To Be A Prize

Chapter 19

Karl rushes into the kitchen and grabs a cloth before reaching forward to wrap it around my wrist. Instead, I snatch it from his hands and roughly tie it over the stinging cut.

"I can do it myself," I say harshly, briefly making eye contact with the man who I once thought I'd spend the rest of my life with.

"I know," Karl replies, worry causing his eyebrows to droop, "you've always been able to look after yourself." His hand, the same one that used to hold me at night when I couldn't sleep, hovers above my wrist, waiting for permission to touch me.

"Don't let us interrupt," Dream says, breaking the silence in the room that had settled in the space between me and Karl.

"Is no one else thinking that we should get y/n to the hospital? That cut looks pretty deep," Sapnap, the ever typical voice of reason, interjects.

"If you think that's deep I pity any girl you've ever slept with," Punz smirks, earning a snicker from the other boys.

"Oh please, we all know little Sappynappy is still a virgin, he's never even been touched by a girl" Dream laughs, tagging onto the end of Punz's joke. Sapnap once again flushes a shade of bright red at the boys' teasing.

"And you'd know all about not being touched, wouldn't you Dream," my sarcasm brings the attention back to me as all the boys, bar Dream, look at me questioningly, "how are you feeling by the way? Still blue?" Dream stares straight at me, shifting in his seat as if remembering our previous uncomfortable encounter, the corner of his mouth lifts in a smirk but I just meet his look with an innocent pout.

Karl is the first to understand the euphemism, tensing up and turning from me to Dream.

"Calm down, nothing happened," Dream reasons with Karl who's jaws clenches at the unspoken suggestion that Dream and I had gotten closer than he would have liked.

"Nothing between Dream and I, at least," I said, running my tongue over my teeth looking pointedly at Punz who had sense enough to shut up. Enjoying the growing spectacle, and always one to stir the pot I continue, "isn't that right Punz?"

Karl slowly moves his stare from Dream to the man now shrinking into his chair. Punz's eyes plead with me to be quiet, full of desperation not too dissimilar from the way he'd looked at me earlier this evening.

Sapnap decided to use the break in the conversation as an opportunity to tend to long slit along my wrist that was still dripping blood onto the floor, albeit at a slower pace than when it first opened. Collecting a first aid kit from the kitchen that I didn't know existed, the shortest of the men methodically cleans the wound with an antibacterial wipe, avoiding eye contact with me. I grimace as it glides over the clean edges of the wound.

"Sorry," he smiles apologetically, briefly looking me in the eye before dipping his attention back to my arm as if embarrassed by his short-lived confidence.

Before I could smile back at Sapnap, sudden raised voices snap my attention back to the drama unfolding between Punz and Karl.

Dipping back into their argument, Punz exclaims "oh please, so when everyone else breaks the rules it's fine but I kiss her the fucking world's gonna end? Give me a break."

"You did what?" Dream demands, joining the shouting match and walking round the table to tower over Punz who is now cornered between the two men like a trapped animal.

But unlike a trapped animal, Punz refuses to back down. "I kissed her whilst she begged me to take her upstairs and fuck her."

On the sidelines I turn to Sapnap and laugh at his disbelief, "I did. I did do that."

"And don't act so innocent after I saw you with your thumb in her mouth, your little bulge pressed against your jeans as you imagined your dick in its place," Punz continues, revealing the full scale of the event that had occurred between Dream and I.

"So both of you have now tried to fuck my girlfriend?" Karl asks, a vein in his neck pulsating with rage.

"Girlfriend? Who the fuck says I'm your girlfriend still?" I interject at the insinuation that I would stay with a man who treated me as awfully as he did just to abandon me when it was convenient for him.

"Not now, y/n," Karl retorts, not even giving me the courtesy of turning round and looking at me whilst he silences me like a 1950's housewife, "stay out of this."

"Don't speak to her like that," Punz says, coming to my defence, Dream nodding along.

"You know what, I've had it up to here with you butting into my relationship, Punz. Why don't you go home and jerk off like you normally do," Karl spits, determined to be seen as the alpha male in this pissing match.

In retaliation, Punz throws a punch in Karl's direction, who leaps across the table and grabs Punz by the collar of his shirt and before long a fully fledged fight is occurring in my sitting room whilst Sapnap and I stare on in bewilderment. Dream, who seems more amused than anything by the brawl, sits with his arms crossed over his chest, leaning back against his chair with a charmed smile on his face.

"Do something," says Sapnap, his attention turned to me.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do?" I reply, surprised at his suggestion, "teach these idiots to talk with their words, not their fists? I'm not their mother," before adding with a smirk, "besides, this is kind of turning me on so I'm not about to be the one to put an end to it."

Sapnap eyes bulge open, clearly stunned by my vulgar honesty. I'm yet to work out if his constant shock at my lack of innocence is a reflection of his own naivety or evidence of his patronising underestimation of my character due to infantilisation. Is he a child or does he simply view me as one?

Meanwhile, Dream chokes back a laugh.

I break eye contact with Sapnap, realising I was staring it him while engrossed in thought. A sharp twinge stabs my forehead, just above my brow, I rub my fingers over it attempting to nurse away the building headache. Despite the novelty of this situation, there are thing I need to say and that means putting a stop to the very male display in front of me.

I watch for a minute longer, taking a mental image of the scene in front of me before heading over to diffuse the situation.

"Wish me luck," I say, winking at Sapnap as he watches me walk into battle.