Turn Around

Chapter four

Day four,  Sunday  

 

Pain rattled through me as I hung up the phone after speaking with my lawyer. Like a million little static shocks, my skin prickled and I immediately looked about, searching for something. Anything. I was in Sem's bathroom four days in to my stay there and had taken refuge behind a locked door to speak in a hushed tone into the telephone, whispering my worries to a nonchalant lawyer. I should mention he was my regular lawyer who I'd had for years and, though he knew of my issues on a basic level and that his news would probably set me off, there was little he could do about it. He was so far away. Back home.



In my fury at finding there was only a tiny window in the room that I couldn't quite reach to open, I hurled the telephone at the wall by the shower. It cracked and spat out its contents onto the tiled floor and I decided to take drastic action while I still could. My vision wasn't yet wavering and so up I hauled myself onto the toilet, trying to reach the window. I wasn't going out into the hall where Sem could see me freaking out so this was my only choice. I needed air! It was so hot and small. No air. The window wouldn't budge as I pushed and pushed, finally crying out in a fit of frustration. And then my mouth began to move. I was yelling at the top of my voice about how stupid people were, how stupid I was, how stupid the window, the phone, the toilet was.



Knocking. “Joonas.” A try of the door. “Joonas open the door-”



“NO! I don't need you. I need the window open! Open the window! The window!” My mind was raging, my body hectic as I sought out something else to throw at the door in my temper. I wanted the window open but I didn't want the door open. If I couldn't do it then maybe if I smashed it, I would be okay. There was some more speaking from the other side of the door – the bad side, the scary side, the side that made me face things that were hard and difficult – but I blocked it out and chucked a toilet brush plus holder in the general direction before setting my mind to work. I needed something heavy enough to break glass but light enough for me to carry. And there it was, gleaming away at me on top of the shelving used for towel storage. In its clouded, thick glass jar, I knew the candle was perfect.



The vague scent of ylang ylang breezed past my nostrils as I sent the object flying. It hit the target, shattering the entire window with one blow, glass falling both into the room and outside.



There was a loud thud from behind me but I took no notice, staggering towards my prize barefoot on the tiles. So excited, shaking, arms outstretched for the barely reachable ledge. Something around my waist, like a seatbelt, was hindering my movement slightly... And then it was stopping me entirely. I kicked and thrashed, attempting to shove a fist in whatever was slowing me down. I had earned my prize and it was deliciously close. I was almost there! Just a little further, just a little. A wail exploded out of me and I felt wetness creep at the corners of my eyes, spilling moments later. It could only be one thing holding me back.



“Get off! Let go! It's right there!” I pointed up to the square of daylight calling my name and shrieked again when my feet no longer touched cool tiles.



“Right beyond the mass of glass on the floor, Joonas.” Sem didn't let go like I politely asked. Instead he dragged me out of the bathroom on my heels, finding my stomach churning at being pulled backwards.



As soon as he put me down, dumping me on the sofa, I managed to land a punch right at his jaw, pain shooting through my clenched fingers. I let out a groan and he was on top of me, pinning me down. “How's it work?”



The question made no sense to me and I struggled again, but he was setting his weight over my middle, my squishy innards complaining already. Hands holding my wrists hard into the back of the sofa, I could do little but wiggle around, worm like. “Let go you fucking moron! This is assault! … Imprisonment!” I actually didn't know what the hell it was. All I knew was that it felt wrong. Things were going badly.



“This isn't like the other ones...” His tone was so calm, full of wonder and slight confusion. He was interested. He was using me like a scientist would. It made me terrified.



I opened my mouth to complain, to scream, to cry, to beg, whatever was going to work, but I was silenced by a mouth on my own. Everything halted. I didn't respond. Soon enough, he wasn't moving either. I felt like sobbing my heart out for the next five hours as parts of my mind slowed and began to hibernate, leaving only the senses and the slow rising of goodness. I felt his mouth on mine, on a slight angle. I felt his grip still painfully tight on my wrists and, lower, in my feet, there was a stinging pain. I could hear my own breathing, having automatically being redirected from my mouth to my nose and I could feel his own slow breaths across one cheek. Something bumped at my nose and I looked up, finding him watching me. And neither of us moved.



