★

Simon’s been watching him for the last hour while he sips on his whiskey and chews on the butt of his cigarette, filter dissolving on the tip of his tongue. It’s as if he’s looking in a mirror. A washed up mutt with hardened skin finally reclining after too many years of work. Tapping his finger on the table, he keeps count of each respiration and breathes in time with the creature. He twitches in his sleep—tail wagging, cheeks puffing up with emphatic growls that hardly roll past his canines. 

There’s nothing else of value to watch in the saloon besides the mangy creature. The poker game taking place three tables down is smothered with ancient men sporting white hair and liver spots who hardly let anything out of their lips except wet coughs, and the bartender has been muttering curses to himself for half the evening that Simon doubts he would make good conversation. Besides, he's a wayward man. Constantly on the move, traveling from place to place, refusing to linger for too long lest trouble finds him.

For now, he’s perfectly content on leaning back in his chair and enjoying his solitude—

—until you stumble in. 

Pale pink fingerprints stain the cotton of your apron that you either didn’t bother to remove or forgot to hang up in the kitchen before bursting into the saloon with wild eyes and a heaving chest. As he takes a drag of his cigarette, Simon half expects some inebriated bastard to stagger in after you, caught in a drunken stupor trying to chase after some girl who he doesn't have even half the skill to catch in his maw. You are a sight for sore eyes. Certainly better than the half dead mutt keeping him company. Clad in a sky blue dress that seems all too common for women settling in the west and a gaze that can’t help but be magnetically attracted to the floor as you walk to the bar on lubberly legs, he nearly chuckles when you hold your hands behind your back. 

“You’re late,” the barkeep berates. 

“Sorry Daddy, I was finishing up chores, and the geese were pitching a fit again—” You’re tripping over your words worse than you do your feet. They spew between your teeth like water from a well pump that has too much pressure behind it. 

“I don’t give a damn what held you up, girl. I tell you to be here no later than seven, and I expect that you listen to that,” the man—your father—snaps. Your apology comes so quiet that Simon can’t make out what you say, but he can tell by the curling of your shoulders that it exists. All you get in response is raised brows and a clenching jaw. “Well? Go on. I didn’t ask you to be here just to stand around.”

You slink away from the bar without another word before your gaze is cast out at the swathes of unoccupied tables around you. Simon flicks the ash from his cigarette onto the floor as he studies the way you mentally drink up the tasks laid out for you before you're springing to work. One by one you ignite the oil lamps that hang from the ceiling with precariously rusty chains. A curse hisses between your pursed lips when you burn your fingers on one of the matches, and you shove the raw pad against your tongue to numb the pain.

Simon doesn't bother to hide the way he watches you. His gaze is heavy beneath the brim of his hat, darker than the coal mines that line this pathetic excuse for a town and ten times more suffocating. You make the mistake of not carrying a canary with you as you approach his table—there is no sudden silence of a bird's song to warn you of the danger you're in—a meek smile graces your face as you light another match and reach up to ignite his lamp.

"Good evening, sir," you greet.

His fingers freeze against the table. Simon's lost his interest in keeping count of an old dog's breathing. "Evenin."

Your scent washes over him just as the oil begins to burn. Sweet like fresh strawberries, yet smothered by crude, unadulterated earth. Wet soil, the muck of animals. Simon studies the curve of your face as the flames illuminate your skin. Delectable flesh, pliable and soft—softer than him—yet the blemish on the apple of your cheek screams at him.

"Look at me, sweetheart." The pet name is kind, but his voice isn't. Jumping, the match burns down to your fingers again forcing you to yelp, but even through the pain you listen to him.

He's traded one dog for another.

When you question if something is wrong, Simon gives you no answer except for the beckoning of his fingers. Complying, you lean forward as he snatches your jaw in one hand and sticks his thumb into his mouth before smearing his spit across your cheek. It's wet like a kiss, and your skin drinks up his touch like starved earth yearning for any bit of rain the skies will bless it with. The dried mud flakes off with ease, and he wipes the remainder off on his stained jeans.

"O-Oh." When he relinquishes you, your hand flies up to your face where you begin to rub at your skin as if you can feel the mark he's left on you. "Thank you, sir."

Simon only hums in response before tapping the side of his glass. It rings like church bells on a bleak Sunday. "I'm dry."

Gruff. Short. Seemingly having no time for pleasantries. You awkwardly snatch his glass up before bringing it to your father where he berates you for not asking what was in it before you took it away. Luckily the saloon isn't too busy, and when you return his drink back to him Simon's happy to find that it's exactly what he ordered even though half of it is beaded on the outside of the cup from your blatant mishandling.

His night has become much more interesting now that he can watch you through the haze of his whiskey. Bent over on your hands and knees, sweat beading on your brow, you scrub the floor in the unoccupied areas of the saloon with a bristle brush. The view is nice. The curve of your ass presses through your dress like rising sourdough while you work, and when you're facing him your bodice cuts so low your cleavage glistens in the marmalade lighting.

John Price has always told him views like this were worth the money. His business partner has always been fond of the little thing he keeps locked up at home fat with his kids and sticky with the food he buys. Always got a fresh meal on the table for dinner and a sweet cunt to sink into for dessert. It's not half bad, Riley.

But he knows that type of life isn't for him. Always on the road, gloves tainted with blood turned russet from weeks of baking in the sun before he even bothers to rinse it off. The money in his billfold is far from honest, but men like Simon Riley don't leave the comfort of England to come to the American West for pure business. Face muddled with scars, thighs sore from years of riding, and back ruined from sleeping on the cold earth—he'll be dead long before he ever sincerely dreams of settling down with a wife and kid.

Still, the thought is tempting.

His daydreams shatter the moment you bucket spills, sending water and suds all along the floor, flooding the wood until puddles reflect both the oil lamps and your shame back into your face. Cursing, your father marches over to where you stare at your mess with watery eyes. You jump when he kicks the bucket, sending it flying across the room. Even the near-dead dog in the corner can't sleep through the ruckus.

"Useless daughter of mine! What are you good for besides making a damn mess of my work?" His disparaging cuts so deep Simon can see the quiver in your bottom lip as you stare up at your father, hands neatly folded on your lap despite the way the water soaks your apron. "Don't just sit there! Go fetch some rags and dry this shit up!"

When you stand to your feet, Simon is reminded of the fawn he slaughtered last spring. Wobbly legs, unsure feet, trotting out the door as if you're a fresh babe again. He only killed the small creature out of pity, not malice. Having shot its mother, it was left alone with without a teat to suckle on or any maternal guidance to raise it into adulthood. It didn't even flinch at the flash of his knife or the cut of the blade, it only stared up at him with soft brown eyes that reflected the whole world back at him.

The meat wasn't half bad, neither.

Sucking down the dregs of his drink, Simon saunters up to your father with his empty glass in hand while you work on fixing the mess you've made of the floor. He towers over the bar so much that when he goes to lean on it he has to curve his spine forward, shoulders hunching as if he's some inhuman creature preying on the animals below him. Your father looks at him without so much as a second glance before swiping his empty glass away from him.

"Another?" he asks. He's already grabbing the bottle of whiskey before Simon even nods.

While his cup is poured, Simon glances back down at you. Head bowed, you're wringing out your rag back into your bucket in an attempt to fill it up, but at the rate your tears are streaming down your face, he knows you'll have another flood to worry about before you're even halfway through.

"That your daughter?" Simon inquires with half-hearted interest.

Your father doesn't even bother to look at you before scoffing. "You mean that useless animal? Yeah, she's mine."

"What's she good for?"

Your father sets Simon's drink in front of him, prompting him to return the favor with a few coins on the scarred counter. The whiskey slides over his tongue like rough sandpaper, but the burn in the back of his throat and the cotton being shoved between his ears is worth it.

"Not a damn thing," he huffs before crossing his arms. Your father glares at you from across the room, and you must feel his gaze on you because it isn't long before you're finally raising your head. Sorrow is strewn all over your face, a hefty guilt you can't rid yourself of. "She's a klutz, hardly speaks loud enough for anyone to hear her, always hurting herself like she's still some child."

"Haven't married her off yet? That'd get 'er off your hands." Simon means it as a sour joke, but your father grumbles before he returns to his chores.

