Chapter 22 #2
Because when I tried to tell him, he’d always ask me, how could it be anything but love?
Why else would he go to all that trouble?
And shouldn’t he get love in return?
“I don’t–” I shake my head.
I can’t even explain myself. That man–the man I killed–he rebuilt me, unplugged wires inside me and reconnected them in places they weren’t meant to go, and I can’t be anything else but this mess of human parts that don’t fit together. He was Frankenstein; I was his monster.
I’m not even sure I’m a real person anymore.
“Why do I want to check your bruises, Tommy?” Young-gi asks again, repeating himself for maybe the first time since I’ve met him. And I hate that his repetition brings me back to the present moment, hate that it actually helps me think.
“You think I give a shit about what you want?” I hiss the question at him, menacing and mean.
“You think what you did was enough to make me cry for a Band-Aid? You think your opinion matters at all to me? It doesn’t!
I don’t need you, I’ve never needed you, and I’m not playing your stupid fucking game today! ”
“You think I’m playing a game?” He stalks forward, and I stagger back a step before firming my resolve.
I let anger stiffen my spine and hold me in place until he’s looming right in front of me.
His hand raises, slow and obvious, and some of my anger cracks open; I feel fingers inside my chest, behind that anger, trying to pry it apart.
Something in me sees Young-gi and just knows that he’s going to help me break up all this ugliness. All this rage and shame.
I’m torn between desperately wanting him to and adamantly trying to stop him.
He takes my chin in his firm but gentle hold, just how I like it. It takes all my willpower not to sway into him with a sigh. Instead, I scowl bitterly.
“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life,” he growls at me, the words intimate. My world narrows to just the two of us, everything else fading away. “I’m not playing with you, Tommy.”
“Prove it,” I snarl, gripping his shirt, keeping him close.
And I think I’ve surprised him again. His eyes widen for a fraction of a second. He studies me, flays me with his gaze. When he speaks, it’s slow and probing. “Prove it like I did earlier? You want correction, Tommy?”
I grip his shirt harder and a raw, confused, desperate sound escapes my lungs. I shake my head, then nod, then shake it again. “I don’t know.”
“Prove it how?”
“I don’t know.”
“Prove it how, Tommy?”
“I don’t fucking know!” I try to shove away from him, but he catches me and keeps me where I am.
“Unless you’re safe wording, we’re staying right here until we figure this out.” He’s immovable. His hands on me feel too good, I want them too badly. I need them, and I’m not supposed to need anything.
Well, fuck that! And fuck him! My anger snaps shut on the weakness inside me.
“Red!” I roar it directly into his face, fully expecting him to ignore it. To get angry with me, to grip me harder. But he doesn’t.
Instead, he lets me go.
He takes several quick steps back.
He’s leaving me.
I stagger and my fingers start to tremble. A shot of adrenaline jolts through my system and I break into a cold sweat. I can’t blink as I watch him stand there across the room, watching me right back.
“If you need space, take it in your room.” It’s an order, but none of the command I’m used to is in his tone; it’s neutral and calm. He’s verbally backing away just like he physically did, renouncing any kind of control over me and my behavior.
My anger cracks, splinters, fractures. Frays.
His face is impassive; I can’t read it at all. “Bring your food with you, I still expect you to eat.”
He’s… he’s…
“R-red,” I choke, my vision getting watery, my anger dissolving, falling apart like sand.
“I heard you, Tommy.”
“No, you don’t get it.” I’m shivering hard now. Lost, confused. “Red. I’m sorry, come back. Don’t leave. Red. This is red, I’m red, come back–”
I reach for him with one hand and cover my watering eyes with the other. By the time I let out my first sob, he’s holding me tight against his chest.
“I’m sorry,” I weep against the soft cotton of his shirt.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he murmurs, petting my back. “You’re allowed to test me, Tommy.”
“I fucking hate you,” I choke out, gripping him tight. “Hate the way you make me feel.”
“Shhh, shh, Tommy, it’s alright,” he murmurs, just like the last time he hugged me.
I was freaking the fuck out then, too. Always such a fucking mess.
“Shut up!” I try to jerk away and shove him off me, but I resolutely keep my safe word locked up tight. “Let me go!”
