DEEP WOUNDS

-CELINE-

The canned laughter on TV faded into the background as I drifted off to sleep with the last few drops of wine. Tiredness had completely overcome me, but it didn’t last long. A violent bang at the front door jerked me abruptly out of my sleep, causing my heart to skip a beat before it raced on at double speed. The couch beneath me suddenly felt unpleasantly hard. “Good heavens, what was that? Was Damian really incapable of shutting a door without shaking the whole house?”

Cursing, I sat up and rubbed my eyes, still half dazed, staggering to the kitchen where I saw him standing. Damian. He was leaning against the counter like a wounded animal, his face half in the shadows, and the rest – well, to put it briefly: he looked like he’d been fighting with a pack of wolves. His shirt was torn, and there was a gaping, bleeding wound above his right eyebrow that was staining half his face red.

“Oh, shit, Damian... what happened to you?” The shock in my voice made me freeze for a moment.

He snorted dismissively, as if I were the one overreacting, and muttered dryly, ”It’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” I put my hands on my hips and looked at him with raised eyebrows. ”Damian, you’re bleeding like a stuck pig and you have a huge wound above your eye. Sit down before you bleed all over the place. I’ll get the bandages.”

But he crossed his arms and glared at me as if I had just forced him into a humiliating confession. “I don’t need your help, Celine. Just get lost and don’t bother.”

I laughed hard and quietly, shook my head and rubbed my forehead in annoyance. Of course, sure. The great, inviolable Damian is too proud to be helped. But even though everything inside me screamed to give him exactly what he wanted – namely my absence – I stopped. Not for him, but because my decency and some completely misguided sense of care were just too great.

Sighing, I reached into the drawer for the disinfectant and bandages. “You really are a hopeless case,” I muttered as I walked back and held the emergency kit in front of him. “Now sit down and let me do this, or I’ll personally press the wound until you realize that you have no choice in this state.”

He narrowed his eyes and shot me a steely look that would have probably intimidated most people. But eventually he gave up, reluctantly dropped down onto a chair and muttered something that sounded like a cynical “Go ahead.”

“Oh, how gracious of you,” I replied sarcastically, and pulled on a pair of gloves. If I had to see him bleed, then at least I would do it with a little style. I bent over him, grasped the cloth and pressed it onto the wound. He winced slightly, gritted his teeth, and I couldn’t help but smile smugly.

“Does that hurt?... Good,” I said smugly, cutting through my voice. ’That’s called a consequence, Damian. Perhaps that’s a word you’re unfamiliar with?”

He opened his eyes wide and snapped back, ’Just do your job without preaching to me.”

“Oh, as if you could dictate that to me.” I dabbed harder than necessary, and his brief flinch gave me the satisfaction I needed to continue. ”It’s almost comical, seeing the invincible Damian sitting here before me, bruised and bleeding, and yet too proud to admit anything.”

His lips twitched as if he were considering a snide reply, but then he paused. Instead, something else came into his eyes, something that made me stop short. He looked away, his features tense as he searched for words that were foreign to him, too.

“You know, you really don’t have to lecture me, Celine,” he murmured at last, his voice surprisingly quiet and almost... vulnerable. ”I may not be an easy person to handle. I understand that.”

I blinked, the sharpness in my posture briefly giving way to surprise. “Oh, so that’s the realization of the year. Yes, Damian, you really aren’t the dream host one would wish for.”

His mouth twitched slightly, but there was something absent in his gaze. ‘I’m just…’ He broke off, biting his lip as if he had almost overstepped the mark.

“Just what?” I asked, half curious, half annoyed. ”A walking disaster? A living mystery that would rather hurt itself than let itself be helped?”

His gaze wandered back to me, rested briefly on my face, and I sensed the intensity in his eyes – that dark, impenetrable something that always seemed as if he were hiding something behind his cool facade. “I’m just... surprised that you’re here at all. That you’re going to any trouble at all.”

I paused, the disinfectant in my hand, and stared at him. “Oh, you think I’m doing this for you?” I laughed bitterly. “Don’t be under any illusions, Damian. This isn’t for you. This is pure duty – and an attempt to avoid having to scrub the blood of a stubborn idiot off the kitchen floor.”

He pursed his lips into a slight smile, a hint of amusement that seemed almost disarming to him. “Whatever you need to tell yourself, Celine.”

“Oh, you think so?” I rolled my eyes and took the plaster out of the box, placed it on his wound with a slight growl and pressed it on firmly. ”Now you can go back to business as usual and pretend that everything is fine. It’s your favorite game, isn’t it? The strong man who doesn’t need anyone.”

His eyes remained calm on me, and this time he held the gaze. “It might not be as easy as you think,” he murmured, a hint of defensiveness in his voice. ”Just because you think you know what I’m like doesn’t mean you really have a clue.”