"No man's stupid enough to marry her."

The harsh reality of it is no worse than Simon's used to, but he finds himself mulling the idea over anyway. Certainly you're good for something. Glazed eye candy for men to gawk at—men who like their women soft around the edges. Tiny little puppy teeth that can hardly break skin and gets a chuckle when it starts to tickle.

Besides, Simon's learned well enough not to trust the words that comes spewing out of an angry father's mouth. Rancid with the decay clogging their arteries, his own father wasn't much different. A right bastard who knew just how to wiggle his way beneath everyone's skin, slicing through tendon and pure bone just to get a reaction, anything that would justify his hand upon a cheek.

Simon won't pretend to be a good man, but he's certainly better, and if it wasn't for the fact this man has provided him the means to get drunk, his blood would be joining the soapy water in an instant.

"I'd buy 'er off ya."

It takes your father several moments to formulate a response; long enough for Simon to down the rest of his whiskey in a single swig. For the first time since he's walked through those doors he finally notes a smile on the man. It's ugly, twisted at the corners in the way only malevolent things can, but it's sincere.

"Quit pulling on my leg, son," he dismisses.

"I'm not pullin' on anythin," Simon grunts.

A large hand snakes through Simon's vest as he presses his fingers into his breast pocket to retrieve his billfold. It's old. Probably ancient. A dilapidating piece of leather he snatched off of a body just outside Lead two years back when he realized it was much better than the coin purse he had. Perusing through the folded up notes, he yanks out a fifty dollar bill and places it face up on the counter.

Your father's smile vanishes once he sees the money, but the twinkle in his eye only strengthens. "What are you playing at?"

"I'm playin' at buyin' myself a wife and giving you a migraine free end of your life," Simon says bluntly. Brows raising, he spots a bottle behind the man and nods towards it. "Better throw in that bottle of Kentucky bourbon, too."

"Now why would I do that?" your father scoffs.

Simon shrugs. "A wedding gift."

It doesn't take your father very long at all to think over this offer before he snatches the money off the counter and hands Simon the key to his spoils.

"You have my blessing."

You put up a teary-eyed fuss as your new future is laid out before you in the form of a tall stranger who smells like whiskey and iron. Despite the pitiful protests that bleed from your lips, your father has trained you all too well—a sharp snap, a show of teeth, and you're falling quiet like the dead of night in winter. Your father doesn't tell you that he's giving you away for a crisp fifty dollar bill. Not out loud, anyway. He certainly doesn't try to hide it when he shoves it into his pocket.

With his bourbon in one hand and the small of your back in the other, Simon leads you out of the saloon. Neither he nor your father give you any opportunity to gather your things back home—you have nothing to your name but the clothes on your back. Dusk brushes over the sky with a plain pallet of deep reds and bruising purples only to be blotched out by migrating geese that honk in the distance. Long shadows tickle your footprints in the dirt until you reach the hardened rocks and earth that surround your hometown. Not a single word is exchanged between the two of you as your travels begin to wane. There is only the jingle of the spurs on Simon's boots and your intermittent sniffling as you attempt to keep your tears at bay.

Simon's camp is nestled in the valley of a ravine where the soil is cool and the walls are high—a protective den for a wild animal to hide in with his back covered and eyes focused on any throat that gets within sniffing distance. He sets you at the yawning mouth of his tent, a simple lean-to with stained white canvas and hardly enough space for the brute of a man himself, let alone you too.

You try to keep your shivering at bay while Simon crouches in front of a stone fire pit. By the looks of it, he's been here for a few days at least. A moderate stockpile of wood rests next to where his horse is hitched and his feet mar the earth so viciously you fear she may be scarred until the next thunderstorm rolls overhead to smother out all traces of human life.

Fire blooms to life with waifish flames licking up towards Simon's face, demanding more. He feeds kindling and small blocks of wood into it until it's purring content near the tips of his toes, illuminating all the gnarly features that comprise his body. Deep scars cut without care around his cheeks and lips, some spanning even as far as his hairline, distorting the growth with keloids and angry skin. His nose is curved worse than a sickle, and is more crooked than a pianist's index finger.

Despite his flaws, he is not an ugly man. Only slightly painful to look at in the way beasts are—striking fear through your heart as if wielding a dagger. His broad shoulders would be something your friends would squeal over, and his height would send any mentally stable person running for the hills if they were ever unfortunate enough to cross paths with him. Still, you're not sure what to make of him or the way he looks at you. Dark eyes pinning you into the dirt, dry lips parting just enough for him to huff as he stands.

"You hungry?"

All you can do is stare at him. Simon Riley; this man who is to now suddenly be your husband, who bought you off of your father for a single scrap of paper. Some untamed piece of you wants to snap at him, snarl with your teeth bared—how dare he pretend to care for you as if he sees you as anything more than a piece of meat.

"Yeah, starvin' aren't ya? Scroungy thing you are." Before you have the time to argue with him, Simon begins to sort through an old leather satchel held together with a spotty stitching job and a half-hearted prayer. From it, he produces a fair amount of jerky and holds out a stringy piece for you to take. "Here."

You swallow down the smoke wafting from the campfire. "I'm not hungry."

Simon doesn't waver in the face of the stern attitude you attempt to wear; instead, he presses the jerky closer to your face. "Mad at your daddy so you're mad at the world, yeah? That shit doesn't fly with me, sweetheart. Eat your dinner 'fore I give ya somethin' else to keep that pretty mouth occupied."

He doesn't give you an opportunity to argue further before he's pressing the food against your lips, pressing past them and jamming into your teeth. To prevent him from shattering your enamel, you take it from him with a fawn-like glare. It's salty. Harder than the rocks at your feet. Still, you gnaw on it, jaw clenching as your molars grind it as best as you can. As you swallow, you pretend it's Simon's throat.

Your husband-to-be doesn't bother to sit while he eats. The speed in which he devours his food like some gluttonous beast leaves your brain spinning—crooked teeth, sharp canines, and a bad habit of licking his lips afterwards like he yearns for something more than just simple brine on his tongue. Neither of you speak. You're glad for it. Conversation has never been your strong suit, and your father has always treated every sound that's ever left your throat like a chore.

Sparks fly into the night sky to dance with the stars as Simon tosses another chopped log on top of the fire, but you don't get the chance to revel in the beauty of the flames before he's obscuring your view. He removes his hat to reveal short cropped hair before he tosses it onto the bedding behind you where it lands with a dull thunk. You stare up at him. Already a large man, he looks baronial when you're settled on your haunches, attempting to make yourself unnoticeable by his burning gaze.

"You know what comes next, don't ya sweetheart?" he questions.

It's as if the fire doesn't exist at all. You can't stop shivering. Simon's belt buckle flashes in the umbra as he sticks his thumb into the waist of his jeans. You can smell him now—or, at least your brain can make sense of the scent. Long soaked tobacco and the whiskey he drank at your father's saloon, along with something heavier. Like ichor. Like lead.

"I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about." Your faux courage doesn't get you very far—there's a waver in your voice that trills on the end of your words, and Simon finds it cute enough to chuckle.

"Didn't realize I bought myself a dumb fawn."

A fat palm rests on the nape of your neck with lightning speed and precision, and before you know it your torso is twisted until you're face first into blankets that smell like musk and gun powder. Your yelp is lost into the sparse padding against your cheek. A wounded animal, bleeding out and waiting to be gutted.

You jump as his other hand lands on your rump, not in a spank but in an arcing motion that smooths over your thighs. Even through the skirt of your dress he can feel the way you quiver as you struggle against the palm on your neck. A feisty barn cat, scruffed when it doesn't want to be.

"That's alright, I don't mind spellin' it out for ya if ya need it," Simon muses.

"Wait, wait, please!"

He silences your pleas as his hand wanders down the back of your thigh. Breath catching in your throat, fingers curling into rough blankets that choke you with lingering tar—you squeal when he pulls up the skirt of your dress, exposing your backside to the fire. Warmth licks up your legs both from rigid shame and the flames dancing behind you, but nothing compares to the way he rips through your pantalets as if they're as thin as paper.

