Chapter Text
He hasn’t left your bed unless he had to, much less your apartment. It’s been days and days and he hasn’t said a word. Quiet, usually sleeping. It’s the first time he’s ever stayed more than a night. First time he’s ever let you touch him in a way that isn’t violent or hungry. It’s exploratory. Strange that the first time you get to really look at him he’s been forever changed. Permanently marked. Like the cavernous hole inside him has physically manifested there on his face.
You unwrap the bandage from his head. Is there a healing process for this kind of thing? There will be no knitting together of flesh, no scabbing over, no scar. Just the absence of something that used to be there. You drag your thumbs over the scruff forming on his jaw, another first. Never seen him unkempt, always in a button down and slacks or tailored jeans and a perfectly fitting t-shirt. Never seen his hair grow too long. Never seen a lot of him.
You trace the curve of his nose, the plushness of his lips, back up to the divot between his brows that doesn’t go away even when he sleeps. You run your thumbs over his eyelids, one stretched taut over his closed eye and one hanging half open, doesn’t need to close that one to be unseeing. To not have to watch the disgust he knows will flicker over your features.
You dip your thumb into his eye socket, touching something no one has ever touched before – except, you guess, for the man who did this to him. You hold your thumb there for a moment, and he doesn’t jerk away from you. Hasn’t rejected a single one of your touches in days. Hasn’t really responded to anything at all. Slow hissing sighs and deep inhales, no words, no flinching.
His eye flutters open when you return to stroking his cheek bones with both thumbs. He does not find a look of disgust on your face. Your mouth hangs slightly open, your breaths coming out shallow, and your eyes are full of something like curiosity. Maybe even adoration. He closes his eye again. Can’t bear to be looked at with anything even bordering on love.
You remove the bandage from his ribs. The stitches will need to be removed soon, just starting to scab over. The flesh around his wound is bruised deep, dark purple with tinges of green and yellow. Partially from the initial injury and partially from where you drove your knee into him. You think you may have cracked a rib with the force of it.
Before you can really think twice about it, you dig your thumb in between his ribs. Right over the heart of the hurt. He grabs your wrist and twists until you fall to the side trying to keep it from being wrenched too far. And he’s on top of you again. And there is a fire in his eye and his teeth are bared at you and finally you think. Finally here is the thing you have been so desperate for. A reaction. A sign that he can feel you. That he knows you are there. That he gives a sh*t how you touch him.
But he doesn’t rip you apart like he usually would. Like you’d hoped he might. He drops his forehead to yours and sighs the deepest world weary sigh you may have ever heard and he rolls back off of you. And you think he’s going to go back to his silence. Back to nearly ignoring you.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he says.
“How to do what?”
“This. Being cared for.”
“I don’t know how to do this either.”
“How to do what?”
“Care for someone.”
You kiss him then. Soft, slow, sweet. No ripping claws, no gnashing teeth, no snarling growls, no closed fists or stinging palms. You savor him. Lick into his mouth and taste his tongue with no attempt to swallow it down, to draw him inside your mouth and consume him. You climb atop him without breaking the kiss, bare thighs settling along the line of his torso. He pushes his sweatpants down his hips and within seconds he is buried deep inside you.
You roll your hips against his, one hand propped on the bed beside him and the other fisted in his overgrown hair. Your lips finally part, but you keep your forehead pressed to his, stare into his eye as you move. God he’s so f*cking beautiful. His hands settle on your hips, guiding you back and forth along his length, but there is no urgency, no hard press of bruises into your skin and no jerking of his hips to meet yours.
Your brow furrows and your eyelids start fluttering and he knows you are close, knows you only need a little more to push you over the edge. He slips his thumb over your cl*t, the barest brush, and feels you clench tight around him. He presses down firmly, letting the roll of your hips do most of the work, and then you are coming, clenching and unclenching around him in such an exquisite way. He pulls you fully down onto him, thrusts into your wet heat a few more times and comes deep inside you with a gasp like the wind was punched out of him.
