My parents return the next morning. They are in a splendid mood, all giddy and soppy. I remember a time when I hated seeing them like that. (Envy? Most likely.) Now I cannot help feeling happy for them.
They instantly detect the strange mood between John and me, the weird mixture of relief, catharsis, and something dark still lurking behind us. But because they are brilliant, they find the right way to help us without mentioning it: They pretend to have missed Emmi so much that they insist on spending the day with her while John and I can do as we please.
And while I am still unsure of what to do now, John takes my hand and wordlessly leads me upstairs. For a moment I think he is about to therapeutically shag me but then he turns towards the bathroom.
"Let's take a shower," he says.
There is so much subtext in that sentence. "Please don't say no", he says without saying, and "This is important and more than just taking a shower", and "Trust me", and "I know what I am doing, I think", and "Your pain hurts me", and (of course) "I love you".
"Yes," I answer to all of it, heart pounding in my ears for no particular reason.
John is completely taking the lead now. (Oh, how I missed that.) He gets naked in a nanosecond, and then slowly starts to undress me. At first, he opens my shirt and softly touches the skin on my arms when he pulls it off me. Then he carefully takes off my vest. I allow my eyes to fall closed (though I would have loved to look at his naked body for longer. But what John is doing now is so … sensual that I have to close my eyes).
I can feel his hands on my bare chest now. They are not exactly caressing, more … exploring. No, taking back lost territory. Gentle, but firm. I am half hard by the time he reaches the waistband of my trousers. He is so close that I can feel his breathing on my skin.
John is very careful not to scare me with a thoughtless, nightmare-triggering touch. Actually, he manages to get me off my trousers and my pants without touching the relevant part of my body at all.
There is no graceful way to take off someone's socks, so lets skip that part.
When I am completely naked, John's hands are suddenly gone. I open my eyes and find him staring at me (in awe).
He gives me a wry little smile when he notices me noticing his glance. He shrugs, not apologetically at all, and reaches for my hand. For a moment he gets sober.
"Do you trust me?" he asks (unnecessarily).
Of course I do. I intend to make an ironic comment but instead I simply nod because there is something very serious in his eyes. Something profound. Something painful. So this is really not going to be a simple seduction underneath the shower.
My mouth is dry when he gently pushes me inside the shower cabin.
It is one of those insanely overstated wellness shower things, with more shower heads than you need to get clean, and more settings to them than any human could ever use. I usually ignore all that by using only the traditional shower head above but John has other plans.
He does something to the settings and the shower starts to produce soft, warm mist, coming from above and from the sides. It reminds me of being in a tropical greenhouse, with a strangely erotic touch to it. The water in the air is so light I can feel my curls getting frizzy.
For some reasons, it feels perfectly safe to be standing within this warm cocoon of water.
John is not aroused at all. There is still something very sober in his glance.
"You all right?" he asks, and again, I can only nod.
"Good," he murmurs to himself, "that's good."
He grabs the sponge, soaks it with my shower gel, and starts rubbing my left arm with it. His face is working wildly. It forms a strange discrepancy with the peaceful, caring movements he makes. He is nearly done with my other arm before he finally manages to speak again.
"He raped you three times."
My stomach clenches painfully but the feeling of safety is still there. John senses how I am feeling. I can tell by he way the sponge stops for the fracture of a second before it moves over my skin again.
"The first time," John goes on, "was immediately after Mary left the room." His voice is neutral, dispassionate. He sounds like a pathologist, telling the police what he found out.
He goes on describing the first rape in short sentences, no needless adjectives, no arc of suspense. No pity but all details. It sounds like a police report written by an over-motivated yet uninvolved officer. His voice does not quiver once.
By that, he gives me exactly what I need. He provides everything I need to know in the only way I can process it without going insane. Or being reduced to a victim.
And what a gruesome crime he has to report. What Big Boy lacked in intellect and finesse, he apparently made up with brutal force. At some point during the description of the second rape my legs give in. I feel myself sliding down the wall of the shower. John does nothing to stop me from going down. Instead, he kneels down next to me once I have reached the bottom, continues sponging me and goes on with his report.
That is good because if he stopped now we would never bring it up again.
