you're too young & eager to love

Chason sits for a long time after the fight has ended, his pulse heavy, holding ice to his face. He is beginning to feel less and less victorious the more his muscles rip and his skin breaks, although he has done better than some would have expected. His bones ache. His jaw is bruised and there are angry welts across his arms, his back, and one dangerously close to his throat. His left eye is swollen and now even breathing has begun to hurt.

Seven out of ten fights – some more easily won than others – but he still cannot shake the burdensome weight of each loss. He thinks of torn feathers and ripped wings until he feels sick to his stomach, until his fingers curl into fists at his sides. He thinks of losing even when he’s won, and he knows he’s incapable of doing this forever.  

The attendant finds him in the treatment room, his knuckles pressed against his forehead, the bag of ice melting in his hand. She clears her throat and Chason glances up tiredly, though he neither moves to rise nor speaks. She smiles, a pretty, slender Vietnamese woman with graceful hands. She moves fluidly and touches gently, working ointments into his wounds and threading stitches into his skin.

“They talk about you throughout the facility.” Her voice is even, lacking an accent, but not unkind. She tilts his face down in order to stitch the cut above his eyebrow, so close that Chason can smell salt on her skin. The nametag pinned to her shirt reads Tuyen.

“What do they say?”

“That you fight for her.”

Chason jerks his head away, his eyes sharp, but the woman waits patiently, needle in hand. “Her?”

Tuyen laughs, a twinkling, silvery sound, before gripping his chin between her fingers and lowering his face once more. “Don’t be stupid, Mr. Waters, otherwise I’ll have to tell the others that your reputation is misleading. You know whom. Harrow’s swan. The prize.”

Chason hisses when she slides the needle into his bruised, bleeding skin and she chides him under her breath. “This is nothing.” With her free hand, she pats his shoulder reassuringly, and he feels the lingering sweep of her fingers across his arm. “So, do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Fight for her.”

“Fighting for my life isn’t enough?”

After she has finished stitching, she uses cotton and antiseptic to clean the welt near his throat. “I have been at this facility for some time, Mr. Waters, and I have seen many fights as a result. Men like you are fighting for something bigger than themselves. Turn around please.”

He moves slowly, flinching around the eyes when the antiseptic is applied to his back, the burning sensation feeling like fire. “You’re shaking.” She says, touching the back of his neck in a gesture of tenderness that surprises him. But it’s true – his arms are shaking and the tension in his shoulders is iron tight. “You’re exhausted. Well, that’s to be expected.”

Tuyen finishes in silence, inspecting old bruises and bandaging fresh wounds. She has almond shaped eyes that are very dark and a full, soft mouth. He wants to touch her hair as she leans forward to inspect a mark on his shoulder but he keeps his hands by his side. It’s only when she turns to leave that he grabs her wrist, swift enough to take her by surprise, and presses his mouth, his nose, into her palm. There, beneath her skin, close to her veins, Chason thinks he can smell her. Salt and ocean spray and mackerel and something else, something he has never known.

Tuyen, bemused now, takes her hand back but not before touching the ends of her fingers briefly against his lips.

“What are you? I don’t recognize you.”

She grins and dips her eyes. “Lissodelphis borealis … Dolphin, the Northern Rightwhale variety.”

“You must be rare. Why aren’t you in a cage too? Leashed by Harrow and fought over? ”

“Who says I’m not?” She moves aside his hair before stepping away, speaking over her shoulder. “A guard will be here to escort you shortly.”

            The room changes each time. It is always nondescript, sparse, and heavily monitored on the outside. Chason tries to create an image of the area, of the hallways and corridors, the stainless steel doors and the identical uniforms, but it’s difficult when everything looks the same. He’s been planning his escape ever since they were captured and brought back, but the process is slow and daunting.

            He stands by a window overlooking an impossible cliff and leans his weight against it. He is hot beneath his clothes, the simple cotton shirt and denim jeans. Too hot, even for him. He can feel a sickness entering his pores, threatening fever, and his palms are slick with sweat. He stands for some time, waiting, listening, and finally Ita is allowed to enter the room. She stands too, close to the door, and he can feel her eyes on his back. What he must look like to her – a tall man, lean and worn bare, battered with injuries, full of grief and hate and, somewhere, tenderness still.

Chason does not turn. He does not face her.

“Come here.” She tells him, softly, and not the demand he had given her, months ago, in the desert. “Please.”

Shoving himself from the glass, he moves slowly. So much slower than she is used to, his hands in his pocket and his eyes downcast. He views her everywhere but directly, the blue of her linen dress, the length of her hair brushing her shoulders and neck. “Isn’t blue for royalty?” He asks while grabbing the silken hem, his knuckles brushing her thighs in the process, and presses her against the back of the door with the demanding presence of his body. He makes a cage for her, catching her between steel and flesh, until she places her palms on his chest and is forced to look up at him, made uncomfortable by his anger. Her eyes are large, and she stifles a gasp when he catches her face between his hands unexpectedly, leaning down to press his forehead against hers. When he kisses her she feels as though an arrow or a bullet has struck her.

Ita can feel him shaking.

He places his strong hands behind her thighs and lifts her, using the door to balance her meager weight, and she hooks her legs around his waist. He pushes her dress up, impatient, freeing himself from his jeans while leaving marks across her collar and the top of her chest with his teeth. The scratch of his beard reminds her of desert sand, but his strangled breathing and the forceful, hard way he tears into her makes her cry out in pain.

Chason takes – what he wants from her, what he thinks he is owed, and the snapping, bestial force inside of him only continues to grow.

Afterward, his eyes clouded and his mouth tight, he slips her into his arms with effort. He almost stumbles, Ita pressed into a ball against his chest, his arm under her knees and her cheek against his heart. He thinks he can smell blood, but he isn’t sure if it’s hers or his.

The bed is soft and white. Sterile colored. Chason takes the time to undress her now, slipping her dress up and over her arms, ignoring the marks of other men on her body – other victors. He lets her pull his shirt off, her hands lingering above the many wounds, and they watch each other. The slow way he pulls her too him again but only to cover her mouth with his, imploring, seeking. How she responds instinctively, tracing his jaw line.

He tells her he is sorry, his mouth against hers, and she wants to let the sob escape her throat but she doesn’t. Instead, she tells him that he has no need for apologies, that she is the one who owes him.

They lay together in the darkness, breathing, hands nearby on top of the mattress and Ita’s hair damp with sweat. Chason studies the ceiling, the cracks and weaknesses, before reaching to stroke her hip absently. It is not too unlike being in the cellar of the old house, except they are running out of words or they simply have no use for them now.