I raised an eyebrow and leaned back, letting the irony in my voice slice through the room like a scalpel. “Oh, this is a new facet. The great, mysterious Damian, whom no one can understand. Congratulations, you’re a walking cliché.”

He closed his eyes briefly, as if to shrug off the remark, and murmured, almost as if it were an admission to himself: “Maybe I am.”

For a moment, the air between us seemed to crackle, as if there was something slumbering in him that he didn’t want to voice – and I almost hated myself for noticing it. It was just a moment, a tiny spark that discharged in the silence before he turned away and said in a low voice, “Thank you, Celine.”

I paused, my heart beating a sudden beat faster, and I shook my head to brush away the weakness. “Believe me, Damian, being polite to you is no more use than trying to teach a stone something.”

He looked up at me briefly, a hint of something soft in his gaze, before it hardened again immediately. “Politeness, hm?” His tone was low, almost a whisper. “I’m glad you call it that.”

With that, he got up, the plaster over the wound, and looked at me briefly, as if he wanted to say something, but then he left it at that. He turned around, his walk heavy and tense as he disappeared into the darkness of the hallway – and I was left alone, a part of me confused and dissatisfied because, damn it, under all his arrogance he had shown this one weakness that suddenly wouldn’t let go of me.

-DAMIAN-

I slammed the door and leaned heavily against it, pressing my forehead against the cool wood. The pain above my eye was throbbing, but that was just a whisper compared to the storm raging inside me. My shoulders trembled, my fingers ground against the wood, and I fought against the heat in my body that almost robbed me of my mind. Celine. Being close to her had completely shaken my already precarious equilibrium. Everything about her drove me crazy – those eyes that seemed to pierce me, the defiance, the stubbornness that forced me to push my limits with every breath. And then, of all times, she came so close that I could feel her scent, her breath, her warmth. Damn it!

I clenched my jaw so hard my teeth ached. I should have known it was madness to let her into my life. But the worst thing was that I wanted it – that part of me literally screamed for her to be here. To look at her, to talk to her, to challenge her until that defiance flashed in her eyes. She brought out a darkness in me that otherwise only slumbered deep within me, that I otherwise hid masterfully. But with her it was different. She coaxed out of me what I never wanted to show anyone.

“Damn it, why didn’t I just send her away?” I uttered a quiet curse and ran a hand through my tousled hair. There was something about this woman that was like poison – sweet and deadly, a poison that was poisoning me from the inside out and making me lose my mind.

With every breath, the anger inside me rose further, but it wasn’t just anger. No, it was much more. It was a mixture of desperation and hatred, not for her, but for myself. My damn weakness that showed itself around her. She must never know that – she must never even suspect that she had this power over me.

I gritted my teeth, the throbbing of the wound above my eye reminding me that I was bleeding – that she had seen the blood. She had seen the power she had over me, even if she didn’t understand it. And then, as if she had purposely pushed the dagger deeper into the wound, she leaned over me, reached for me, touched my face. Her fingers on my skin were like fire eating through my veins. It was as if she had a damn need to destroy me, and I was stupid enough to let her get close.

But what made it even worse was the pain I felt – a pain that had nothing to do with the wound on my eye, but with the fact that I had to push her away. I had to push her away before she saw too much, before she realized how my body reacted to her. Part of me wanted to grab her, pull her to me, force her to look into my darkness until she too was trapped in it. And another part – the part that still had some of my sanity – knew that I couldn’t let that happen.

I clenched my fists so hard against the wall that my knuckles turned white. What the hell was wrong with me? I was Damian, the Damian who compromised with no one, who never cared about anyone’s feelings, who never showed even a shred of interest in anyone because I knew exactly where it would lead. Feelings were weaknesses, and weakness meant a loss of control. But Celine...

I tore my hair out and took a deep breath, but the burning in my chest only got stronger. The thought of her closeness, the way she had looked at me, how she had forced her help with this defiance made me tremble. I hated it. With every second I spent looking at her, with every moment I spent with her, a deep, dangerous desire was digging into my heart. It was a desire that burned in me like a blazing fire, spreading relentlessly and threatening to burn me.

I snorted and pressed my forehead against the wall. She had to go. She couldn’t stay. She was the reason for all the chaos I had caused here. And yet I knew I couldn’t let go of her. Not because I cared about her – God, I could never admit that to myself – but because she was a challenge.

“Damn it, Celine...” I murmured into the silence, as if she could hear me. As if she could understand what she was doing to me without lifting a finger. ‘She shouldn’t matter to me.’ She should just be any other person I could push out of my life. She brought out the worst in me, and I hated her for it. I hated her for every touch, every look that dragged me deeper into this hell.