Calluses Pt. 07: Repeat

When had I started quivering all over? How long had I been sluggishly grinding my hips up into him, trapped between his thin, steely thighs...softly moaning for him, deep and weak and barely there?

It didn't matter. He was doing the same, matching my slow, aching rhythm...but much harder, vital and hungry, crushing my injured ass down into the creaking bed with each greedy, savory thrust of his hips. He was so light and limber on top of me, yet sinewy and strong...funneling all his weight down into his clumsy, eager groin like a horny kid on prom night...nothing like the Chief...but it didn't matter. It was enough. I was barely conscious either way, floating above it all...letting it happen...

"I've wanted to do this since the first day I met you, you smug prick..." He was nibbling at my face with tender little gasps, bolder by the second. The rhythm of his hips picked up the pace, left me behind...now undulating back and forth, side to side, churning me like butter. I could feel my raw, swollen cock burping trickles of precum every time his hard crotch smashed down into my naked groin. His teeth were nipping my earlobe, and my balls were throbbing painfully against me, and soon everything below his rib cage was hellbent on grinding me down into the mattress until I was nothing but pulp...

...and then he was pulling off me, his hard skinny hands running down the wounded landscape of my pale torso, reveling in my silky black body hair, his voice moaning with lust far above...and then he was grunting with effort, fingers digging into my skin, lifting my greater bulk...turning me over. My muscles were screaming, begging me to let them rest, but I ignored them. He was doing all the work anyway, yanking and shoving my body until I was on my knees, face and chest smashed against the rumpled blankets, bruised cock flopping between my thighs as he turned my bare ass to face him...

He stopped, his ragged panting pinched off into silence, the grip of his hand on my ass unraveling...holding me steady...

"Oh...oh Jesus, Mike!" he squeaked. His voice had changed in an instant, now the farthest thing from husky, or horny, or hateful...in fact, it almost sounded like he wanted to cry. "Why didn't you tell me...?"

My dick was going soft again at the sobering quality of his words, and I felt something like relief...until I realized what he was looking at, in all its vivid, disgusting detail. The flesh of my furry, brutalized ass cheeks had settled into a dark, ruddy shade of bruised red. The pair of deep, ugly woundshis teeth had left on my upper thigh were still open and raw, and I could feel a trickle of blood running down my leg. My hole was exposed to the drafty air between us...puffy and wounded, certainly...but now I knew it was worse than I'd imagined, that the woundhe'd left inside of me could be seen on the outside as well.

Get off me, I tried to tell him, but all that came out was a wheezy, angry sob. I let it die against the mattress, made myself go numb again. I fell onto my side, drawing the blankets over me, wanting to fade into nothing...

...but he was pulling me up from the bed with the same lithe, determined strength he'd been using to manhandle me moments before. "Stand up, man, work with me here...there you go..." I was standing again on my rickety legs, painfully aware of the harsh, hideous crush of reality as it rushed in to eat me alive...but his voice was kind, and it cared about me, so I listened to it.

"I'm so fucking sorry, man..." He was dabbing something against my hip, and a razor sting blossomed there, spreading across my skin - under it. I smelled rubbing alcohol, felt the cotton swabs, and was glad he'd thought to do that. Human mouths were nasty...I'd read that somewhere...

"I don't know what I was thinking, but when - I couldn't just let you keep pushing me around like that, you know? You're a big dude, and you were acting really crazy, so I had to...you know?" He was babbling, most of his focus devoted to the wound in front of him. "But then, when you were...when we were...shit, I've never done anything like that before, ever, but I didn't know you'd been..." He didn't say the word. I was grateful for that, because I didn't want to hear it...but how wonderful it would've been, how sweetly sad, if he'd never found out in the first place...

He shook his head and smoothed the edges of a large, square-ish bandaid over the wound, then snapped his first aid kit shut. Of course he had one of those. "That'll do - but I'm taking you to the hospital, okay? Right now. Do you need help getting...?"

I didn't answer, afraid of what my voice might do if I tried to use it. I just pulled a fresh set of clothes onto my body, wincing and slow, careful...and soon enough I was covered again, warm and hidden...but I wasn't meeting his eyes, and he wasn't meeting mine. Now that our short bout of insanity had passed, and our boners along with it...even the air around us felt wrong.