"This is how this is gonna work sweetheart." His hands are wandering further, fingertips brushing where they shouldn't, dipping into the warmest part of you with enough friction to make you yelp. "You're gonna lay right there nice, pretty, and quiet for me while I christen this new union of ours, yeah? Gonna get the best bang for my buck, that's for fuckin' sure."

Squeezing your eyes shut, you nod. One of the working women in town once told you what sex was like. Your father has always held purity in high regard, but she talked about it as if it was nothing of importance, a flippant union that she did for work nearly every night.

Ain't nothin' but a slight burn and pleasure so underwhelming you'd wish you had your own fingers down there instead.

Finally, you nod. "Yes sir."

Chuckling, the pressure on the back of your neck vanishes as Simon stands to his feet, spurs jingling on his boots and kicking dirt up into the air as he positions himself behind you. He whistles low as if looking at a painting. Always hung up high in the gallery at the library, brushstrokes vivid as they swirl in prismatic colors—a work of art, just for him. He makes a few adjustments as he tears further through your pantalets with a knife. The iron runs across your skin. A gentle kiss with teeth hardly held at bay. You shiver as the night air rushes to meet your sex.

"Spread those legs, sweetheart," Simon orders. His words are tough, but slurred. Whiskey heavy on his tongue, alcohol burning through his blood like wildfire devouring a mountainside.

Obeying, your weight wiggles side to side as you move your knees further apart and it feels like cutting into yourself. A doe with a knife gralloching herself so that the hunter's work is less laborious.

Simon only chuckles. "C'mon, you can do better than that."

When you try again and he still isn't satisfied with the way you're contorting yourself, his feet thud into the ground behind you just before something bites the inside of your thighs. They're cruel. Like thickets gnawing into your skin as you attempt to fetch the enticing berries just before you, but you get no sweet treat in the end. Just ichor running down your legs as you lurch away from the source of pain, quivering legs spreading until your hips can't take it anymore.

"Yeah, tha's good," your husband-to-be purrs.

Shoulders curling, you attempt to look between your legs only for your dress to block your vision. "Did you- did you cut me?"

"Just used my spurs for some extra motivation," Simon shrugs. The said item jingles as he falls to his knees again, but it's smothered by the sound of his fly coming undone. "If it's not cruel 'nuff for my horse, then it's not cruel 'nuff for you."

"T-That hurt," you snap. You're glad he can't see your face right now and the way pathetic tears plunge down your cheeks with each flutter of your eyelashes.

"I'll kiss it better later if it means that damn much."

His promise tastes stale in the air as his jeans rustle down his hips and the sound prompts you to freeze as something presses against your backside. It's too warm to be a hand. Blistering hot like the surface of the sun jumping out to snatch you up on a warm summer's day. It's too smooth to be his hands; those palms of his are calloused beyond recognition.

You don't realize that it's his cock until it's butting up against you, pushing your labia apart until you're choking him. The stretch burns. Like a paper cut being pried too far apart, flesh splitting, blood oozing from the pathetic laceration. An ache blooms in your jaw as your teeth clench together, and you have to fight the urge to chew on the bedding against the side of your face. Simon grunts as he moves closer, attempting to push further into you, but your body refuses to give. Skin dimples, organs flutter, and you're left wincing at the small intrusion.

"Fuckin' hell. Never been fucked properly before, have ya?"

As Simon curses, he pulls away from you and the pressure dissipates throughout your body. Relief comes next. Bitter and cutting, it tingles between your thighs as the muscles in your back liquefy. Perhaps he's finished with you.

You don't realize how terribly wrong you are until his hand yanks back on your shoulder, forcing your torso off of the ground until your spine is bending like the branches of a willow tree. Sour fingers dart into your mouth, pushing past your lips and knocking around your teeth until gunpowder and stale tobacco presses against your tongue. You gag as the fingers move to the back of your throat, nails digging through your soft pallet, slicing up your throat until you're pulling on his forearm for any bit of reprieve he'll allow you to earn.

"Dryer than a goddamn desert," he mutters against the back of your skull. "Can hardly get you to take even an inch."

He leaves you coughing and sputtering as he retracts his fingers from your mouth and pushes you back down on the blankets. Spit coats your chin, but it isn't long before it's coating your sex too. Haphazardly wiping his fingers along your labia, Simon pushes two fingers into you, plunging too far too fast. Your feet kick at the intrusion, but Simon only laughs.

"That hurts!" you squeal, hips moving side to side as if you could buck him off like a rodeo horse.

"Relax, sweetheart. I'll get ya singin' real pretty f'me in no time," he discards.

There is no time to think or breathe before he's replacing his fingers with his cock. You split apart easier this time. Faster. Body giving into his, flesh decoupling where it's never bled before. All you can do is hold your breath as he fills you with slow, even pressure. When you're so full of him that you can't take anymore, he continues to try despite it. Breaking the laws of physics, bending your will to his own, all while growling like a guarded wolf refusing to share a meal with the rest of the pack.

"Yeah, that's it," Simon praises between gritted teeth. "Just like this, sweetheart."

When Simon picks up his pace—pumping in an out of you faster than your brain will allow you to comprehend—you realize that prostitute you spoke with all those years ago is a liar. This is more than a simple numbness swallowing you, wishing that you'd take matters into your own hands. You feel every ridge and angle of him. The way he pushes your walls out of the way, organs displacing to make room for his demanding cock, everything sliding against one another as if to start a fire within you. Friction too great. Nerves melting off at each junction.

His fingers curl into your hips as if to mark you. White hot branding iron against your skin, shaping you into the swirls of his finger prints—your husband-to-be. You've never heard of men claiming their wives with anything other than a ring on their fingers, but you suppose this man—Simon Riley—might not be much of a human at all.

"Sweet little thing, you are," he grunts. His pace continues at the same speed he's kept since he began, relentless and fast, desperately chasing for something he hasn't gotten in such a long time that it's left him half brain-dead. "Dunno why your daddy treats you the way he does. I've always liked dumb fawns."

Though his words sting, the pain is nothing compared to the way he moves inside of you. His words seem kind and sincere but the verbiage is cutting and wrong—a backhanded compliment meant to leave you floundering. Keeping your lips tight, you refuse to respond to him. You're not sure what you would even say to such a comment anyway. This man, who bought you off your father as a wife, now staking his claim before the matrimony has even taken place.

Seemingly displeased with your silence, Simon's pace falters as one of his hands snakes around your front and down between your thighs. His weight presses on your back. Soft stomach rolling against your rump, hair rubbing against the tender skin—he steals your breath away as his firm fingers swipe against the rawest part of you. The part where your skin hardens, puffy and stiff, blood rushing between your legs until you're brimming full with electricity like lightning.

Simon hisses as your body tenses, back arching as you lift your head up from the bedding, arms aching from keeping yourself from toppling over. He sounds like a snake. An angry rattler slithering through a garden he doesn't belong in. He chokes it off with a chuckle when you begin to gasp and choke on your own breath.

"Yeah, there she is," he chuckles as his pace begins to pick up once more. "Just need a little extra coaxing."

It feels like a betrayal to yourself to admit that it feels good—but it does. It numbs the burn inside of you as Simon continues to take what's now rightfully his. Adding water to the fire until it's no longer roaring, but sizzling, smouldering remains snuffing out with each swirl even as you clench so tightly around him that you nearly trap him inside of you.

His nose rests against your back, crooked tip nestling into the bend of your spine. You feel each exhale. Hot breath soaking into your skin. It makes you shiver.

"That feels—oh—I don't… I can't…" It's the first sentence you've attempted to string together since he began, and it comes out disjointed. Half formed stutters on a tongue that's too limp underneath his fingers.

"I feel it, sweetheart," Simon pants. "Squeezin' me as tight as you are, not sure I could stop myself even if I wanted to."

And he doesn't. He goes faster. Hips snapping against you, thighs rubbing against the new cuts on your skin, blood smearing along him until his legs are bright pink, fingers raking over your sex, digging deep until he's twisting the nerves to his liking, rewiring you until all you can do is hold your breath with clenched fingers. Then, there's the swell. The change in pressure that tenses in your core and skull. Brain throbbing, eyelids fluttering until everything becomes so tight—

—that you finally shatter.