You fall asleep like that, tangled in each other.
He spends a couple days watching your routines. Something a bit voyeuristic about it. He doesn’t usually comment or participate. It’s almost as if he isn’t there.
You wake up in the morning and stare at the ceiling for a while, mentally preparing, he supposes. You eventually drag your laptop off the side table and sign into work for the day. You always pee during the first break in the flow of emails, leaving the door open like you normally would, like he isn’t there.
You climb back into bed and work a while longer before heading to the kitchen to grab a bag of chips or leftover takeout and a glass of tea. You bring it back to the bed and eat while you watch youtube videos or read on your phone, usually leaving the dishes and trash on your side table until later.
He usually takes a quick shower while you eat. He closes the door so he doesn’t disturb you. Uses your body wash and your shampoo to clean himself. Movements slow and sore in a way he tries not to let you see, becoming less so everyday.
He stares at himself in the mirror. Trying to get used to his new face. Nothing looks quite right anymore, though he supposes that makes sense. Seeing it all through one eye now. He dresses, brushes his teeth, uses one of your silly little floss picks since you don’t have real floss. He shaves, finally. And it helps a little. Makes him feel a little more like himself in the mirror, though his hair is too long.
You shower in mid afternoon, when you can afford to be away from your computer a bit longer. He can see your shower from his place in your bed. You don’t bother to close the door. You strip bare and toss your clothes in the overflowing hamper.
Sometimes you wash your hair, but today you don’t. You use a loofah that has certainly seen better days to scrub your body. You run a razor over your armpits. You squeeze face wash onto your palm, rub your hands together, wash your face under the spray of the shower.
You get out and wrap a towel around your hair, use another to quickly dry your body. You throw on a big tshirt and a pair of panties and move to get right back in the bed.
“Brush your teeth,” he calls just as you step out of the bathroom. You grumble under your breath and do as he says.
“Did you floss?” He knows you didn’t.
“No.” You flop back onto the bed, seemingly exhausted by the process of maintaining your body.
“Go floss your teeth.”
“No. You go floss your f*cking teeth.”
Dave gets out of bed and you think he is going to be petty. You think he is going to floss his teeth. He goes into the bathroom and grabs the bag of floss picks. He returns to the edge of the bed and tosses the bag into your lap.
“Floss your f*cking teeth.”
“Why do you even give a sh*t?” He does not know why he gives a sh*t. He just does.
“If you don’t do it, I’ll do it for you.” It does not sound like an offer to help. It sounds like a threat. You throw the bag of floss picks on the floor, several of them spilling out and skittering across the hardwood. Dave’s face darkens. He retrieves the floss picks, tosses the bag onto the bed. And then he is on you, your hands pinned above your head and his thighs trapping your torso.
You twist and buck, letting out a near feral growl. You try to headbutt him and he dodges it, but loosens his grip on your wrists. You launch yourself at him, trying to use his flinch to knock him off of you. He grabs your shoulders and wrenches you back down, settling his knees on your armpits to keep you there.
“f*ck you.” Oh you are pissed. How dare he make you do anything.
“Sit still.” He grabs your jaw in his right hand, digging his fingers in where it hinges until you’re forced to open your mouth. Your frustrated scream is garbled. You try to close your mouth and only succeed in biting down on your own cheeks. He takes a floss pick in the fingers of his left hand.
The gentleness with which he flosses your teeth for you is at such stark contrast with the violence of his grip on your jaw. Despite this, you still taste blood. You close your eyes in shame. Hot tears leaking from the corners of your eyes. Dave finishes, lets go of your face, strokes his thumbs through your tear tracks.
“Look at me.”
You open your eyes, staring defiantly at the ceiling, and your lip trembles with the effort of containing your breakdown.
“Honey, look at me. Please?” Your eyes snap to his then. He’s never called you that, or anything really. “Why are you crying?” He couldn’t have hurt you. He’d been careful, so careful, not to hurt you. So different from his usual touches. He eases his knees off of you, but stays straddling you, holding your face in his hands.