What felt like a considerable amount of time passed with us like this and I knew he was waiting to see if I was somehow able to fake the calmness that was flooding my body, so comfortable and warm. It could have been better. Things could always be made better, but I figured he was new to it all. Neither of us had broken eye contact but he didn't seem to be understanding me telepathically telling him I could no longer feel my hands. “You can let go of my hands. They're about to fall off.” I spoke without moving my head back, staring up at him, my lips moving against his own.



He snorted through his nose as if he thought I was lying but he looked up and a frown settled over his features. No doubt my hands were a funny colour. “Shit, sorry. I just didn't want a broken jaw..” When he let go of my hands he also moved his entire form backwards, making a seat for himself on the coffee table directly opposite me. “You need to tell me what the fuck just happened. You broke my phone and my window, you punched me in the face... you were screaming and acting like you were out of your bloody mind!” I hated it when he raised his voice. I hated it when anyone rose their voice. “And then you act like a cat who is held by the scruff of its neck when I kiss you. Do you even realise you have half my window stuck in the bottom of your feet?” Oh, so that was the cause of the agony. Stupid glass shouldn't shatter all over the place.



He lifted my feet up and set them on his thighs so he could look carefully, nodding. “Nothing has gone deep thanks to me stopping you right on time but you'll have to go to the doctors tomorrow, first thing, to double check. Lucky for you, I own a good pair of tweezers...” He pulled a cushion off of the sofa and eased it under my feet and back on the coffee table before wandering to the bathroom, muttering under his breath about weird people. What had just happened? The tingly warmth was still taking up my mind and all I could do was relax my shoulders, a hand going to my chest to feel my heartbeat. Feeling his would have been much more comforting, but that fact alone was daunting.



He set up his little doctors office rather well if I'm honest. Latex gloves, vodka – both in a glass for me to down in an attempt to numb the pain and one for him to dunk the tweezers in. He also had a bowl which I assumed was going to be used to collect the nuggets of glass once extracted from my flesh. With my feet back up on his thighs he began work and I cringed, gripping my glass. I knew he was going from my toes to my heel, not leaving a single shard in, and though it may have worked well for him, for me it was a nightmare never knowing how much pain to expect. Half a foot done, he leant over, pouring me another glass which I quickly gulped down.



“How ya doin' now? You at least seem through the worst of your freak out.” He settled but kept eyes on me, waiting for me to answer.



“I've been better.” He nodded and got back to work, leaving me to concentrate on just getting through the rest of the pain. A minute later, “How often, on average, do you have these freak outs?” He just couldn't keep his mouth shut, could he? But I knew deep down I was thankful for his ignorant question; the pain was beginning to affect me.



“They're not freak outs. 'Freak out' makes it sound so terrible and like... Like I go around stabbing people and smashing doors down. The latter is your speciality, not mine.” The door looked reasonably okay but around the door handle was battered and the lock had been blown off, now resting on the tiles along with the glass and phone parts. “Are you going to make me pay for that and the other damages?” How much did windows and doors cost? I'd never owned my own place.



“Don't you think that you should?” He was too busy easing a chunk out of my heel to look at me but gave me a quick, “This is going to be sore for just a second”, before I felt something dig deeper into my flesh.



“Ow!” I felt my bottom lip quiver and growled, trying to take my foot back. “Fucking son of a bitch, that hurt!” The nugget of glass was dropped, bloody, into the bowl and Sem went back to work.



Piece by aching piece the glass was set into the bowl, shards, splinters of glass, miniature daggers of torture. The mound grew. Each new piece sent streams of watery blood over the rest and I couldn't help but think and wonder just how many were still in my skin. It seemed endless. I couldn't see beyond the glass and the blood and the pain. This was my forever.



“Sem.” My hands became unsteady and I felt my feet being carefully placed down. The glass was taken from my hands with a soft laugh from above my head.