He soldiers on all the way through the third rape without hesitating once. Not even when he can tell that there are tears running down my face. Not even when my head falls heavily against his chest. And even when he holds me tight with his left arm when my shoulders are shaking, his right hand continues to rub my back with the sponge.
It is only in the end when his voice finally breaks.
"I looked at the two of you the whole time," he explains and suddenly he has to stop to breathe hard. "I thought … I felt like that made it worse, like I also hurt you, but … " He is crying now. "But then I thought, what if you needed to look into my eyes, to … to find comfort? What if you felt pain and shame and needed me for comfort? What would you think if you looked at me and found me staring at the wall instead?"
The sponge is forgotten now, slowly spinning in the swirl above the drain. Our tears are mixing. We are hiccuping in sync.
"So I watched, all the time," he concludes his grim tale, "but you never looked at me."
"I wasn't there that night," I say quietly. God does my voice sound small. He nods.
"I know now," he whispers.
There is a lot that could be said now. But John said so much already, and I am not the most eloquent person when it comes to feelings. So instead, I let my body do the talking. I return his embrace until I feel him stir.
"Let's finish cleaning you," he commands, voice rough but steady, without any bitterness in it.
He gets up (as gracefully as one can inside a cramped slippery shower cabin), reaches for the shampoo (his, apparently knowing I love the smell of his hair), kneels down again and starts to apply it to my hair. Well, apply. It is more of a massage, really, and I cannot stop myself from humming.
I feel my body relaxing, and his, too.
It goes on for a while, a lot longer than necessary. Then, finally, he stops and clears his throat. "I need to clean you completely," he explains. "All of you. I mean ..."
I know what he means. So I silently watch him taking some of the foam from my head and putting it onto my cock. He cleans me from my glans to my penile root and then cleans my balls too.
It is funny how that does not have any sexual connotation at all. Under different circumstances, it might have aroused me within seconds. But now, with John's face sober and his hands moving without caresses and his shoulders ever so slowly losing the tension they have kept up for months, it is only another part of cleaning me.
When he is done, he gets up to change the settings of the shower and rinses the douche gel and the shampoo off my body with clinical precision. Then he gets out of the shower cabin, helps me up and towels me thoroughly, head to toe. Then he wraps me up in the softest bath robe he can find.
My skin feels raw by now, as if John has removed the entire epidermis. As if he has removed every cell that had been in contact with Big Boy. As if he has washed off every trace of him. I feel like I am a hundred pounds lighter than before. I feel like I am finally able to breathe again.
John moves away from me a bit and looks at me. I can tell from his eyes he wants to make some funny remark to lighten the gravity of our situation, but then sees the expression on my face and swallows it instead.
He nods, and that nod tells me he knows fully well what an enormous gift he had just made me, that he knows how grateful I am, and that he understands all that without me being able to voice so much as a simple thank you.
He nods again, with a little, honest smile on his lips and in his eyes.
"Anything more I can do for you?" he asks then, almost playfully, to lighten the mood.
I take a deep breath, because yes, there is the one thing I still need.
"Is there anything you would not do for me?" I need to know.
He holds my gaze for a while. Then he shakes his head. "I would do anything for you, Sherlock, you know that."
Yes, I know that.
I need to even my breath, even my thoughts, my up-roaring feelings, because it is a big thing I need from him. But I need it nevertheless. And I need to say it now.
"I need you to … " Damn. No hesitation now. Go on. "I need you to forgive yourself."
His face works on it for a while. Does he know his face does that when he is feeling that deeply? Probably not. For a while I watch the rapidly changing expressions. Then I have to stop because all of a sudden he pulls me close and embraces me so hard that he almost strangles me.
I can feel something hot dripping down his cheek. And I can feel him nod. Feverishly.
"Okay," he murmurs over and over again. "Okay, okay."
We stay embraced like that for half an eternity. Later, when we re-enter the reality outside the bath room, I watch him carefully. His steps are lighter, his face looks younger than it has in months. Every now and then he gets sober, sighs, and then goes on.
He won't be finished with forgiving himself soon, I know that. Just like I won't be able to be shagged without Big Boy's shadow looming over me instantly. But we will make it.
For the first time I know for sure that we will heal.
Author's note: As always, biggest thanks to my wonderful betas. I am blessed to have you with me.