I pushed all that beneath me as I pulled on my heavy jacket, limping as I followed him out the door...

"Sec," I muttered to no one. The laptop had been wedged between the mattress and the wall, half-covered by my pillow. I grabbed it and slid it under my jacket, secret and safe, and still he said nothing. I followed Kevin's slender form out into the cold, white world, glad he was finally done asking questions.

The drive to the hospital was a silent blur. I let myself sink back into total indifference once more, and found it was a comfort. I let everything that was happening freeze over, like a rushing river trapped under a sheet of ice, a numbing separation. Automatic doors opened like jaws, and then Kevin was talking to someone behind a counter, and the lights were harsh and sickeningly bright, and the air was sour, like vomit buried under layers of bleach and flowery acids. I let Kevin hold onto the laptop while I filled out sheet after sheet of paperwork, autopilot again, and finished without registering anything I'd written...and then I was following a chunky nurse down a white hallway and into a closed room, just the two of us, and she was asking me all kinds of questions, casually invasive...but I was answering them, letting her look at my neck, the rest of me, and realized I was cold again, wearing nothing but a hospital gown. I couldn't recall undressing, or if I'd been alone while doing it...but I was used to being naked in front of people by then, and too exhausted to care.

I couldn't look her in the eye. Just like Kevin, she knew very well I'd been attacked, and it wasn't just the physical trauma she was examining. She saw it went much deeper, that my mind had been wounded along with everything else. Part of me wondered if I'd ever be able to look at anyone again without feeling so hideously exposed...

She cleaned the bite wound on my upper thigh all over again, and declared it wouldn't need stitches at least. She covered it with ointment and a bandage and told me I'd have to do the same for a while, that I'd have to take antibiotics as well. She asked if I wanted a male nurse for the next part, but I shook my head. She was an older woman, large and pillowy and detached, the furthest thing from him, so I let her look at what he'd done. She didn't seem too worried afterwards, said I wouldn't need stitches there either. She talked about fiber and rest and drinking lots of water...but I was already tuning her out again, nodding along and staring at the paint on the wall.

She didn't seem surprised when I avoided telling her the specifics of the "incident," and the name of the person responsible...that I had no intention of reporting it at all, that I didn't want any cops involved. She just accepted these things and moved on, giving me a tetanus shot, and drawing some blood. She was saying my throat should recover in a week or so if I rested my voice, then describing the medications I'd be taking, just in case...

"Are you sure you don't want to report this, honey?" she asked. Her voice was warmer now, tugging at me. She was trying to coax me into looking at her, but I couldn't. I knew it would only release the river, make me feel something again - make all of this far too real.

I shrugged, looking at my hands. "It wasn't really a..." I started to say, but my throat felt like raw meat. I swallowed. "It got bad at the end, but I asked for...told him he could. Well, I mean..." I shrugged again. I didn't know what to say, or how to say it, or if it even mattered.

"Sometimes words don't change a thing, hon. Sometimes both parties know exactly what's happening. And what happened here wasn't anything you asked for."

I heard her words...but I didn't process them. I shut them under the ice, carried away by the river beneath.

She left a neatly packed manila folder on top of my folded clothes when everything was done, full of xeroxed printouts about self care, and support groups, and other standard bits. She also slipped in a blue post-it note with a phone number written on it. "You can call me if you ever need to talk, okay sweetie? Even if I can't answer right away, I'll always call you back - but only if you want to. Just make sure you talk to somebody, at least. When you're ready. Alright?"

I just nodded, and she left, and I took my time getting dressed.

I was back under the bright lights, at the counter again, and a woman with gigantic glasses was asking me for money, softly explaining that there was a co-pay, since I hadn't pressed any charges. I was searching my pockets, and realizing I'd stupidly left my wallet in my jeans, the ones I'd stuffed into the trashcan in the bathroom back at the dorm. I was feeling something again, the heat of a rising panic that threatened to shatter the ice like molten glass - but Kevin was there, pulling out his own wallet. He gently nudged my shoulder with his until I stepped to the side, and the panic was gone. I should have been grateful...but I only felt small again. Helpless. Worthless...