“Can't have you breaking anything else of mine today.” Always so light and carefree in his tone. “We'll take a break until you finish your whatever you want to call it, but then I really need to make sure they're all out.” He lounged on the sofa beside me, drinking out of what had been my glass and looking at me sideways. “So what do you call them?”



“I believe most people in medical professions call them episodes. Once one comes along, I am more sensitive to triggers for a while and the whole process of that stuff being dragged from my skin didn't sit well with me.” I sounded like a moron, a whining pain. “You could have just called me a taxi and I'd have gone to the hospital.” Because that would have ended so well. Even the thought of public transport and hospitals and forms made me panic so I sat there, staring straight ahead, going through breathing techniques.



“You're not going to ask me to do it, are you?” He sounded so sure of himself and I knew what he was talking about. My physical symptoms were right in front of him: the sweating, the shakes, rapid breathing, staring at a wall like a loopy person. I shook my head. “Why not? It helped. It helped before and so it can help now.”



“Because it leads to bad things.”



“Long term, maybe, if we do things wrong but I am a professional. If I can provide a service for you that is going to help you, I would like to do so.”



“What's in it for you?” Always cautious. Always suspicious.



“I hope to get a good worker and I hope to have a good apartment sharer for the next three weeks. You get your happy time and I get work effort and sanity at home. Win-win.” He put a hand on my wrist and I scowled, turning my head to look at him as if he had just smashed my head into a wall.



“Don't fucking touch me.”



“So kissing drugs you and touching you anywhere else makes you flip out? Some people need to come with a manual.”



When his lips touched mine I knew I didn't have long and so I shook his hand off mine. Only then could I relax and submit to blissful feeling bubbling up. He didn't seem to be making the next move, not moving his lips just like the time before. But just like I had dreaded, I required more than last time. I moved first, kissing his top lip lightly and he seemed to get the message. Tentative at first, gentleman like he moved his lips against mine. He stared at me and I stared back. But I could only keep it up for so long with his lips going at mine with something that felt incredibly like passion and my eyelids became heavy. But I wasn't shut into blackness. When my eyes closed it was like doors opened, pathways surged on in my brain to make new connections, all centring on the pleasure, the peace, the comfort. When my lips were left without attention for a second I moaned for the first time in possibly a year and he chuckled breathily over my mouth. A peck on the corner of my mouth later and he had pulled away.



“Feeling better, you little weirdo?”



“Not weird.” I wanted to bundle up and contain all the good feelings whirling through my body but my legs were rapidly pulled straight again and I huffed.



“You forgetting we need to finish your feet? Am I such a good kisser to knock you on your ass so much? I should start kissing more people.” He got back in position and worked on my remaining foot. When I started to come down from my kissing high he took another break to get me some cotton wool, warm water and bandages so I could sort out the glass free foot. Having something to do certainly helped take my mind off of the pain but when he came to the points where glass had gone deepest, I was having to stop work.



“So how often do they happen, Joonas?”



“I don't really keep track. Sometimes I can go weeks with nothing but that's only if my routine is perfect and nothing bad happens. It's worse right now because of all the extra stress.”



“And you're not on medication for anything, huh?” Was he trying to say I should be?



“No. Never tried anything for it either. The thought never crossed my mind. It crossed many other peoples minds though. I went to see a psychiatrist once. Psychiatrists can and seemingly love to hurl medication at you.” I looked up from my foot to find Sem staring at me, mouth open in disbelief. Surprising him was entertaining. “She suggested a range of treatments. She wanted to refer me for therapy where I talk about crap and they tell me it'll be okay and one where they teach you how to relax your body on command or some shit. But of course the medication was waved in my face from my first appointment with her.”



“And why didn't you try any if people said they were going to help?” There was no judgement in his voice now; simple curiosity. It was refreshing.