A million pieces of you scatter all over Simon's tent as you come. Thighs quivering, cunt fluttering around him despite his relentless pace; it's sweeter than the strawberry pastries you spent all afternoon baking but the acid that follows bites worse than a wasp. A wretched give and take that leaves you gasping in the stilly night air.

Simon plunges in not too far after you. Both hands returning to your hips, he yanks you towards him and keeps you locked against his body while his cock begins to pulse inside of you, jumping rhythmically as if to a tune you can't hear. Your brain can't make sense of it until he's pulling out of you with a grunt and something warm runs down the inside of your legs—he's truly consummated this marriage-to-be with a gift only man can bestow upon a woman.

He allows you to collapse, but not without another mocking chuckle. On your side, you curl your legs up as close to your chest as you can get while Simon shuffles through items out of your view. Ruined pantalets at your ankles, dress wrinkled beyond recognition; you're soiled. Claimed down to your very marrow by this stranger who blew into town and suddenly decided to take you for himself out of the kindness of his heart.

A kindness soaked in acrimony. Both your tongue and eyes water at the mere stench of it.

When Simon yanks the skirt of your dress over your exposed rump, you can't help but jump. Hands pushing into the earth, you look over your shoulder at him and you're nearly blinded by the fire that dwindles into coals waving with remnants of heat. He holds something out for you to take—a large bottle with a skinny neck and fat bottom. Amber liquid sloshes around inside as he settles down next to you, head skimming against the lean-to tent canvas.

"Go on, then," Simon prompts.

You take the bottle into your hand and realize it's the fresh Kentucky bourbon your father sells at the saloon. The cap has already been popped off, and fresh liquid stains the rim with the remnants of Simon's lips.

"I'm not thirsty," you say, ready to discard the bottle back into his grasp.

"I told you to drink, sweetheart," he corrects you, tone severe.

Brows heavy with a scowl, you ignore the pang between your legs as you sit up and press the bottle to your mouth. Tiny sips allow the alcohol to seep between your lips and though the flavor is smooth, the sting is violent. Needles on your tongue, coals down your throat. When your mouse-like sips aren't enough to satisfy Simon, he tips the bottom of the bottle up, flooding your sinuses with the drink until you're choking it down and coughing at the sting.

"Atta girl," he chuckles before swiping it away and swallowing more gulps than he should.

The earth moves but you stay still. Frozen in time as everything moves around you, time and space warping with you at the epicenter of the destruction of your life. When your husband-to-be settles for bed, he pulls you close to his side but doesn't seem intent on offering any sort of comfort to you besides heavy snoring from his crooked nose.

Your eyes glaze over as you stare at the dying fire. It no longer cracks and spits sparks into the air, it only dances with trembling embers that remind you of waves on a lake. As a coyote howls in the night, you think of how easy it would be to wander back home. To slip from Simon's faint grasp and vanish into the night. You do not scrounge up the courage to leave.

Like your father has taught you—love is nothing if it is not painful.

When dawn breaks you are alone in the tent, but Simon is not far. Breathing life back into the campfire, he crouches next to it with hunched shoulders while boiling water for a canister of dry tea that rests next to his boots. Eyes like soot quickly find you as you peek your face out from the blankets, body stunned into silence as you watch him.

"Mornin' sweetheart," he greets.

Breakfast is just as dull as your pathetic dinner was. Hardtack with not enough salt, and tea that tastes like raw juniper without sugar—you do your best to keep your discontent to a minimum. Your hot cakes are better. Smothered with freshly churned butter and doused with maple syrup from up north. You think about telling him as much, but decide to keep quiet when he stands to his feet and begins to dismantle his tent.

You turn your attention to the dwindling fire as he works. It is a difficult task to focus on the way flames sputter and cry when you can still feel the way Simon ruined you last night. Your sex is swollen, puffy between your thighs, chaffing in areas you never thought were possible. His stench smothers you. Hard work and musk, salty cum between your legs, scabbed cuts screaming at the mixture as it spills out of you, soaking into your tattered pantalets.

Reality hits you without any qualms the moment you place your hand on your stomach. Even that much movement alone hurts.

There are womanly duties that are expected of a bride—of a wife. Of anyone unfortunate enough to be born into the life you are. The seed has been planted, and you're worried about the growth that will overcome your body if it decides to germinate.

"Here."

Simon's voice lulls you back to your senses. His hand is extended for you, and in his palm lies several five dollar bills, all crisp with a neat fold in the center to be stowed away somewhere safe. There's a fat wad of them—nearly 100$ total if you had to guess. Brows creasing, you look up at him.

"What's this? An allowance?" you ask with shaky snark.

He shakes the bills with a tilt of his head. "A parting gift."

Dry lips part in shock. A half-formed demand balances on the tip of your tongue, but you cut it in half with your teeth as you stare up at Simon. "A parting gift?"

"Should be plenty to get you on your way. I'll take ya to the next town over, then what you do from there is up to whatever your sweet little heart desires," he says, voice heavy laden with sarcasm.

Legs contracting, you attempt to stand to your feet only for your knees to give out underneath you, leaving you struggling like a poor-shot doe waiting to be put out of her misery. "But you-! You bought me! Told Daddy you were gonna make me your wife! And last night you took me Simon Riley!"

Tired of holding out money that you don't seem to care about taking, Simon drops the bills to the dirt at your knees. "I'll be real honest with you, sweetheart. I don't have a need for a wife. You're nothin' but just another mouth to feed. Baggage I don't need. Just needed a good night's rest, and that little cunt of yours got the job done just fine."

His haphazard disregard of you leaves thick shame bubbling in your chest like molasses being brought to a boil. No man will take you like this. A whore who has already given herself to someone who has no intention of marrying her, virtue stolen away and devoured as a midnight snack.

"You can't do this to me." Despite your anger, your words only escape your mouth as a hissing whisper.

"Trust me, sweetheart. It's better this way."

"No!" Just as he begins to turn away, your fingers curl into the front of Simon's jeans. A thick layer of dirt and grime wiggles beneath your finger nails, but you ignore the discomfort as you stare daggers up at him with wet eyes and an iron jaw. "You bought me off my daddy, you fucked me last night here in the middle of nowhere—I'm coming with you. Please Simon, you can't just… just leave me. I'll die out there."

As Simon looks down at you with your wet eyes and desperate hands, he realizes he's found himself another fawn. Dumb, looking up at him with a gaze so glassy he can see the whole world reflected within it, lost without guidance. Begging for something to be done. A knife to their throat—anything.

He has long known that he's had no use for a wife. Some woman to calf out children and stay home like a singing bird locked in a cage. But you? This fawn begging for him, desperately in search for someone to trail behind, ready to listen to his every whim? Perhaps he can get used to that.

"Okay sweetheart." He softens right before your eyes. Warm palm against your cheek, thumbing away at the tears on your skin before pressing them into your mouth, all but stunning you into silence. "I'll take care of ya if that's what ya really want. Don't mind havin' a pet."

Simon's sudden change of heart leaves you dizzy, and the thumb on your tongue doesn't help to stabilize you. You promise to be quiet as he finishes packing up the rest of camp, storing away all his items on his horse who lazily watches you while chomping away at the sparse greenery at its feet. When he's finished, he stands in front of you with the rim of his hat sitting low on his face and his thumbs hooked behind his belt buckle.

"Stay right 'ere, sweet fawn. Gonna go get your things from your daddy, yeah?"

It takes all of twenty minutes to convince yourself that Simon's abandoned you. The only thing that can convince you otherwise is that his horse is still here. Just as obnoxiously tall as he is with the same dull, dark eyes staring at you as if he doesn't know what to do with you. Either that or he's gone off to buy a horse from someone else to abandon you without hearing your pathetic shrill cries. He's certainly got enough money for it.

Yet, about an hour later, you hear him huffing and puffing as he settles back down into the ravine. Clenched in one of his hands lies your old carpet bag, something you haven't used since you stopped visiting your friends for sleepovers when you were a child. Even from a distance you can tell it's full to the brim, old fabric bulging beneath the weight of your items as they clank around.