I winced and steadied myself as I lowered my rear onto the car seat outside. The smaller hurts had melted away with the pain meds, or perhaps I'd finally gotten used to them - but the larger ones were only getting worse.

He placed the laptop in my hands when I'd finally gotten buckled in. I'd forgotten about it somehow, and I felt a jolt of fear that he'd opened it, looked inside -

I turned to him with a start, met his eyes, and knew he hadn't. "Thanks," I managed to say, so thin it was almost a whisper. He just nodded with a quick, tired smile, and started the car.

In time we were back in our room again, as if we'd never left, but I didn't think about it. Kevin went to his desk without a word, put on his headphones, and got back to whatever he'd been doing before I'd interrupted his life. I went into the bathroom to retrieve my keys and phone and wallet, then stuffed the soiled jeans back into the overstuffed trash bag. Before I tied it shut, I balled up the blue note with the nurse's number scribbled across it, and tossed it in with the rest.

Kevin's desk lamp would be on well into the night, but it didn't matter. His fingers were softly typing, ready to lull me to sleep like falling rain. I slid the laptop under my mattress, peeled off my pants, and collapsed into the blankets. I was unconscious before I'd even closed my eyes, and I dreamed...

...the town was old, and stained, and drowning in white. The streets were empty and silent, frozen by the night. A black police cruiser was idling in a vacant lot between crumbling concrete walls, surrounded by sloppy graffiti and shattered wine bottles, its blue-red lights flashing lazily between streaks of fluttering snow...

***

I don't remember much about the following week, other than fighting off an anxiety attack at the sight of blood on the toilet paper whenever I used the bathroom. Jennifer had sent me a barrage of increasingly pissy, unanswered texts the previous weekend, but none since I'd returned.

I didn't think about it. I just went to my classes, soothed well enough by the routine. I spoke to no one, avoiding any texts I received once I was sure they weren't from him, until my friends gave up and stopped sending them. I could tell the giant bruise on my neck was distracting more than a few of the other students, and even a professor or two...but I got wise, and started going to class with my jacket zipped up to the base of my jaw. I spent my time filling my head with notes and other meaningless information, and pretended life was normal.

It was harder to pretend whenever I went back to the dorm room, of course. Kevin and I hadn't spoken since that Sunday, which should have been normal, as it had been for months...but the tension in the room was palpable, unrelenting, like a wound rotting under a bandage. I didn't think about that, either...at least, I tried not to.

I received a discreetly marked letter from the hospital at some point, detailing whatever they'd billed my insurance company, along with a sheet of paper that declared my system free of drugs and STDs. This lifted a low pool of worry I hadn't even noticed until that moment, even if it was only one among many...still, I simply put those papers in my top drawer along with the others, ready to forget about them and everything they tried to make me feel.

***

I found myself walking across campus one windy evening, less than a week later, heading for Jennifer's dorm. We still hadn't communicated, or even seen one another...but it was a big campus, and the semester was starting to ramp up, and the snow had kept many people inside before it melted...so I chose to believe things were normal between us, more or less. It wasn't like we'd ever been dating; we weren't even friends, really. Just a regular outlet, a reliable booty call...but we'd always liked each other well enough, and she was the only girl I knew.

I had been thinking about her a lot over the last few days, until the lurking urge to see her again had overwhelmed everything else, and I finally felt like something good might happen. I wanted to smell her fruity scent as I buried my face in her soft black curls, and let her take control for once. I wanted to hear her silky, soothing voice invite me inside, and I saw no reason it wouldn't...especially now that most of my bruises had faded, and my limp was almost gone, and my voice no longer sounded like a ragged cough. Instead of waiting to lose my nerve, I had just zipped up my jacket, walked out the door...and now I was here, standing in front of hers, wondering what I was going to say.

She answered by the second knock, peeking out from her shadowy room with squinting brown eyes that widened when they saw me. "Oh...!" She leaned out, wearing a tight robe and nothing else, smooth brown skin against lush purple felt. I wanted to touch her there, wanted her to open the robe and wrap it around me, hold me close...I blinked, tried not to stare, but she'd already seen me looking. "Hey Mike. Did you text me, or...?"