You close your eyes again, squeeze them shut as if it will keep him from seeing you. “Embarrassed.” You mumble it, so quiet he wouldn’t be able to hear it if he wasn’t so close. He gets it then, but he isn’t sure what to do. What do you say when you have embarrassed someone without meaning to, when you do not think they have any reason at all to be embarrassed?
He kisses you. Soft at first and then hard in the way it always is. But also not in the way it always is. He tries to tell you, with this kiss, that he simply wants to care for you. That he does not know how, the same way you do not know how. That you are both trying.
You bite his lip hard enough to draw blood. Blood for blood, you think. He takes your hands in his again and holds them above your head, shifting both your wrists into one hand. He wraps his other hand around your jaw like before, dragging your mouth open. He spits onto your tongue, watches it drip down to the back of your throat.
“Swallow,” he commands it, but does not release your jaw. You swallow his spit with your mouth open, nearly choking with the effort. His fingers slide down and latch around your throat. Your eyes flutter shut and you buck your hips, chasing friction. He looks down at you in awe. Your tear soaked face. Your wet hair. Your spit and blood soaked lips.
“Gorgeous,” he whispers. And that is a new name too. He releases your hands and slips down your body, pulls your panties off and tosses them into the floor. You don’t move your hands from where he had them pinned down, but you crane your neck to watch him strip bare.
You think he is gorgeous too. Body scarred and mottled blue and yellow and green. Marked with you as much as anything else. Mine, you think. You have made him yours. Others may have had some other version of David York, but this one is yours and you will not let him go without making sure it is clear he was yours once.
He settles between your thighs and pins your hips down with a forearm. He thrusts two fingers of his other hand inside you. You cry out and grind into them, hands immediately flying to his hair. He drops his mouth to your cl*t, sucks it between his teeth and bites down. You pull his hair hard, but he only doubles down. f*cking you with his fingers and rolling your cl*t between his teeth.
You can’t do anything but take it with the way he has you pinned down. You claw at his shoulder, the nape of his neck, try to push his head away, but he doesn’t stop. And then you see white, coming with a shudder as your ears fill with a high pitched ringing.
Before you can come down, he’s thrusting himself inside you. He sits back on his heels and wraps his arms around your thighs, using them to pull you onto his co*ck with every thrust. You close your eyes at the overwhelming, overstimulating pleasure.
“Look at me,” he roars. He won’t let you hide from him. He locks his eye with yours as he f*cks you, jaw set in a hard line. You reach for him and he obliges, leaning over you and folding you nearly in half with the motion.
You wrap your arms around him and dig your nails into his shoulder blades. You can feel his back muscles shifting with every thrust. If you dig your fingers in deep enough maybe you could watch the way his muscles work beneath that expanse of golden skin.
His eye bores into your left one and he imagines falling inside it, falling inside of you and staying there forever. Safe and cared for in a way he has not ever known and isn’t sure he ever will. He could stay inside you forever. You are so warm and wet and tight. A space seemingly carved out for him to fill.
He dips his head and sucks your nipple into his mouth, rolls the bud between his teeth. He drags his lips back up to your throat. Presses his lips to your pulse. He can feel your heartbeat here. Could dig his teeth in and feel all that warm and wet inside you gush over his tongue. f*ck he wants all of you. Every bit of you. An endless cycle of wanting to consume you and be consumed by you that makes his head spin.
Your hands find the back of his head and push him deeper into the crook of your neck. He sucks the skin over your jugular between his teeth and bites down hard. Your whole body seizes and spasms around him, coming as soon as the points of his teeth sink into your skin and he follows you instantly, drawn out by the way you shout his name.
He rolls off of you and pulls you against him, still craving the heat of your skin against his. He draws your thigh over his legs, wraps his arm around your body, buries his face in your hair.
“Do you wanna take a shower with me?” Despite both of you showering earlier, a sheen of sweat and blood and saliva coats you both. He pulls you impossibly closer to him.
“Yeah, honey. In a minute.”
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