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Forcing you to sit on the edge of the bed, Jake seized your arm, shoved it up to your face so you could see the gouges you had made in your soft flesh. Blood dribbled down and off your elbow, staining the white towel and white comforter.
"Look what you're doing!"
You jerked your attention away, grinding your teeth. He grabbed you by the chin, forced you to look back at your arm.
"Look. What. You're. Doing," he hissed.
Tears welled in your eyes. You squeezed them shut, shook your head.
"You are hurting Steven and Marc. And you're hurting yourself. That is unacceptable! ¿Me entiendes?"
You shook your head violently, tried to jerk your arm out of his hand. Blood seeped into the towel from both sides, your legs and other arm still oozing.
"Understood!?"
A sob burst out of you, and you thrashed. Your free hand pummeled not Jake, as he expected, but yourself, punching your abused thigh hard enough for him to feel the impact through your whole body. "I can't," you cried. "I can't, I can't, I can't, Ican'tIcan'tIcan'tIcan't-"
Seizing your other wrist, Jake shoved you down onto the bed as you thrashed, straddling your thighs to protect them from yourself. You thrashed again, your body taut as though possessed by some demon unwilling to be exorcised.
"Enough."
The single word and the command behind it made you still. Tears still streamed down your face, and you wouldn't look at his eyes, but your fighting diminished, replaced instead with abject despair.
"Mírame," he ordered.
Biting your lip, you shook your head.
"Look at me."
Your attention slowly fixed on him, your head moving as though each action creaked deep inside you. Jake stared hard into your face, his own grim, bordering on dangerous.
"You will stop this," he said, his words simple but heavy. "You will not scare Steven and Marc like this again."
"It's inside me," you whispered, choking on the words. "I am trapped, and I can't get out. I need to get out."
"You are hurting yourself."
"I don't care! I don't fucking care! It's better than doing nothing and feeling like I'm crawling in my own skin! It's better than feeling like I'm burning from hot and cold and I'm going to die! I have to do something and I can't do anything." You thrashed again, bucking up against his hips, and then sagged back onto the bed, another sob wrenching free, though you clenched your teeth hard to keep it contained. "I'm fucking helpless!"
It was like looking at Steven from behind Marc's eyes, seeing the most pure of the three broken and battered. Jake felt a rather distant feeling, though present nonetheless, constrict his chest as he watched the tears stream down your face. Helpless? He understood it.
Relinquishing your hands, he sat up, still on your thighs. "Hit me."
Confusion contorted your distressed features as you swallowed back another cry. "W-what?"
"Hit me."
Trembling beneath him, you shook your head. "You're such a fucking man," you managed to say, some of your sarcastic defensiveness returning. "I'm not going to hit you."
"Because you're helpless."
Your lips twisted into a grimace. "Get off me."
"Make me."
"I'm fucking serious."
"So am I."
Your anxiety and panic, so focused moments before, coalesced into something different as you stared up at this man looming above you, his expression earnest, provocative. You should have felt fear, but instead anger replaced it.
You shoved against his chest.
He rocked back but remained in place, teeth showing behind his lips. "Pathetic."
"Fuck you."
"You're helpless because you let yourself be, mujer. You don't even try."
"I do," you snapped, tears pushing at your eyes again, hot and furious. "I fucking try, and it isn't enough."
"Because you aren't enough. Because you like to be used."
You shoved him again, then a third time, hurt and rage driving you. He laughed, the sound grating against your ears.
You shoved up with your hips and slammed into his chest.
He sprawled off the bed, landing on his back on the floor.
Then you were on him, swinging wildly, pummeling his chest with your fists, your arms stinging in the air as your wounds, already trying to scab over, broke open anew. How dare he say that? How dare he speak so close to the truth?
Pounding against him, you heard yourself yelling, a guttural thing emerging from deep inside yourself. The pit of cold nestled at the base of your belly shifted, unmoored by your anger. You couldn't feel anything but the need to hurt, to inflict pain on something in the way it had been inflicted on you. Years of exhaustion, of fighting yourself and hating yourself and hating everything that made you you, not just the compulsions but the self-hate, boiled over, a kettle screaming inside your brain.
Let it out, let it out, letitoutletitout! And then you were spent, hanging over Jake's chest, arms trembling from exertion, everything inside you ponderous and worn out, leaden.
The cold in your stomach was gone.
Jake watched the fear and panic and anger slough off your face, replaced by weariness and relief. Not one of your punches had done any serious damage to him, though he had felt the full force of your fury behind them. He recognized it, the blinding rage that had been suppressed for years, shoved so deep beneath the surface it had lurked in the depths, growing in the darkness.
He sat up with you in his lap, hands settling on your hips. Though his fingers gripped bare flesh, you hadn't yet realized that the towel had slipped off you, baring him to you entirely. He couldn't resist glancing down, taking you all in, before looking back into your face, your attention slowly coming into focus on him.
Less than inches away from your face, he felt your breath push against his lips. His hands kept you anchored firmly against his pelvis.
Tremors rolled through you as though you were wracked by orgasmic aftershocks.
He leaned forward, almost touching your lips, and then moved past, brushing against your jaw as he pressed his mouth against the shell of your ear. A shiver coursed through you, felt in his hands and his pelvis. He smiled to himself, but his tone was edged.
"If you ever think about laying a hand on yourself again, you will come to me," he stated, his breath ghosting over your ear, "and we will fix it."