He understands me more than he should, because he ignores my rage, the way I want him to. “Shhh, Tommy, shhh.”
I thrash in his arms but he clamps one hand on the back of my neck, forcing my face to stay hidden against his chest. The other he bands around my waist as he hauls me closer, backing me against the counter.
I hiss when my sore ass is pressed against the granite.
The tender pain and the forced closeness is exactly what I wanted, what I was hoping for.
So I fight harder, until he finally loses his patience and growls in my ear, “Settle down, Tommy. Now.”
He squeezes me tight, so tightly I’m barely breathing, my face pressed hard against his chest–and I finally go limp in his arms with a sigh.
All the tension in me eases, like he broke a dam inside me and it all spilled out.
My ass is sore, I can barely breathe, he’s pressing me so hard against his chest I can feel his collarbone against my cheek. It’s uncomfortable. It’s perfect.
He loosens his grip slowly, in increments just like last time, allowing me to pull in more air a little at a time, until it’s easy, and I feel soft and calm. I stay there, docile and hollow and quiet, while he shushes me and murmurs soothing things to me.
After a few minutes, I realize he’s rocking me from side to side, and I close my eyes to ask the question I need to ask.
“Young-gi?”
“Yes?”
“Why do you want to check my bruises?”
Because I love you, because I’m the only one that loves you, I’m the only one that cares for you, because it’s what lovers do–
There are so many wrong answers that I’m not even sure what the right answer is, but I wait for it anyway. I hide against his shoulder, feeling small and nervous in a way I don’t think I ever have before.
“You’re strong, Tommy,” he murmurs, still petting my back.
“Smart, fiercely independent. You don’t need me to take care of you.
But you’ve trusted me to help you anyway, with corner time, with the soap, at the club last night, on the couch earlier today.
Checking your bruises is the same. It’s the same as a spanking, the same as telling you that you can’t drink at the club or having Yosef bring you back here after you ran off.
It’s not about controlling you, or pretending that the bruises aren’t from my own hand. It’s for your own good.”
My own good… It’s a new answer. He’s said it to me before, but I didn’t think about it in any other context besides correction.
And maybe he’s right, maybe this is the same as everything else.
It doesn’t need to be different just because it reminds me of my past. Young-gi isn’t using care against me. He’s just… giving it to me.
But all things have a price. Nothing is given for free.
“What do I have to do in return?” I ask, raspy and almost inaudible.
He stills, like he’s absorbing my question. I wait, barely breathing.
“You’ve got it backwards, Tommy,” he finally answers. “It’s not about what you have to do to earn my attention, it’s about what I need to do to earn your permission.”
And that’s the right answer. The one I didn’t know I was waiting for.
“Okay,” I sniff, then clear my throat. I pull myself together, blink my eyes dry. When I look up at him, I’ve got my game face on, bratty and annoyed. “Fine. Whatever. Look at them if you’re gonna throw a fit about it, but then we need to eat because I’m starving.”
And despite my sass and the way I’m twisting it so that it sounds like I’m doing him a favor, like he’s the one that’s gonna owe me instead of the other way around, he just smiles.
A real smile. Not a big one, but really there.
Amused, maybe even fond. So I roll my eyes and scoff, but eventually give him a grin in return.
“Good boy, Tommy,” he says, guiding me toward the counter.
When we get close to the cream, he turns me so my back is facing him, and I realize all at once that I’m about to let this man touch me. On my ass.
“Um…” I shake out a brash laugh, like I’m not even a little bit embarrassed. “I might get excited if you’re back there touching me, Young-gi. You sure you’re alright with that? Seems really gay of you.”
“Unless you’re safe wording,” he dares, his tone completely different now, sensual and sexy instead of somber, “push your pants down and let me see the marks I left on you. Let me see if you’re sore enough to remember all the tests I’ve passed.”
Goddamn. We haven’t even started and my dick just twitched. Heat curls in my belly at this sudden shift in the mood. It’s almost alarming that I can go from emotionally breaking down to horny on a dime, but I never claimed to be normal.
“That’s kinda fucked up,” I whisper, keeping my back to him, while my shaking hands go to the front of my borrowed shorts. I grip the elastic. “Do you get off on this kind of thing?”
“Out of the two of us, Tommy, I think we both know who gets off on this more.”