He doesn't bother to greet you upon his return. Too busy tying your carpet bag to his saddle back, thick fingers working along frayed rope as he gives his horse yet one more thing to lug around. Rocks and sand crunch beneath your shoes as you approach him. Even at a distance you can smell the sweat on him. Thick perspiration and musk seeping from his skin, getting his pallid flesh to glow in the sunlight as morning draws dangerously close to noon.

Fingers lacing together, you rock back onto your heels just as Simon turns to face you. "Is everything alright?"

Nodding, Simon digs his thumbs behind his belt buckle once more. "Yeah."

"Good." It's impossible not to notice the stench of blood that follows him. Fresh ichor, iron thick on his skin. When you look at his hands, you see the splitting of epidermis—knuckles busted open like overripe peaches. "Did my daddy say anything?"

"Yeah. Said he was sorry."

You blink. "Sorry?"

Huffing, Simon begins to stalk forward, boots heavy on the ground, spurs ringing with each step, until your cheek is cupped in his hand. It feels wet. Freshly cooled in a nearby stream.

"Said he was sorry 'bout everythin' he ever said 'bout you, 'n that it won't happen again," he explains. The cogs in your mind begin to twist, cleaning the rust off of the gears until every web and speckle of dust is gone. Before you can stop it, you're smiling as you admire this strange man before you. Broad shoulders, crooked face, and fresh blood on the collar of his shirt. "C'mon, sweetheart, let's get outta 'ere."

You situate yourself on the back of his horse as best as you can—legs swung over to the side, arms wrapped around his torso as he kicks the beast into action. It's far from comfortable. Each bump reminds you of the way Simon's cock took you the night before, rabid like a beast and chuckling like a hyena in the night.

Lucas made sure of that. With every firm grip that left bruises, every icy look that made your stomach clench, every time he got too fed up and dragged you over his lap and left you unable to sit for days. 

Every time he went out into the woods and came back with blood splatters and fresh meat to fill the off-limits deep freezer in the little storage cabin out back. A freezer that you dreamed about, still dream about now and then; what would it feel like, to be cut up into pieces and stored there, waiting to be turned into stew and steaks?

What would it be like if Lucas turned his trusty axe and brought the blade down onto your tear-stricken face?

It was easier to pretend you were what he wanted than to ignore the fear of death. What were those little things that he took away compared to being chopped up with an axe? 

And, yes. Eventually, pretense bleeds into reality. Not right away. Not completely. But when the days become weeks, the weeks become months, the months become years–5 whole years, to be closer to exact–it is hard to keep the pretense at bay.

When you spend almost 2000 days trapped in the cabin of a serial killer who claims to love you (and he does–he does, you think, in his way) there’s simply no way to hold a firm line between What He Wants You to Be and What You Are and still exist as a functioning human being.

You don’t swear anymore. On the rare occasion you do, well, Lucas is there with soap to give you a bitter reminder to keep your mouth clean and pretty. 

And you’ve long since learned to be satisfied with the occasional VHS tape, often his favorite Westerns; your attention span has improved from the lack of constant visual media, so maybe it’s for the better. 

“Darlin’?”

You wouldn’t dare ask Lucas to let you watch the type of gory slasher flick you used to enjoy; he doesn’t pay much attention to the books you ask for, so if you’re in the mood for something awful and violent, all you have to do is pull out a paperback.

You’re more mindful of what you do and what you say, and how you say it. Pleases and thank yous and all those pretty words like pearls that pass easily through your lips, just how he likes it. And so much more of you has been left on the cutting room floor.

So you’ve changed. Of course you have. Who wouldn’t, under these circumstances. Hell, people change under normal circumstances, so there’s no use beating yourself up about it. 

But sometimes, oh, sometimes. Sometimes you find a little scrap of yourself, something you thought you’d long since discarded, and hold it up to your cheek and remember what life used to be. What and who and how you used to be. And then it’s dropped and painted over and you go about your pretty, homebound cabin life.

Usually.

Sometimes it’s a fight.

Like right now.

Because the scrap you’re holding lately is really, really fucking hard to put down.

“Darlin.”

You must have been staring into space again, because when Lucas’ voice finally cuts through your thoughts, there’s an edge to it. Half-concerned, half-annoyed. It’s the syrupy concern that you appeal to when you blink your eyes–you’ve got such pretty lashes, he tells you, no need for the mascara you’ve long since stopped requesting–and slowly bring your gaze to him.

“I-I’m sorry,” you say, and draw yourself up on the well-worn sitting chair in the spare room that’s slowly become filled with your bits and bobs. Books and embroidery kits and sewing projects; scrapbooks and a typewriter, a pile of papers for the various books and short stories, some unfinished, that you’ve written over the past few years.

“Been callin’ your name for dinner,” he says, still gruff, but the tension in his shoulders eases enough to let you know that you can weasel your way out of his irritation easily. “Been callin’ for a while.”

You let your teeth drag over your lower lip, let your eyes flit down to your lap. Repentant little thing; he likes that, so you do it. 

“Sorry,” you repeat, voice softer. “I was just thinking about…” 

But the words don’t come any further than that, because you remember now, that you were just thinking about something that isn’t like the current-you at all. It’s former-you, the you-that-used-to-be, who was just thinking.

He shifts, one hand resting on his hip. The smell of dinner trickles through the open doorway. Meat and potatoes. ‘Meat.’ The generic term he always uses, so you always use it, because despite the fact that he knows you know, neither of you will say out loud that the meat on the plate was once a human being.

“Just thinkin’ about what, sweetheart?” And yes, yes, there’s a softness in his words. But behind them is that sharpness, always looking to sniff out something that needs to be cut down. Whether it’s a bad habit or your throat.

Oh, God. Why did you say anything? Why did you let yourself get distracted, let those daydreams enter your head? 

Your eyes glance over to the nearby nightstand, piled high with your books-du-jour: travel books. Guides to popular destinations, from palaces to parks, tips for snagging the best restaurant reservations, how to see such-and-such a city on a single weekend…

You love to travel. Or loved. It’s been such a long time. Travel is how you ended up here, in this room, with this man, with this life. You’d been traveling with a group of friends, who agreed to your notion of a weekend camping in some mountains. The nature was supposed to be beautiful (it was) and the mountain was supposed to be uninhabited (it wasn’t). 

Before that weekend, though, you’d been planning more trips. That’s what you lived for, what you worked for. All your money stowed away to save up for going here and there. Seeing this and that. What a thrill to see the world. 

There were so many places on your bucket list, still, waiting to be crossed off.

Wouldn’t it be nice to travel again? To go somewhere. Anywhere but here and these walls, this yard, this small garden. You could close your eyes and trace every step without stumbling, you’re sure. 

What would Lucas say, if you asked? “No,” of course. But maybe. Maybe it’s been long enough. Five years. Years. He never talked about the ones who came before you, but you know they didn’t last very long. The pieces they left behind attest to that. Diaries that only lasted a few months at most; polaroids you’d found in a drawer, people who appear for a few shots and then never again.

But you… you’re different. He’s different with you, you’re sure of it.

So maybe he might say yes. If you ask the right way. If you ask the right thing. You swallow, and think about those far-off destinations that he might shut down right away. Beijing, China is out. So is Paris, France.

But what about somewhere closer, somewhere in the same state. A resort town. The kind where there are so many tourists that no-one would ever remember the two of you, and Lucas wouldn’t have to worry about anyone staring too long at you. 

(And you’re not from around here, anyway. No one would recognize you. No one would care enough to look up ‘missing woman from 5 years ago’ and squint and call some hotline, just in case.)

He clears his throat, and you shift, stomach pitching forward. Yes. Yes, you could ask. It’s been years, you’ve been good. He loves you and you can live with him, but you just want to be a little bit more yourself.

That’s not too much to ask. Is it? 

“Can we… talk about it after dinner?” You smile, expression brightening, watching the way he eases his hand off his hip. “It smells so good, I want to eat it while it’s nice and hot.”

It’s not even a lie. Human meat tastes awful cold.

“‘Course,” he says, slowly. There’s wariness in there, but you know you can ease it away by being extra sweet at the table.  “Let’s get you washed up and we’ll have a nice dinner.”

