sam evans ( werewolf ) . (tamest) wrote in light_of_may, |
If Sam's arms had been bare Jo might have been able to get an idea of just what had happened to him, where all those rattled nerves and anxious behavioural tells came from. From an early age he had been looked down on, considered wrong, and the scars down his arms, so distinct and obvious as bites, might have given her an idea of what his pack, people who should have treated him like family, had done to try and fix him, make him more like them. It was just one of the many things Sam didn't see as wrong, though, his experiences had warped his view of the world to the point that he was in a constant state of confusion, so overwhelmed by the simplest of things. Simple things like gentle touches could throw him completely, as Jo had just seen.
Sam's heart was still racing, his breathing still shallow and rapid, the fear and shock taking their toll and slow to release their grip on him. Her apologies reached his ears but they might as well have been a foreign language for all the sense they made to him them. Sorry? Why was she sorry? She had nothing to apologise for, she was dominant and he was submissive, if anyone ought to be apologising it was him and if his throat hadn't dried up completely and his voice hadn't retreated to the background somewhere that was exactly what he would have done in that instant. Instead he remained quiet, shrunk back against the counter with his gaze averted out of habit, as Jo spoke to him.
It was only when she turned her back and returned to the stove that he lifted his gaze and looked at her, blinking back the first familiar traces of tears that always sprung so quickly into being at times like this. Everything she had said had settled in his mind but Sam struggled to put them in the right order and make sense of them. Words like home and family, promises like I'm never going to hurt you and I promise rattled around in there, almost alien in a way that Sam suspected should have made him sad. And he did feel that, but mostly because he knew Jo genuinely hadn't meant him any harm, she'd only been doing what came naturally to her and once again it was him who had acted out of turn. It was always him.
"I'm sorry," he managed to say, his voice quiet and small, and he had released his grip on the counter so that he could tease at the first signs of a loose thread at the cuff of one sleeve. It helped to have something else to focus on but at the same time it felt dismissive. Wrong. Sam dropped his arm again.