luke Hemmings was a licensed dentist.

She couldn't believe she was going to let a man she just met pull out three of her teeth.

The four men who had caused such a ruckus upon their arrival were the four members of 5SOS, the Australian black ops group that both Harry and Perrie had mentioned earlier. Similar to One Direction, they were a specialized group of agents working outside of the ASIS with Australian interests. And they were a bunch of insane motherfuckers.

Piper had been briefly introduced to each of them after she had finished emptying out her stomach and then Luke had stepped forward as the one who was going to be doing her hack dentistry job. Apparently him and Niall had been at the same base in Kandahar for a while which was how the two groups had gotten to know each other. Since then, One Direction and 5SOS had worked together numerous times on critical missions.

Two of them, Calum and Michael, had hung back in the living room with everyone else but Ashton, the other cute blond wearing a ridiculous American flag bandana across his forehead, had flounced after Piper, Harry and Luke into the kitchen. He had hopped onto the island counter top to watch as Luke and Niall both led Piper through the motions of getting herself ready for the traumatic experience of having her teeth removed.

Despite the fact that she didn't think Luke was at all certified for this, he did seem to know what he was talking about. He had brought along a bag with some tools and he pulled out a medical grade mouthwash first, leaning over the sink with her as she washed out her mouth. He placed a hand on her lower back when she winced at the burn of the alcohol on her broken teeth and exposed nerve endings. When his hand landed on the bandage, he lifted up the back of her jumper (uninvited and without permission) and whistled at the extent of the bandaging job. When Niall told the whole story, much more enthusiastically than an attack and attempted rape should ever be conveyed, Luke had clapped her on the back hard as he shouted praise, making her spit out the mouthwash.

Obviously, Luke's and Ashton's (and probably also Michael's and Calum's) personas were more in line with Niall – buoyant, exuberant, fun, and untameable. Harry, on the other hand, leaned against the counter beside Ashton's swinging legs with his arms crossed, looking like he was barely tolerating the personalities around him. Piper was pretty sure that the only reason he stayed was because he didn't want to leave her alone with them. Which she was so grateful for because she'd come close to hitting them more times than she could count.

She'd been instructed to sit down on one of the kitchen stools so Luke could take a proper look in her mouth. Harry had moved forward instinctively to stand behind her back, supporting her with arms around her waist so there wasn't too much pressure on her injury. The morphine was helping but it still twinged a bit.

Luke had told her to open wide in a lewd way that made Harry growl low in his throat, but they had gotten on the same page when she dug her heel into Luke's thigh painfully when he tried to step forward. He'd gotten the message that she wasn't one to be messed with and since then, it had been pretty natural. Luke had the proper tools with him, sticking one of those little mirrors into her left cheek and flashing a little light toward the area. Two broken teeth on the top, one on the bottom, according to him. He thought that the removal would be pretty easy since they didn't look impacted. Piper didn't think teeth removal was ever something easy really.