–

Dinner is eaten, the dishes are done, the chickens have gotten their supper–and you finally have time to talk with Lucas about going somewhere. It helps that a quiet meal together gave you the time to think about what you wanted. Just a little trip. Nothing big. Something to wet that whistle you used to have about seeing and doing new things.

Just something small to remind you of yourself. It wasn’t that big a deal. 

“Well,” he says, patting his thighs and you oblige by sliding your rear over them so he can cradle you on the sofa, “what was it you were thinkin’ about earlier, sweetheart?”

Outside, the evening is calm. The sun has just about set and the beautiful reds and blues and purples come in clear through the windows, half-cracked, letting in the songs of the crickets outside. 

Inside this cabin, inside your chest, you begin to feel a bit like a dog relentlessly kicking after a good scratch. The thought of it–getting to travel again–makes you feel almost nauseous in anticipation.. A bit of yourself reclaimed, even a small part. Something you don’t have to tear up and tuck away forever. Something you could enjoy with Lucas, even.

“I was thinking about… before.”

He tenses. Quickly. Too quickly. It almost throws you off but you rest your head against his shoulder, feeling the solid weight of him. Your words are spoken against his chest, with your hand curled around his shirt. The way he likes you to lay against him, the way you’ve been doing for years now. Because he likes it, so you like it, now.

“Before what, darlin’?” 

You could stop here. You know you could. But you’ve navigated tough situations with Lucas before. There was the time he caught you outside without permission about a year or so in. Or the time he read one of your short stories about a woman who escapes a kidnapper. And of course, the time you’d broken down (was it three years in? You can’t remember) on your sister’s birthday and begged him to just let you call her once for the love of God.

All tricky things. All things he might have hurt you for. Might have killed you for. (Has killed others for, you’re sure.) But you got out of them all right. And you can talk him through this. You know him well enough. You’re–you’re sure.

“Before… I came here,” you murmur. You do not mention that he killed your friends in front of you or that when he took you to his cabin, you were covered in their gore and blood. No, coming here must sound like you simply appeared one day, a baby dropped by a stork. 

“What about it?” He’s still tense. Still annoyed. But you can ease him down, you know it.

“I was just thinking about how before…” You sigh, a pretty, soft noise. “Before, I really liked to travel. You know. To different places.” A smile on your lips, a real one, an old one from the old you. “I even went outside the country. Japan was really cool. I always wanted to see China, too, but I didn’t–” And you feel the way his muscles tense even more, can see out of the corner of your eye the way his jaw is setting up hard, and you walk back, inching, step by step.

“A-Anyway. What I was thinking was… I’d really like us to take a trip somewhere. Together. A couple’s trip,” you add, “Somewhere near here, like um,” and you add a nearby resort city you found in a travel guide. There’s a crack in your voice when he doesn’t seem to be relaxing at all with your tidy clarifications. A couple’s trip. Near here. Nothing too extravagant at all.

“No,” he says, chest rumbling underneath you.

You’re not stupid. You didn’t survive this long by being stupid. But you don’t want to let the scrap in your hand go. How could you? Just one thing, one little thing, twisted to fit his terms! 

“If–if it’s too expensive, it can be somewhere else. Even a little bed and breakfast weekend together would be nice.” You look up at him with batted lashes, the age-old trick when he’s not in the right mood, and immediately regret it. The stare he’s giving is ice cold, sending prickles down your back right to your bowels.

“I said no,” he says, shifting his position until he’s got both his hands wrapped around your upper arms. He squeezes, once. Tight. A warning. “That’s final.”

You’re not stupid. Really, you’re not. But… you feel the tears building up before they fall, and they’re not even an intentional move to soften him. They’re real. Real and hot and painful as they make you choke out your words.

“But why not? I’m not–I’m not trying to run away, I’ve been good–” You could say so much more.

(You’ve been good and quiet and sweet and done everything he asks and you don’t even complain when he watches his damn Western movies anymore and you hardly ever think about wanting to watch a good horror movie or wear lots of makeup or ride a bike or leave the motherfucking house more than a few paces so why, why, why can’t he give up something, for once?) 

But you don’t get another word out because he cuts you off by practically yanking you off his lap and plopping you down firmly on the worn seat of the sofa.

“What’s the matter with you, darlin’?” There’s a firm coldness there and you can practically feel the frustration, all mottled and bubbling, pushing through the surface. “What’s gotten into you, huh? You’ve been so sweet lately. So good.” 

A thumb goes up to your cheek, rubbing at your tears like he might be able to wipe out whatever has you dumb enough to ask this.

God, what has gotten into you? You’ve given up everything else. Why not this? Why did you read those stupid books and let yourself get carried away by a fantasy that will never come true? Not for you. You’ll die here, in this cabin. Of old age or an axe blade. But it will be here. 

“I don’t know,” you choke out, crying over the words. “I was just… I was reading about traveling… and then I thought maybe… I don’t know why I thought… I don’t know what’s wrong with me…”

And he fills in those blanks for you and if you were someone else, if it was two years ago, if you’d been more stubborn, maybe he would have decided it was time to take you out back and put you down.

But everything is in the right place at this right time and he tsks, dropping your arms. He heads for the spare room in a few great strides and you stumble up, following along on soft lamb legs that barely take you there. You reach the doorway just in time to see him scanning your books; the shelves, the flat surfaces, pulling out books until he’s got a nice tall stack.

You don’t have to read the titles to know what he’s grabbed. All those travel books. And some books about famous places, travel or not. He’s not being picky, you suppose, when it comes to anything that sparked this particular request.

“I’ll take care of them,” he says, and you think he means it kindly. “Won’t have nothin’ like this making you…” He frowns at you, or maybe at himself. “Makin’ you act out.”

He pauses. Stares at you. 

Your mind reaches for what you ought to say. What he wants to hear. What the new-you would say, when corrected on this awful, awful mistake of asking to do something besides be a pretty little housewife.

“Thank you,” is what comes out, voice still croaking from your tears. “I’m… sorry. I won’t ask again.” And it’s true. It’s awful but it’s true. There’s no desire to ask again and you feel something inside you curling up to sleep.

“I know you won’t, darlin.’ You listen real good lately.” 

There’s something terrible about the tight, tense smile he gives you as he passes through the doorway, books in hand. Terrible and final. You’ve had a warning, and that’s enough. 

The man’s presence wasn’t the not-nice part. (It was often nice when people admired the same things you did, because it meant they might ask you about them. And as many years as you had under your belt visiting these same paintings, these same steps, you knew quite a lot.)

The not-nice part was that there was a man standing in front of your favorite painting, and he was staring at (horror!) the wrong thing. 

As you trace your familiar steps, coming agonizingly closer, you can see that he’s not looking at the painting but the frame. The frame! Of all things! He’s got his head tilted just-so, looking at it this way and that. Like he’s admiring it. He stops only when your footsteps get close enough to make it clear that you’re about to stop at the same spot.

“The frame isn’t period authentic,” you say, perhaps a bit too loudly, “There’s no point in looking at it.”

The man hums. You half-wonder if he’ll snap at you, people sometimes do.. But instead he looks back at the painting, as if he’s trying to see what you mean. “What makes you say it isn’t period authentic?” 

His voice is low, a murmur. Out of respect for the museum, maybe, or he’s just embarrassed at being called out. You don’t bother trying to figure it out, because the question he asked is more than enough to have you ready to spill out the words.

“Well,” you begin, swallowing because you can already tell it’s going to take a while. “For one, it’s gilded with aluminum.” When he doesn’t respond, you smile, unbidden. “And of course, aluminum isn’t suitable for water gilding.” Your finger points to the frame (an unwelcome frame, in your opinion–but again, it was the painting, not the frame, that one ought to look at) and wiggles. “The era this painting was made, water gilding was the most popular. They certainly wouldn’t have used an inferior material like aluminum to do water gilding.”

“I see,” he says, after a moment. “Is that all?”

It is, naturally enough, not all.

“No!” You say, maybe too loud, because he raises an eyebrow. But you press on. “If it was just the frame material, that would be one thing. Not everything was water gilded, of course, it was just the most popular. But the real tell…” 

And you might be reading him wrong (you do that a lot) but he does lean in, doesn’t he? Because he’s interested in what you have to say. You think. It would be welcome, anyway.