“Fucker.” He’s right.
“Push your pants down, and put your elbows on the counter,” he orders, leaning over me so he can put those words right into my ear. I shiver hard.
“Perverted freak,” I whisper, mostly to myself, when I do as I’m told.
I do it fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
Before I have a chance to second-guess it, I’m leaning over the counter, with the borrowed shorts taut around my thighs, right under my bare ass.
And, of course, I immediately get really fucking turned on.
I let out a slow, hissing breath as he examines me without touching me. I peek over my shoulder and watch his eyes trace every centimeter of skin.
“Like what you see?” I ask crudely.
“I like that you’re letting me do this,” he answers, not really answering me at all.
“Get on with it,” I huff.
“Ah, here’s one,” he says softly, scooping out a dollop of bruise cream. “Right here.”
He swipes it onto my left cheek, near the outside, almost on my hip.
I flinch hard, but not because I’m scared.
It takes everything I have not to reach down and start touching my dick.
That’s not what this is about. But I can’t help it, it’s just so hot for some reason.
And I know he knows I’m rock hard, my cock embarrassingly full and ready for action.
My emotions wobble for a second, but this isn’t meant to be sexual and all Young-gi is doing is taking…taking care of me. I don’t know why it’s different, but my dick stays hard and I just…let him do this for me.
Young-gi spends a few more seconds than necessary applying the medicine and checking everything over a second time, but before I’m ready for it, he’s reaching for my shorts and pulling them up. The elastic waistband gets caught on my hard dick, and I groan.
He pauses, then carefully pulls the shorts up around my cock without touching it, smoothing his fingers around the edges of the waistband. His hands don’t stray anywhere intimate, but I groan again anyway, loving the way his big hands wrap around my hips.
He presses himself against my back, lays himself over me like a blanket. He peels his hands off me like it’s difficult for him, and grips the counter on either side of me.
“Do you need something, Tommy?” His question is rumbly and deep.
“No,” I gurgle the word, pushing back against him because I love the way he feels.
“Are you sure?” And this time, he sounds amused.
“Yep.”
“Hm.” He backs off.
I hang my head on my shoulders, breathing hard, trying to pull myself together so I can face him without a tent in my pants.
He lets me have my moment, doesn’t rush me, as I try to work through the emotional roller coaster that he puts me through every time I get turned on.
It was delayed this time, happening after instead of during.
And the shame spiral seems muted, less catastrophic, less sickening. It’s not gone, but I handle it.
“Actually,” I say quietly, still facing the granite countertop, “I think I do need something.”
Silence, perhaps surprised silence. I said it so easily–I need something–but I gave it a sarcastic, teasing drawl.
A little spin on the tone to imply that I don’t really, truly, need anything, that I’m just being a smart ass.
But he must know. He must see right through me, because he lets that silence sit just a few seconds too long, like he’s making me acknowledge what I just said.
I grip the counter, but let the words stand.
“Oh?” he finally drawls, and I turn. He’s sitting in front of the food, but hasn’t started eating yet. He’s just staring at me, watching me, like always. He waves his hand in an invitation to continue. “Well, go on then. Tell me what you need, Tommy.”
Bastard, he’s so elegant and fucking hot. Sexy, dominating prick. Why do my mental insults feel so fond and affectionate? I don’t do affection!
Ugh.
I huff, feeling oddly…lighthearted. “Next time, give me more bruises.”
Heat flares in his gaze like I just lit a match. And the promise in his slow nod, the way he beckons me to my chair with a finger, the way he makes me sit on the hard stool despite my soreness, gives me pleasant, excited shivers.
“Eat,” he says sternly. “We’ve got meetings tomorrow, so I want you back in bed soon to rest up.”
We. He casually makes it clear that where he goes, I go.
I wait for annoyance or indignation, even fear, but it doesn’t come, which surprises me. I was never allowed to be alone when I was a kid. So, naturally, you’d think I’d want to be alone all the time now.
But…
That’s never been true. I’ve never wanted to be alone, I’ve just never had someone around that I wanted to be stuck with. At least… until now.
I take a big bite of my food to hide my smile, but maybe Young-gi sees it anyway, because before he starts eating, he smirks and says, “Good boy.”