Black Beauty- Steve HarringtonxOC

Chapter 12

She can't think. She can't stand, her thighs protesting while she drags her body to the rear of the bus. A dark splotch on her wrist peeks over her sleeve when her arms extend and pull herself further. The number glares up at her. She ignores it, staring ahead at her goal.

Food.

It waits for her patiently, situated in boxes under the rearmost seats. They were shoved out of the way in preparation for the recent battle. A plethora of varied foodstuffs was gifted to her, each donation a seemingly random selection of non-perishables. Cans of beans, fruits, and even meat. Filly drags it out and blindly grabs for sustenance.

A can of peaches is the first thing she opens, knowing it only by the taste on her tongue. She forgoes checking labels and using silverware, slurping down the saccharine syrup along with the chunks. Unscrewing the top of a jar of sausages, she dumps them into her mouth altogether, giving them minimal chewing and forcing it down.

It's not enough. She shoves more and more into her mouth, contrasting juices flowing freely down her chin and dribbling their way along her neck. In her first year out of captivity, she didn't have the quantity of food to facilitate this kind of feast. From the meager amounts she could scavenge, she ate what would spoil and kept what wouldn't, rationing it stringently. It was a habit she doesn't want to break, one that keeps her from decimating her food stores. Normally, she would eat just enough to quell the hunger pains. But right now, she can't keep from gorging herself. She doesn't stop until she drops a sixth empty can at her side.

Her thoughts are back to being coherent and rational. She no longer grimaces from the raw pain in her tummy. Her stomach feels weighted, heavy with consumption. When she shifts to lean against the seat, her elbow brushes against the lump in her bag and she remembers the vegetable she'd swiped earlier in the day. A simple yet delicious end to the meal.

"Is that blood?"

Filly's head zips up, her eyes flicking over Steve's form. His extremities look healthy and intact. He doesn't limp to the seat across from her. He's unharmed, she thinks, releasing a tension she didn't know she was holding in her shoulders. His knees encase her where she resides on the floor and she gives a relieved sigh at his comforting presence, but she realizes he spoke to her and she hadn't heard a lick of it. "Pardon?" she responds, doing nothing when his hand grips her chin and tilts her head. Steve, squinting at her from above, takes her appearance in grimly. She follows the gentle movement of his fingers, taking what almost feels like pleasure in his doting.

She doesn't understand it. Orderlies and scientists had looked her over thousands of times and all she had ever felt was disgust. She'd felt like a lab rat being inspected for the results of an experiment, a show dog being examined to ensure they fit the breed standard. She felt like an object. What Steve is doing to her is a mirror image of what they had done to her almost daily.

"How are you feeling today, Seven?"

"Not hiding anything, I hope."

"Hands on the wall. Got anything I should know about?"

Years of careful inspection had made her weary. Distrustful, even, though no one would know it by the way she lets him handle her.

It feels nothing like it did at the lab. It feels nice. Steve's hands are warm if a bit clammy. The calloused pads of his fingers grip her softly. A rough thumb strokes over the point of her chin and down her throat, sending tingles through her. She can't help but shudder as something unknown dances in her belly and tickles her chest. This new sensation couldn't be more different from the lab, when bile rose in her throat and fear gripped her. But she should've known because Steve is nothing like them. "You look like shit. What the hell happened after I left the bus?" he says, disrupting her introspection, the feeling of his hands on her making her stomach flip. It turns her content sour, something in her head telling her to break the spell and look away.