“The real tell,” you continue, pointing here and there on the frame. “Are the fasteners. Especially around the joints..” You press on before he thanks you, because he shouldn’t thank you before you give him the really important detail here. 

“When the painting was made, they didn’t have keyed stretchers yet.” You point here, and there. “These made it easier to expand the frame, or make it smaller, simply by sliding the keys and tightening the screw. Before,” and there’s a laugh in your voice, “it was a pain when you wanted to take a painting out and swap it for something else. But with these newer ones, it was much simpler!”

There is a beat or two, and you wonder if he’s going to scoff and give you that smirky little smile people give when you’ve shared too much information that they apparently didn’t want. (Even if it was fascinating information, nonetheless.) 

But he doesn’t. Curiously, and it’s a pleasant sort of curiosity, his smile isn’t smirky at all–it’s pleased. Happy, even, if your guess was as good as gold. 

“Thank you,” he says, eyeing the frame–still the wrong part, you think–again. “I wasn’t aware that frames held such nuance.” He glances at you. “I appreciate your insight.”

Insight. Huh. No one has ever called it that before. Word-vomit, yes. Over-explaining, definitely. “Stuff no one cares about,” that one was pretty common. But insight–that was new. And it was, like his smile, perfectly pleasant. It made you feel almost fluttery. 

“Most people don’t appreciate it,” you admit, too honest. “But the frame isn’t the important part of the painting, anyway…” 

The next time he looks towards the painting he, thank goodness, actually looks at the painting within the frame. “Is this your favorite painting?”

“Of course.” The words come quick and sure.

“Why of course?”

Sometimes you wonder if other people have a switch that lets them choose when to hold back, 

and when to indulge in their words. Because you find it very, very hard. Especially when it’s something like this, something like a painting you adore, something like being asked to explain why it is your favorite painting.

But this stranger asked about it, so even if this mysterious switch did exist, you certainly would have slammed the “full speed ahead” setting without hesitation.

“Well…”

This stranger gets to learn about it all. About the artist (Henri Lamorliere) and why he chose the subject (a village scene in the winter) and who commissioned it (a prince who owned the land and later died from complications related, presumably, to his gout) and how it ended up here, in this city, of all places. (That was, indeed, a longer story–involving said potentially dubious origins that you were more than happy to indulge in, considering the stranger’s interest.)

As for why it is, of course, your favorite–it is because of all the tiny details, small things, inconsequential and silly to most, but details that keep you coming again and again. A child depicting playing in the snow with friends; a couple ice skating, with one leg clearly losing balance, forever frozen before the young man falls straight on his bum; a woman with a bucket, frowning, staring into a frozen water well; a farmer carefully draping warm blankets over his horses; a streak of mud revealed underneath the pristine snow as a cart of firewood is pulled along; and on and on. It’s not just a painting, it’s a frozen moment, people forever engaging in these mundane or delightful or simplistic moments.

When you are done (and you must admit, you talked for quite a while) the man doesn’t roll his eyes or sigh or say that he must be off, which is very often the case when you talk too much. 

Instead he, of all things, smiles.

“Thank you,” he says, and before you can ask why, continues: “How fascinating. I didn’t know the history of the piece as well I as I thought.” His eyes roam over the painting, the details you cling to. “And I never thought much about the scene being depicted.” He glances at you. “Not in the way you have, at least.”

It might be an insult. It might not. 

“When you come here as much as I do, you learn a lot.” 

He hums. Seems to consider something. And then, he asks:

“Would you like to share a coffee?” If you’re not mistaken, there’s a warmth to his voice. A bit of humor, too. Maybe he didn’t hate your diatribe about the piece, in the end. 

But–well. It won’t work out, at least not without a concession on his part. (And yours, too, not that he’d understand it.)

“I only get coffee after I see the rest of my paintings.” A pause, something heated piercing the apple of your cheeks. “Um. They’re not my paintings. I didn’t paint them. I don’t have any work on display,” you explain, as if he needs that clarification. “I think of some of them as mine, because I visit them when I come here.”

Sometimes, when there’s time to ponder on it, you liken actions to machinery. It starts with thoughts. They go through a certain process before resulting in an expression or a word. That’s what you think of, now, as you watch this stranger taking in what you said. His own thoughts are no doubt moving through the cogs, being sent this way and that on some conveyor belt, ending in his final action. 

Though it isn’t one you expected.

“Well then,” he says. “May I accompany you to see the rest of your paintings, so that I could join you for coffee?”

Huh.

It’s a break in the routine, sure. But he didn’t roll his eyes while you talked or quickly excuse himself to get out of hearing what you had to say. And if he was willing to listen, and follow your route, well–it might just be okay.

You don’t exactly plan to smile when you answer, but it creeps along your lips all the same.

“I suppose you could,” you say, and that smile quirks. “If you can keep up.”

“My name is Chrollo,” he replies, oddly, like it’s an answer. 

–

Chrollo does, in fact, keep up. More than that, he engages in conversation with you, offering counterpoints, asking questions, even going so far as to ask how you learned such-and-such a detail. 

Despite the interruption that he presents, it’s not unwelcome. It’s nice, actually, and as the afternoon goes on, you almost regret that there aren’t more paintings on your usual stop. But it’s not like the afternoon stops when you visit Boy and his Dog, one of the museum’s quirkier paintings; it is, yes, a Boy and his Dog. But the dog is wearing human clothes, and the boy is running wild on a broken leash. 

(The painting always makes you smile. When the stranger asks why, you’re almost–well, perhaps actually–rude when you explain: “Because it’s all backwards, of course.”)

After Boy and his Dog comes coffee. And if your newfound companion is relieved to have finally gotten to the part he asked you about earlier this afternoon, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he watches; he watches as you approach the counter and the barista greets you by name, already starting your familiar order before you say a word.

“You come here often,” he says, and it’s not a question.

You nod and eye the pastry case. “It’s tradition,” you say, not taking your eyes off the goodies displayed inside the climate controlled glass. If they have fresh cinnamon buns, you get one of them. If they aren’t fresh, you stick to the prepackaged cookies. “Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.” 

The glaze isn’t hard, but smooth, a bit of it still runny along the edges.

Fresh.

“One cinnamon roll, please,” you order. Then pause, because that isn’t quite right today, is it? “I mean, two.” But is that right, either? You eye Chrollo and something like a smile plays at the edge of his lips. “Er, well, if you’d like one, that is–”

“I would, thank you.” It’s a relief to not have to walk back the order, and the barista behind the counter swiftly bags them up.

Chrollo orders his own coffee before you can offer to add his to your tab, but that’s all right. At least you’re buying him the cinnamon bun. It’s nice to help others, especially someone who was patient enough to listen. (Not just listen, though, you remind yourself. Actively engage with you, which is far better. And more rare.)

You’re in the middle of your cinnamon bun–literally, fork stabbing the middle part first, which is the softest, gooeist part–when he speaks up.

“I enjoyed our conversation today.” Soft, almost as if he didn’t say the words often. Maybe, and this was perhaps too egotistical of you, he didn’t. 

“Mm,” you say, because you really did want to eat that middle part first, and the explosion of sticky-sweet cinnamon goodness in your mouth prevented further words for a few moments. Something about this seems to amuse him, and he places a hand over his mouth before he chuckles.

“What?” There is still some cinnamon roll still clinging to your teeth. 

“Nothing,” he murmurs, though it wasn’t nothing at all. “I was simply thinking that I might see you on Thursday. If that’s all right.”

Your mouth quirks. It’s not irritation that you’re feeling. Not really. But he was something new, a blip in your schedule. Still, he didn’t make a mess of things. He listened, and it was nice, actually, for someone to not shoo you away like some gnat the moment you got going on a favorite topic.

“It’s all right,” you say, mind still wavering, but voice already made up. “If you can still keep up.”

He snorts, and nothing more.

–

On Thursday, he’s there. Standing by your favorite painting. And staring, again, at the unimpressive, unimportant frame. Of all things–again! 

“You–” And it’s strange, how easily the indignation bleeds into your words. “But I already told you about the frame–”

But when Chrollo turns, he’s smiling, and it takes you a few slow moments to realize that he was kidding. Ah. It was… It was a joke. 

