“Tommy.” My name is a firm warning, and his intense stare darkens. Very deliberately, he starts to open the lid of the jar. “Tell me the truth.”
“You don’t believe me?” I demand, angry. Scared. “Are you calling me a liar?”
I am. Iama liar. But fuck him for calling me one.
“I have no evidence that you take care of yourself to my standards. All I’ve seen from you regarding your own comfort and safety is an attitude of casual unconcern.”
“I’ll take such good care of you.”The echoes of my past make me flinch. My dream haunts me.
“And what would being worried about my health and safety even get me?” I demand, my eyes drawn to the open jar, to the hypnotically slow way he sets the lid down. “There’s no use worrying about what I can’t change.”
“The cream is right here,” he points out. “I’ll give it to you. You could take it and use it, and it’s fully within your power todo so.” He waits, the room thickening with tension, before finally asking me in a threatening tone: “But you won’t, will you? You lied.”
A tingling, scary, vulnerable feeling hits me and I take a step back. His quick eyebrow twitch pisses me off, like he sees my emotional reaction and is confused by it; it’s not fucking fair that he’s a brick wall and I’m an open book.
“I’m lying?!” I demand, throwing my arms wide, trying to be big. “Me?! You’re the one who put the bruises there, Young-gi. You’re the one who said you wanted to correct me. Don’t backtrack on me now, and play all caring and concerned. My comfort? My safety? Fuck you! You want to beat my ass? Fine! You want to be rough with me? Then get rough! But I’m not gonna let you play doctor just to make yourself feel better about it. You can do whatever the fuck you want, but shit like that? It doesn’t help at all. It’s fucked up, it’s all twisted. And I refuse to say thanks for putting a Band-Aid on an issueyoucaused. I won’t owe you or anyone else a goddamn thing ever again!”
Silence. This man uses silences like a lever, pulling on my insides and dragging more out of me than I ever intend to show. I make an inarticulate sound of rage.
“What?! Nothing to say?”
Without breaking eye contact, Young-gi puts the open jar down on the counter. “Why do you think I want to check your bruises, Tommy?”
“You…”
I don’t want to say it, so obvious and ugly; that I think he’s trying to control me, to own me, to manipulate me. That makes me sound crazy; italwaysmade me sound crazy when I tried to tellhim, the man who made me this way, that what he was doing didn’t feel like love. It made me sound insane.
“You…” I try again, mentally spinning.
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.”