I stuffed my hands deep into the pockets of my jacket, shifting from one foot to another, trying to figure out why I hadn't given her that common courtesy. It was the only thing we'd ever expected from one another. "Yeah, sorry...I didn't think about that. Sorry." I tried to catch her eyes with mine, the first real effort I'd made to connect with another person in over a week, even for a second...and she even let me, and my belly was quivering...but only for a second. She was looking past me now. Through me.

"So...what's up?" she asked. I let myself believe she wanted to know, even if she wasn't opening the door any wider.

I shrugged...and then the words were coming out of my mouth, words I didn't know I needed to say. "Some things have been bugging me, so I just wanted to...apologize for something, I guess? If that's cool?"

"For what...?" She was confused.

What are you doing...

"I'm sorry if I ever made you feel...uh...if I ever took things too far, when we were...whenever we met up. Things were like...intense? Rough, a few times? And I always just assumed you were into it, but I guess it kinda hit me that I never really...asked you if it was cool? Ever. I just went with it." I sighed, and it was shaky. Ready to break. "I know we never really talked all that much, so I just wanted to make sure you never felt...like that. Like you couldn't tell me to, uh...chill out, I guess. I don't ever want to be that way."

I looked up from my boots, and found her face. I don't know what I expected to see there...but it shut me up.

There was no matronly compassion, no well of understanding...just a polite glimmer of pity over a painful, grimacing frown. Like she just wanted me to disappear, and take my problems with me.

She knew, I realized. She'd seen it all over my face, when I'd burst into the room covered in bruises and smelling like sex, haunted by the thing I was running from. She knew, and she didn't want to care...and now I'd just made it even worse, because I was creeping her the fuck out. It made my entire body heat up until I was burning all over, armpits drenched in sweat, blurring the edges of my vision...

You're an idiot.

"Who's that...?" called a muffled voice, deep and groggy from the darkness behind her.

Jennifer scowled at nothing in particular, almost as mortified as I was. "This is...kind of awkward, Mike. You really should've asked before..." She glanced behind her, into the room, at the guy in her bed. "Look...you never did anything like that. We're fine. But you know we weren't, like...exclusive. Right?" Her voice was softer now, almost a whisper, but her eyes were crystal clear. "We were always straight about that..."

"Of course, yeah. Of course." I wanted to tell her that wasn't even the point, that it had nothing to do with anything...but I was trying not to melt into the floor, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. "Sorry I didn't text you. I'm gonna...I'm gonna go now. See you around." I turned to leave as the hallway twisted like a funhouse mirror, static roaring in my ears.

"Hey," she called after me, and I stopped. She had retreated even further into her room, just a pretty head with a mane of black curls. Her face was softer now, kinder...but only because I was leaving. "Get some help, okay Mike? You should really talk to somebody..."

I turned away and left for good.

She shut her door quickly, and locked the deadbolt, and I told myself she would've done that anyway.

The sun was setting. The world was getting quiet and dark...and the thought of returning to my room to study, of sitting ten feet from Kevin and pretending I didn't want to scream - I couldn't do that. I got into my car instead, drove right out of campus...and I just kept driving. I knew Jennifer wasn't my soulmate or anything, but I thought she'd at least let me come in, let me lose myself in her for old time's sake...but I'd let myself forget that she was just another person, and we didn't really know each other very well. I just wanted to talk about something real, for once. I thought I'd feel safe enough to do that in her arms, even if they were soft and slim...even if they'd never make me feel as utterly, undeniably secure as his strong, steely limbs...pulling me against his hard, muscular body, muting everything I was under the sultry armor of his embrace...high on his druglike musk...

I bit my cheek, because it wasn't him I wanted. It was the feeling. I just wanted someone, anyone to hold me...but I hated that newfound weakness, because it was just another thing he'd done to me. A way I had changed. So I turned my brain off, and let my hands and feet take my car wherever they wanted to go, assuming it wouldn't matter, as long as I was alone...

I don't know how long I'd been driving on the highway before I finally read the words on an exit sign, and came to my senses. I was heading north and west, toward the town of Meter...toward him.