Chapter Sixteen: Knock and the Door Shall Open
Jane continued to wonder if Bane was telling the truth about focusing on healing and not taking from her.
She pressed her lips together, tasting a trace of him as she inhaled sharply, closing her eyes as she shook off the encroaching feeling of warmth that his touch elicited.
Jane had inherited her mother's luck with men.
She'd fallen deeply in perceived love with a resident she'd met at a nursing home when visiting a great-aunt who'd fallen and broken a hip.
She'd dived into Doctor Patterson's cerulean blue eyes, never knowing that he was married with four kids, second mortgage and even though he saw Jane Bell as beautiful and wildly talented with disarticulating a body, at the beginning, middle and end of the day, he simply saw her as three warm holes to use, fuck and eventually discard without a first thought to her heart, head, or veritable humanity.
Jane tried to keep herself from falling into the rabbit hole of painful memories by rooting around the plastic gift bag for the stiff bristled hairbrush.
As Jane loosened her silken wave of hair and began brushing the cascade until the strands shone in the van's poor light, not too far from the closed rear doors, Bane paced their living space.
His mind was replaying every moment that he'd shared Jane's airspace, the touch of their lips, her taste he inhaled before they parted. He clenched his hands into tight fists, reliving the effort it was to not take more.
He turned in the direction of the van and began stomping back towards it, his heart rate increasing a bit with each step that drew him closer.
Jane heard Bane coming back and wasn't startled as he pulled the rear doors open.
Their eyes met; what Jane saw reflected in his pulsing chestnut orbs made the hand holding the brush pause in the midst of her silken strands.
Jane blinked slowly and resumed running the brush through her luxurious hair with long, languorous strokes, tracking Bane as he stepped up into the van, unable to conceal a pained grunt from the effort.
She scooted down to the other end of the joined gurneys as Bane settled himself, the squeaky, antiquated wire springs gave a metallic squeal from his weight.
"Why did you pick the name Vanek?" Jane asked as she dragged the brush along her scalp, slipping to the end of the wavy locks.
"He was a healer," Bane answered and briefly summarized the place where the blue flowers grew, finding himself openly sharing without the thought of Jane sousing out a vulnerability and exploiting it. "He could close the pain gate," he added in a low rasp.
Jane nodded, vaguely familiar with acupressure work and points of pressure in the body.
When Bane had spoken, he had pressed his palm against his chest, pressure point CV17, known by its lovelier name, the sea of tranquility, his torn apart shirt didn't cover much of his chest and Jane found her eyes tracking the movement of his hands as he showed her where Vanek had palpated his flesh.
"You truly found pain relief?" Jane asked, partially surprised, genuinely given the state of the injuries of Bane's that she could see with the naked eye.
Bane nodded, telling her about where Vanek would place his hands, how he'd expel the waves of anxiety when the pain overwhelmed his brain's processing center.
He closed his eyes remembering the relief from Vanek's small hands joining the valley of nerves between his hips, through his chest, turning down the intensity and noise.
If she'd been asked years later, Jane Bell would never be able to explain why she set her hairbrush aside and slid closer to Bane on the gurney.
She'd never have been able to describe what led her to raising her hands and settling them first on the smooth cap of his shoulder, the muscular tissue dense under the pads of her fingertips.
Bane's eyes flew open when he felt Jane's touch, he turned towards her, careful not to scare her hands away with too abrupt of movements.
They held each other's gaze, both careful to keep their true thoughts buried from being projected by the optic nerve.
Bane shifted his whole body towards her, allowing her to naturally slide her hands across the broad expanse of his chest, the scars that criss-crossed his firm flesh felt like a topographical map under her fingertips.
Her freshly reinjured wrist gave small objections to the pressure she applied against his flesh, but she pushed the pain aside as she watched Bane's face for a reaction, a flicker of what he was thinking to appear in his eyes.
"Is the pressure okay?" Jane asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
"You may give me more," Bane answered in a strained growl.
Jane pressed her lips together as she wanted to drop her eyes away from his but wouldn't allow herself.
Bane experienced an equal struggle of maintaining eye contact as Jane pressed her fingertips into specific patterns, engaging nerve clusters and forcing the energy to freely flow.
Jane stilled her hands when Bane lifted his own hands and closed them gently around her wrists, being mindful of his grip.
"Continue," Bane said with a breathless rasp, finding himself nearly salivating as he craved more.
Jane resumed pressing and palpating his dense flesh as Bane began to slide his hands up the outside of her arms, pausing and moving in slow circles around the points of her elbows before continuing upwards, squeezing her upper arms.
Bane dropped his eyes away from hers first as he trailed his hands to rest on the smooth cap of each shoulder, his large hands engulfed her narrow shoulders.
Jane kept her touch steady as he trailed his fingertips along the valley of her collarbones, her loose strands of hair tickled the backs of his hands.
She stilled her touch and pressed her hands flat against his chest as Bane slid his hands up the sides of her slim throat and wove his fingers through her hair, individual strands snagging on his ragged cuticles.
"Jane, I," Bane started to say before a series of tentative knocking sounded against one of the closed, rear van doors.
He swallowed back a primitive roar at the interruption.
Jane found herself also equal parts irritated and relieved by the knocking, she wanted to know what Bane was going to say, what words accounted for the shift in the caramel fire within his orbs.
