Page 20 of Fear
Though maybe the better question here was, What the hell are you doing to yourself?
Jake pulled Tobias’s hands forward to see them, then cursed himself silently and steadily for a good minute at the damage he saw.
Some of the damage on Tobias’s hands was old, thick welts that looked deliberate and even. It was bad enough getting a good look at how fragile Tobias’s hands were—how could he not have noticed when he held Tobias’s hand all those times that they were downright skeletal, to the point where Jake could easily see the tendons moving over his bones under the skin?
But marked over the old injuries were deep, angry scratches extending from the wrist across the back of Tobias’s too-thin hands, lines all red and raw, with some seeping blood through the torn skin. When Jake angled Tobias’s arms up so his baggy sleeves slid toward his elbows, he saw more scratches down his forearms. Few were as deep as those on the backs of his hands, but some were red where Tobias’s nails had bitten and scraped into the skin.
So help him, Jake’s first thought was that he had checked the apartment for ghosts, for cursed objects and mysterious histories, and that there shouldn’t be a witch in the country who could snoop around and leave a hex bag without him knowing.
Then he saw the blood on Tobias’s nails and fingertips, and he knew he couldn’t blame this on anything supernatural.
“What the hell, Tobias?” Jake breathed, stifling his panic as hard as he could. He would not panic. He would not. Someone had to not panic, and it looked like it would have to be him, though he sure as hell didn’t want to be the only option right now.
“S-s-sorry,” Tobias gasped. “S-s-s-sorry. J-Jake, I didn’t m-mean . . .”
Not thinking about this. Jake was going to focus on the basics right now because if he thought about it, he would snap.
“Sit down.” Jake half led, half pushed Tobias onto the couch. Tobias went easily, shaking, keeping his head turned away from Jake, eyes fixed intently on nothing, the fear in him cramping Jake’s gut. But he wasn’t thinking about that right now. “Sit there and, fuck, don’t scratch.”
Tobias nodded, but Jake was already moving. He kept the first aid kit in his room because he’d figured that in the case of an attack, that was the best place to retreat.
When he returned, Tobias was sitting exactly where he had told him to, in the exact same position that Jake had left him, his arms half extended as though he didn’t quite know what to do with them. As though, because Jake had told him not to scratch, the arms didn’t belong to him anymore and he didn’t dare lower them, move them, touch them, because that might be violating the rules.
Not thinking about any of this. Jake crouched in front of Tobias and took his right arm, careful not to touch any of the ugly scratches. From long practice, he opened the hydrogen peroxide against his hip one-handed and dipped it against the cotton ball.
Tobias sucked in a breath through his teeth when Jake started cleaning the scratches, but he didn’t move away, barely twitched, even though it had to hurt like a bitch. Jake tried to be gentle while working as fast as he could. It unnerved him how Tobias watched Jake’s hands moving with fascination. Like he’d never had a wound cleaned before.
The silence between them stretched out, and it hurt. The wounds weren’t deep, but Jake wanted to be sure they were clean. He had to feel like he was doing something, that even when he couldn’t stop this from happening, he had some way to pick up the pieces. Though he had the strong suspicion that that was complete and utter bullshit.
When Jake thought he could keep his voice even—about the time he was done disinfecting every inch of Tobias’s raw skin—he reached down for a roll of light gauze and cleared his throat before beginning the process of mummy-wrapping Tobias’s arms.
“You aren’t allowed to hurt yourself, Tobias,” he said. He didn’t look up from his work. It probably wasn’t necessary to wrap Tobias up. Maybe a couple of bandages on the worst scratches, where Tobias’s nails must have found purchase and dug deeper.
But he wanted the gauze. He wanted to know that Tobias couldn’t hurt himself this way again. Jake wanted a visible reminder that he had to fucking do better, had to be as vigilant here as he was on a hunt. Tobias wasn’t a one-night stand, wasn’t a fuck buddy or an acquaintance. He was everything, and if that everything didn’t include anything but Jake taking care of Tobias until he had no need for Jake anymore, well, that was fine.
But Jake had to get him to that point first. He had to watch, because the more Tobias surprised and scared the shit out of him, the more Jake was convinced that he could lose what he thought had been the most meaningful achievement of his life. That one day he would look up and Tobias would be gone, somehow, some way, maybe on his own two feet, maybe because he’d done something like this. Jake had to be more fucking careful. It wasn’t just his life he was taking care of now, but Tobias’s, and wasn’t that a fucking joke? He, Jake Hawthorne, taking care of someone, when probably the most reliable relationship in his life was with a fucking car.
“You can’t hurt yourself,” Jake repeated. “I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want you to hurt yourself, and if anyone else hurts you, I’ll fucking kill ’em.”
That snapped Tobias’s gaze up, only for a second, but it was enough for Jake to see the utter bewilderment in them. Tobias had no fucking idea what he was talking about, and whatever had happened at the bar was still messing with his head, because he should not have looked fucking surprised when Jake said he didn’t want to hurt him.
Jake had given himself permission to not think about a lot of things. But whatever the fuck had happened at the bar couldn’t be one of them.
He levered himself up and sat on the coffee table in front of Tobias, carefully pulling his hands away from Tobias’s. If Tobias didn’t want contact, Jake didn’t want to be touching him. This was going to be fucking hard enough when Jake had no idea what he’d done.
“TOBIAS, I NEED . . .” Jake stopped and took a deep breath while Tobias’s nerves tightened. “I know I did something . . . said something that totally fre—messed with your head, but I don’t know what, and I . . . I’m really new to this, man. You have to—I need you to be patient with me. Can you . . . Tobias, just tell me what I did, and I’ll do better, I promise.”
It sounded like Jake was pleading with him, and that didn’t make any kind of sense.
Tobias didn’t know what to say. Quite apart from the fact that he had no right to make demands of Jake, of anyone—it was already too much that Tobias had inconvenienced him in the restaurant and Jake still hadn’t had his dinner—Tobias simply didn’t know what was wrong with himself other than that he was a weak, twitchy, stupid freak, and that he couldn’t change.
But Jake had asked him a question, and he could no more ignore that than he could stop himself from making Jake ashamed of him every time they left the apartment.
“I don’t w-want to h-hurt her,” Tobias repeated, because that, at least, he knew was true.
Jake looked more worried and distraught. His hand twitched like he wanted to touch Tobias, but he pulled back.
“I don’t want to hurt her either.” Jake ran a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking straight up and spiky. Tobias wanted to smooth it down again, wanted more than anything to be able to touch Jake without dirtying him. “Look, I talk shit sometimes. I know that, it’s a bad habit that I should—well, sometimes I want to piss people off, but that wasn’t what I was doing here. I’m gonna do my best to change anything you need, and you got to believe that I didn’t want to hurt her either. I wouldn’t, Tobias.”
