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“Lynn,” Amanda’s voice breaks in her throat, tangling thick over her tongue. It was easier to be tender at knifepoint than laid bare on her shitty cot behind the curtain that reeked of rubbing alcohol. Like she’d doused it to try and set it on fire, or a hospital. Sterile.
“Mm.” Lynn made a noise in her throat, somewhere behind the shotgun shells and Amanda perked up like a dog, that eager ear-prick and the leg shaking mess of excitement. Fear.
Amanda’s knees stayed hugged to her chest, longing for a twist of limbs, ribcage against ribcage until bones knit and the empty steeple holding her heart in place wouldn’t feel so hollow.
“Can I touch you?” Not that she’d asked before, not that any of the brutal bravado was consensual, but that was cruelty for cruelty’s sake- high on someone else’s fear, finally not having to gag her own. Now, though, it caught in razor wire, hands to her sides stroking down her own waist like a vain hope, watching Lynn’s eyes flicker from shut easily- she’d wanted to sleep, Amanda had offered her bed then followed her in like a stray- to half-lidded, heavy and tired. Her gaze raked Amanda’s skin, over her thighs and for a second Amanda thought she could see everything, medical precision, she felt pinned like a butterfly on her heartstrings. Coronary arteries secured out over a pretty board, cutting off the blood to her brain and she’s dizzy, strung out on Lynn’s undivided attention.
“Touch me how?” One eye open, now, brow knit with a suspicion that furrowed over her face and Amanda pressed her knuckles together in front of her chest.
With my hands, she couldn’t quite manage. Like a person, even if she couldn’t find all the right parts to feel like one.
“Can I hold you.” More of a statement than a question, flat as if she was reading it off a clipboard, a diagnosis for something fucked up in her heart and not the same frantically beating butterflies somewhere in her body (she could hear their wings pounding in her head).
Her teeth folded into a sheepish grin, no longer sharp with wolffish glee she’d held at axepoint, a delight in the ‘you-could-kill-me’ match of wits, that Lynn was on equal footing. A confidant to the twinkle in Amanda’s eyes as she traced the edge of the metal collar in her mind, wondering if the collarbones underneath would hold strong under these hands that dirty and rust everything they touch.
Lynn considered rolling on her side, away from the wrung hands and heart wrenching so unprofessionally under her glare. She doesn’t. That would be mean, wouldn’t it? It’s clear this woman’s condition is fragile, to put it in the least clinical terms she’s fucked in the head but she plays like a big dog who doesn’t know its bite til it’s laying on its side, tongue lolling with the sedation and feeling oh-so-sleepy as the pink shot seeps in. (Or something. Lynn hadn’t gone to veterinary school, but seeing a dog put down can’t be dumbed down to grad school jargon.)
Lynn sets her jaw. Finds a slow nod somewhere at the base of her skull. Fine. “You can.”
Part of her expects Amanda’s body to be cold against her own- she can’t put a name to the idea, or where it came from, maybe it’s that any time Amanda’s touched her it’s been in tandem with metal. Unyielding. But Amanda’s warm, sidling up behind her eagerly, nestling her bony frame against Lynn’s. Breath coming in hitches, delight and nervousness, every bone in Amanda’s body is held together by stiff wire as she tries to squirm to something comfortable. Finally stilling with her face in the crook between the collar and Lynn’s cheek; one arm draped from under her shoulder down to Lynn’s waist and the other squirreling in at the other side of her face. Amanda’s fingers are bony; knuckles worn red. They tangle in Lynn’s dark hair, gently, so gently, and the other hand taps out a stilted heartbeat against Lynn’s hipbone. It’s intimate, the way Amanda’s breathing presses against her back, how the nervous tremors as she holds herself stiff next to Lynn make it difficult for either of them to settle.
“Are you all right?” It’s a doctor’s duty. Lynn shifts an inch to try and glimpse Amanda’s face.
“Mmhm.” Softer in her throat, the slight hum of it all too close. Something ties tight in Lynn’s chest.
“Are you frightened?” Lynn probes.
“Are you going to try to kill me like this?” Amanda parries.
“No.” Lynn wonders if she’s lying.
“Then no.” Amanda is lying. Her throat is in knots, not to mention her stomach. It’s all a mess of innards.
She presses closer, stray fingers over Lynn’s cheekbone and grazing her hair back from her face. She’d like Lynn’s heartstrings knotted with her own- to be needed to keep life pumping. To be needed, period- she needs this. The metal of the collar warms where she’s pressed to it. Blankets wouldn’t be enough to keep her cozied up like this on nights where her skin puckers in on itself, and screams rattle her throat raw. The key feels like a part of her sternum now, pressed against Lynn’s spine.
Amanda wonders if she’s going to be able to sleep in an empty bed again.