“A couple of reasons. One, there is no actual proof that they would help me. I was told it was trial and error the whole way so they would pick a drug at random and gradually up the dose. If it didn't work out right, I'd have to try another and another. So many ups and downs. You're messing with the chemicals in your fucking brain! It's weird and awkward and who would willingly hand themselves over to a brain surgeon who didn't really know what his tools were going to do? Not me.” I shook my head, sighing. “The side effects are shitty. It depends what type of drug you're put on, yeah, but they all have bad side effects. Nausea, dizziness, low libido, sweating, drowsiness. Lovely. And most aren't even made up to treat anxiety and shit. Do I want to be on epilepsy medication if I do not have epilepsy? No.”



“So you've never taken anything for it, ever?” He spoke as he hauled out a particularly sharp piece of shrapnel and I whined low in my throat.



“Second person I was in a relationship with freaked out big time with a panic attack. I became... Aggressive like I did with you which doesn't happen so often. He made me feel trapped when it came on and he ended up driving me to accident and emergency. Once there, I lost even more control because hospitals make me unsettled and they ended up giving me medication by force. Short term stuff. Sedative... Knocked me out and I woke up properly back home. Shortly after, we parted ways. Asshole.” When the stinging subsided I went back to work bandaging my other foot, wiping carefully around each tiny hole with damp cotton wool in a vague attempt to clean it all up. But Sem was right about needing to get proper treatment or at least them just checked over in the morning. I hated the idea but it was better than eventually losing both feet due to some massive infection.



“Mm, beginning to see why you would be against medication in general if you were first forced to take it, but I suppose the doctors or whoever it was believed it was for the best. I've only seen you like that once so far and I'll be clear with you, I don't want to see it again. I don't want my things broken and I don't want to be hit or kicked by you. I have a lot of sharp tools in the kitchen and so I'm kinda glad you were in the bathroom.”



I hit him. I hit him. How horrible, how rude of me. And I couldn't promise I'd never do it again because I simply didn't know. Regret was going to nag at me for the rest of the three weeks and on into the future until I figured out some way to make it all up to him. The phone, the candle, the window, the door, the general inconvenience and his face. Flowers and a fruit basket weren't going to cut it. “I really don't know how to tell you how sorry I am, Sem. I will pay for your stuff. You can take money out of my wage – however much it's going to cost. I just feel so terrible because you are so kind and nice enough to let me stay here. How do most people repay such generosity? A gift wrapped book? Wine? Chocolates? And how do I repay such generosity? By breaking your stuff and hitting you in the face!” I was exasperated with myself beyond belief, covering my face with my hands to block out the shame.



“Ain't like you hit me too hard, Joonas. You were so off balance and looked confused.”



“You trying to say I throw a weak punch?” I was many things: a hermit, a complainer, sheltered and a bit woohoo but I didn't think I was weak.



“Eh.. Um, no. I'm sure that if you put your mind to the job you could cause a great deal of damage but you weren't concentrating on it so though you did hit me, it just shocked me more than hurt me.” He had stopped working on my foot again to watch me.



“I'm not going to go crazy again or try and hit you to prove I'm not a whimp. Relax. Ha! Who would have thought I'd be the one saying that to you?” I chuckled a little but soon went back to securing the bandage on my foot. “It's going to hurt to walk for a long time.”



The tweezers went down with a clink-clink and I found myself smiling. Thank fuck it was all over. I would keep it in mind to not trample on broken glass in future. Sem left me to comfort my aching feet and I watched him sort out a few things in the kitchen before getting a sweeping brush and bag, heading to the bathroom.



