He sits up, barn debris falling from his blood-stained nude body as he stretches. He gives me a curt nod. Good morning to you too.
The blood on his body has dried, but the wounds still glisten with congealed blood. He barely winces as he moves. I don’t know how he handles the pain so well. “We need to get your wounds stitched. You’ve slept in this mess without cleaning them. You’re going to get an infection. And I'm starving. I need iron. I need meat, please,” I propose.
He looks me up and down, and nods thoughtfully. He comes to his feet and offers me his hand. I stand up, remembering I am completely naked. Modesty shouldn't have a place here, but last night, I told him I wanted things to keep growing. So I test him.
“I have no clothes here.”
He points a finger up, signaling for me to stay put. He puts on his jeans and slips out of the stall, running out of my sight, and returns with his t-shirt. He beats away straw from it before handing it to me.
“Thank you,” I offer coyly.
He leads me towards the picturesque farmhouse I had only seen for the first time yesterday. But instead of treating it like some forbidden fortress, he leads me up the stairs and through the front door.
I want to take it all in. The antique furniture I can tell was not collected, but has lived in this home for generations. Spots where there were once frames hung for many years, and removed, leaving just the trace of their outlines on the wall. But he takes me to the bathroom so quickly, I barely have time to absorb and interpret these pieces of him.
In the bathroom is a huge, claw foot, cast iron tub, with a flimsy pale yellow shower curtain draped around it. He turns on the water and gestures for me to enter first. I pull off my shirt and he his jeans and we enter together.
Filth and muck rinse off our bodies and down the drain. That’s when I am able to get a full view of the damage, the deep cuts, possibly a dozen, all carved into thick scar tissue.
But even with the fresh wounds, once the blood is rinsed away, he doesn't look like a monster, but a young man, roughened with scars, but handsome enough for them to only add to his mystique. Nothing about him makes sense. He should have never had to do the things he did to get me, or any woman for that matter. Though I know by now, this has nothing to do with sex.
He cleans my hair and I clean his. Something he's done for me so many times before, but I've never had the chance to reciprocate. Between us, there's silence. Just the sprinkling of the shower water hitting the tub and our bodies.
“Am I staying here?” I ask. I'm used to doing the talking for the both of us.
He shrugs. He didn't plan for this.
He yanks the shower curtain open, giving me one last glance of his dripping naked body before closing it behind him. I finish and towel myself off, wondering where he went. He returns within seconds with a needle kit, thread and rubbing alcohol.
He offers it to me with a shrug. Will this do?
I nod and direct him to sit on the edge of the tub. I thread the needle and take a deep breath, rubbing alcohol along the wound and dipping the needle and thread in the solution.
I plunge the needle into side of his cut. He hisses.
“Sorry!”
He winches and nods, encouraging me to keep going. I weave across the cuts. These aren’t small nicks and the skin is thick from existing scar tissue, so it takes tremendous pain tolerance on his end.
The experience is so wholly unpleasant for him, I cannot understand how or why last night he was the very person who opened his own flesh with a knife.
“What happened? In the barn?” I have to ask knowing he has no way to answer sitting here naked without a pen or pad. He doesn’t acknowledge the question. I didn’t expect even that much anyway.
Whenever I think Sam needs a small break, usually once I’ve wrapped up one laceration, but before moving onto the next, I rub his hair softly, and he allows himself to lean back onto me with his eyes closed, and accept my comfort. When I am finally done, he’s covered in black stitchings, like an old teddy bear being held together after decades of ownership.
“You look like a rag doll,” I laugh.
He snickers, walking over to the sink and running the water so hot it steams, and rinses off his face. As he does that, I tend to the small mess I made working on him. The door closes behind me and I spin around to see that Sam’s left, but the sink is still running. On the large foggy antique mirror over the sink is a finger-written note for me: Thank you. It had to be me so it wouldn't be you. I'm going to get meat. TRUST.