She started towards the doors when Bane reached out with startling speed and encircled her, half-pushing her down onto the gurney as he slipped his hands to the smaller part of her waist, squeezing urgently in the small space of time before the knocking sounded again.
Neither of them spoke as Bane reached down and pulled her shirt up to expose the gentle curve of her lower back.
Jane felt her breath leave her lungs at the first touch of Bane's lips on her bare skin.
"Find out who that is," Bane growled as he lifted his lips.
Jane pushed open one of the doors to find Deborah's cheery face.
At the sight of Jane's flushed face and seemingly nervous state, Deborah was certain she'd interrupted them enjoying each other's bodies.
"Oh dear, am I bothering you?"
Jane plastered a broad smile on her face, "not at all, is everything okay?"
"Yes, certainly," Deborah said with a wave, "I thought you might like to walk with me a bit."
Deborah hadn't been able to shake the nagging feeling that she had witnessed something violent between Jane and Vanek and wanted to lay eyes on Jane up close and personal.
"The air will do you good," Bane said from behind Jane.
"Well that settles it," Jane said easily and slipped out of the van, adjusting her clothes as Bane followed her.
Deborah walked a few feet away as Bane leaned down like he was going to kiss her goodbye.
"Do not kiss me," Jane whispered low enough that only he could hear.
Bane paused, his lips centimeters away from touching hers.
From Deborah's vantage point, it appeared as though they were kissing. "I will be following," he whispered, his words were delivered on a hot exhale against her lips.
Bane watched the two women walk away, his eyes lingering on Jane before he moved in a diagonal path and cut through a thicket, keeping the women in his sight at all times.
He wasn't close enough to hear their exchanged words, he lamented being without Venom, if he'd been filling his lungs with the aerosolized analgesic and physiological enhancement, he would have easily been able to discern their conversation.
Jane fought the urge to spin her head every which way like she was a fucking owl.
She forced herself to walk at Deborah's easy pace and chat about the unimportant.
Deborah happened to glance down and catch sight of the dark bruising on Jane's wrist.
"Are you okay?" she asked, concern etching lines into her forehead.
Jane was able to naturally flush, "sometimes he gets caught up in his passion," she gave as a benign answer.
If Bane could've heard the women talking, he would've stopped breathing in order to hear every inflection in Jane's voice when she answered Deborah's questions about who exactly she and Vanek* were.
Jane's voice took on a softer touch as she spoke. "He's a different man than he was before the war."
Deborah didn't ask her what war, the world was forged in violence, life was brought forth by death.
"His soul was damaged fighting someone else's battle," Jane murmured as she plucked a long thistle from the dry earth, twirling the stem around her finger.
"But you still accept him," Deborah stated as both women lapsed into an easy silence, both lost in their own thoughts.
As Deborah and Jane continued a weaving path through the encampment, Bane was never far away but out of sight anytime that Jane took a sly peek around.
Before Jane and Deborah returned to the van, Bane doubled back, appearing as though he'd never left as the woman found him clearing a space in the dry grass to build a fire.
He looked full of life; his color high, acutely alive.
Jane knew it was because he'd jabbed another epi-pen into the meat of his thigh.
Deborah thought it was because he'd laid eyes on Jane returning.
"You look well," Deborah said, briefly raising a hand in greeting as well as goodbye in one motion.
Bane put away his fire and gave Deborah a nod before she rambled on an excuse and hurried off to check on her father.
"Your walk was enjoyable?" Bane asked after Deborah was long out of earshot.
Jane nodded, "yes, she's a nice woman."
She watched Bane carefully stack thin branches and twigs, carefully construct a stack of dry grass in between the wood before going and retrieving his coat, slipping into the warm, wool cocoon, unable to ignore the woodsy scent of Bane's skin that filled her nose.
She watched Bane become the architect of fire.
"Join me," he called to Jane after the flames were climbing to life in the open air.
Jane walked over to where Bane had settled on a rectangular cushion from a chaise lounge. He'd found the discarded cushion, the frame long since bent and gone.
The faded floral pattern had once been painfully bright, decorated with garish red flowers with phallic lemon-yellow stamens.
"Your chest tube can probably come out tomorrow," Jane said as she settled next to Bane on the cushion.
Bane nodded, he was pleased to know the straw would be gone from his side soon, the healing tissue was starting to become bothered by the presence of the biodegradable straw insinuating itself inside him.
"How is your wrist?" he asked, like Deborah, unable to not focus on the dark bracelet of bruising.
Jane shrugged, "it's manageable."
"Are you able to tolerate closing the gateway to my pain?" Bane asked, each word delivered on potent syllables, thickened with restrained lust.
Jane couldn't stop the scoff from preceding her words, "you're still feeling pain after another shot?"
Bane's eyes darkened; storm clouds of emotions passed over his features. "There is a pain that the drugs have never reached," he said with measured carefulness, shifting closer to Jane.
She cleared her throat; his words could hold so many meanings, but her body heard what he was saying deep inside.
Jane's body temperature shot through the roof; she struggled out of his oversized coat. As she partially folded it before she set it aside, she paused when she looked down and saw the blood stain from where she'd bled through her clothing again.
Bane followed her gaze, briefly glancing at the blood before moving back up to meet her eyes.
"I'm not bothered by the blood," he murmured as he took the wool-lined coat from her hands.
"Who was that woman to you?" Jane asked.
Her question stopped Bane's momentum.
He was off balance as she continued, "who was the woman whose ashes you scattered at sea?"