“I can help, ya know! It's the least I can do. Let me tidy it up for you.” But he turned and scowled at me, shaking his head as he bent down, trying to make sure all minute fragments of glass were out of the grout work. Lounging on the sofa, knowing that there was someone right there who could help me out was comforting and a nap was in order. I was meant to say something to him to let him know I was sleeping but the words never came and I was out like a light.



~~~



Waking up was pleasant. A thin blanket had been draped over me at some point and my head was nestled on cushions. A few lights were on and curtains closed, creating a soft atmosphere. I watched Sem work, not knowing what time it was or how long I laid there on his sofa. He had removed his tie and rolled his sleeves up. The smell of coffee was lingering still but I could just work out that his mug was pretty much empty from my angle. He worked so intently, fingers flashing away over the keys, watch glinting every few seconds under the nearby light. What I couldn't smell was food and damn I was hungry. I cleared my throat, attempting to be subtle, and he looked up.



“Evening, sleeping beauty. How was your nap?” He smiled at me, hand blindly searching for his coffee mug. He sighed when he saw it was empty.



“What time is it? My stomach is killing me.” Actually asking for food in someone elses home was awkward as fuck so I beat around the bush with it a bit.



“Gone seven. I was going to wake you an hour or so ago but I didn't have the heart to. How about I treat you to a home cooked meal?”



I was suspicious. “What.. Did you have in mind?” He didn't look like the kind of guy who could rustle up a three course meal. More like a guy who went out to a fancy restaurant and paid my monthly wage for one meal.



“Omelettes? Stir fry? Let's see...” He moved over to the fridge and nodded approvingly. “How about we do one tonight and one tomorrow? We will have to go shopping tomorrow though... Unless... Maybe you would be more comfortable ordering and having them deliver it here?”



I knew he was trying to make me comfortable but the idea of someone else picking out my food and delivering it was just weird. “I think I would prefer to help pick stuff. And maybe omelettes tonight then? I can help. I'd like to help.”



He allowed me that much at least and I slowly hobbled my way across to the dining table where he laid out a chopping board, bowls in a variety of sizes, a knife, and things to chop: an onion, cheese, bacon. I felt a bit like a young child but thankfully he didn't feel it necessary to teach me how to slice and dice.



“How many eggs for you?” Swirling a small amount of butter around in a frying pan, he was sorting the eggs about.



“Two.” Always a two egg omelette. That was the right way. That was the only way.



“What would you like in it?” Mushrooms. I scanned the board in front of me and swallowed before getting out,



“Cheese will be fine, thanks.” He was pouting like a baby when I looked up, sauntering over after cracking eggs, collecting the bowls of chopped food and heading back. He tried to make me have more while I tried to make him let me do my own omelette.



“You really do need more rest than you are getting. Or I think you do. I am not a whatever the crap you need to see so I'm only guessing but rest helps everything and everyone in my opinion.” He spoke over my shoulder as I carefully folded my omelette in half, holding a plate out so I could slide it on, inching about on my feet, desperate to find a comfortable spot. “I'm taking this and putting it on the table for you,” I scowled up at him. “It's either that or I take YOU and carry you there instead.” I backed off painfully, wincing as I went and he rolled his eyes.



I ate in silence, awkward as ever, trying to avoid looking up at him sat across from me. The omelette was pretty good in all honesty, even if it was cheesy beyond belief instead of light and mushroom stuffed. I loved mushrooms. Maybe mushrooms in the stir fry tomorrow.



“So you're going to try work again tomorrow. And this time you're going to take it slow and easy. No rushing to try and look good for your boss. It's not needed. You can contact me via email which is almost totally secure, the company instant messaging system which only your boss is allowed to scan through for... I don't know... Bomb plans or something. You can have the direct line number to my office but then everyone on the floor will be able to hear you. If all else fails or you feel safest then you can just come knock on my door.”



“Mm, because that won't look weird at all...”



“People already think you're weird, Joonas. You freaked out and fell on the floor. But the longer you stay here, the harder it's going to be for you to go back in and I know that you need the money for something. So we're going to do it together. Nice and easy.”

 

Author notes:



Lisa: There is Joonas’ main reason for not wanting to see a psychiatrist or go on medication. He knows that he can get by without his method of relaxation to a point, but he needs space to do that and there’s no way to get it right now. But he also knows that the kiss was the start of a slippery slope.

Sem doesn’t mean it in a nasty way really. It’s his half assed, extra subtle way of trying to make progress in their relationship.

Unfortunately my offer of more sex for more reviewers didn’t produce what I wanted but... We shall continue on without them! We don’t need them! -boo face-



Reader1964: I looked it up on the forums and sadly allowing anonymous reviews is not possible at the moment. They removed the option a while ago and have yet to bring it back. But yes! Sem helps :D



Smoochie faces to MissusAnn, my beta.