There’s a flush in your cheeks as you stuff your hands into your jacket pocket. “I’m not good with jokes,” you admit. 

He stuffs his own hands in his pockets and you can’t decide if it’s intentional mimicry or if he simply does the same thing in an awkward situation. (And which of these options is better, really?) 

“Nor am I, it seems.”

That, for some reason, makes you laugh.

Makes him laugh.

Makes the afternoon start off on a better foot.

Later on, after paintings and coffee, Chrollo insists on coming to the museum Saturday to see you again. 

You don’t protest.

–

It’s remarkable how quickly Chrollo becomes a part of your daily routine, and how swiftly he moves from being solely within your once-tidy museum routine to the outside. 

To things like asking you out to dinner, and when you explain that on Tuesday evenings after work you go home and make breakfast for dinner, he insists on taking you to a diner-style restaurant to maintain your breakfast meal while not intruding on your home life.

Which is considerate, you think, that he understands that you’re wary of inviting a relatively new acquaintance into your home. But–going out to eat is not what you usually do. At least he doesn’t comment when you fidget too much, when you don’t look in the waitress’s eyes as you order, and when you seem relieved when the check comes. 

You like him better for it. 

–

Chrollo doesn’t tell you that you’re doing things wrong. Which is nice. It’s not that most people tell you flat out that you’re doing something wrong, at least not since you’ve become an adult. But you can tell by their looks; pinched eyebrows and frowns, glances, murmured comments to their peers. 

Chrollo does none of this. 

Chrollo does, however, often forget how you like things; or rather, how you don’t like things. 

He gets too close. A hand that brushes your thigh when you sit together for lunch or coffee, his arm slung around your shoulder when the museum gets too crowded and you start to feel the crush of it crawling up your back. A term of endearment slipped in at the end of the night. Goodnight, dearest. 

Maybe it’s a lot to remember, or maybe he’s just forgetful. There are other options that sometimes sneak up in your mind–maybe he’s doing it on purpose–but they are swiped away so quickly. 

Because it’s Chrollo. He listens to you, he actually pays attention to what you say. He doesn’t mind that you sometimes have trouble making eye contact or that you get flustered in ordinary situations. 

More than that–

He’s your friend. Someone who listens, who has something interesting to say, who seems to actually care about you. He’s the first friend you’ve had in a long time, and you were willing to put up with his forgetfulness in order to keep that friendship alive and well.

Even if it meant having to bat his hand away from your thigh on more than one occasion. 

–

It’s Friday evening. 

Friday evening should be relaxing. The end of the work week, a time to grab a favorite frozen dinner from the freezer and relax in front of the TV with a show that you’ve seen a thousand times. 

Once it’s over, you’ll turn on the news and you might work on a puzzle or write in your journal or slowly make progress on an embroidery kit you picked up 2 years ago and have only ventured into a few times.

You might do these things, except–well. 

Except everything has fallen apart.

Your shaking fingers almost don’t manage to pick out Chrollo on your contacts, and it’s a wonder your phone doesn’t crash to the ground and break into a million pieces with how much your hands tremble.

“Hello?”

He barely gets the word out and you’re already blubbering into the phone, incoherent, words bubbling out with no time to make them more understandable. They choke out, stuttered and half-baked, before you finally beg for the one person who might understand your distress. 

“It’s–it’s–and–they–and–it’s–g-g-g-...Chrollo–please-come-over.”

He manages the trek in record time, impossibly fast, but you don’t pay attention. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s here and you don’t even protest this time when he sees your sobbing form and immediately scoops you into his arms.

It’s almost comforting, the way he squeezes you, gives you something to feel grounded. One of his hands inches a bit lower on your back than you’d like but even that doesn’t matter, doesn’t even register, because his presence has calmed you down enough to spit out the terrible truth:

“They stole it.” You gulp in a great, heaving gasp. “The Village in Winter. Someone… someone stole it.”

Chrollo’s body tenses. The news drones on in the background, but it’s moved on to something less important now. As if something could be less important than this. There’s a great big hole where the painting used to be, on the wall, in your mind.

Chrollo steps in or rather, steps back, placing one hand on your chin–the sensation makes something itch down your back, but you ignore it, because such things can be ignored in a time of great distress. “You are truly upset,” he says, finally, slowly. 

“Of course I am!” Your own hands come up now, grabbing the one on your chin, tugging it down so you can squeeze it with great abandon. Chrollo doesn’t seem to mind. “It’s all wrong–” It’s wrong, too, the way that other hand still rests far too low on your back. “It won’t be there. I love that painting. I love it and now when we go to the museum tomorrow, it won’t be there!”

Chrollo’s hand on your lower back begins to stroke. Maybe it’s soothing. Or meant to be; you have to give him credit, you think, for rushing over and trying to calm you down. 

“We don’t have to be there,” he murmurs.

Which does nothing to calm you down at all, because of course–

“We do have to be there.” Bitterness sets your jaw hard. “We do have to be there, and it will be all wrong.” The thought of all those precious details lost to you forever, the stories you’ve wound through again and again in your head. Even the new routine of admiring them with Chrollo, who always takes interest in the wrong part of the painting–that will be gone, too.

And it’s wrong, wrong, wrong. The world feels worse for it. What would be the point of going to the museum, when you’ve lost some integral part of yourself, all thanks to the work of some lowlife thieves?

Chrollo finally pulls himself away from you, a frown set on his lips. He glances around your living room, the disrupted Friday evening routine that is begging to be set back into place without all the pieces. 

“Have you had your tea? You always drink it while you watch the news, don’t you?”

You do. Yes. Not tonight, though. At least not more than that first sip before it was interrupted by the horror of the news report. 

“I was too upset to finish it,” you admit. “It’s on the counter.” But if you could finish it, maybe it would help. Now that Chrollo’s here to set everything back into order. It wouldn’t make things right–nothing could, except the restoration of that pivotal painting–but it’s a start. A comfort.

 “Could you…” 

He’s already on his way to the kitchen, a hand slipping into his pocket. “Of course. I’ll warm it up for you.”

“Thanks,” you force out, the word heavy on your tongue. Yes. Thank goodness Chrollo is here to set things into place. He knows what you like and need, wandering hands notwithstanding. So it comes as no surprise when he emerges from the kitchen with a newly warmed cup of tea and you stumble on shaking legs to the sofa.

Microwaved tea never tastes the same, and it’s no exception here. It’s almost too bitter now. But you choke it down anyway while Chrollo sits next to you, eyes on the screen, the flickering bar underneath the next program that repeats the news about the museum break-in.

Theft suspected to be the work of professional thieves. More updates on stolen paintings will emerge as staff inventory the losses. At least three security guards found dead…

The world spins. Literally, the world spins, and you reach out a hand and stand up on reflex with the anxiety that spreads through your chest.

“Chrollo?” He’s there, sitting next to you, but he falls in and out of focus as your vision wobbles.

“Yes, love?” 

“I don’t feel very…” The word never comes before everything goes black, and you only just register the awful sensation of falling and being caught in someone’s sturdy hands before you faint.

–

Someone has shoved cotton into your mouth. That’s the only explanation your mind comes up with when the world returns and all you can taste is stale dryness. Someone must have shoved cotton into your mouth at some point before the blackness and this bleary, foggy wake-up.

But why would they do that, and why does your head feel so fuzzy, and why does the world feel like it’s moving? There’s an awful sound underneath you too, almost like rushing and wheels mixed together, like heavy traffic or–or a train. 

Oh. Oh, no.

Air comes in great gulping gasps as you heave yourself forward and sensations assault your senses. A leather seat underneath you, the sun dimmed by drawn curtains, warm, stale air, the sound of rolling wheels and ground underneath you–and Chrollo. Chrollo sitting your opposite, on the same type of leather seat.

You’re on a train. You’re awake and on a train and Chrollo is sitting in front of you.

It’s a dream. Maybe. That’s what you think as you swallow up the cotton feeling, smacking your lips, craving the realization that this is nothing but a bizarre nightmare.

But nightmares don’t feel like this. This is real. It’s your body that feels sluggish and heavy, your eyes blinking away an awful, long sleep. Your voice that croaks out the words that half-stick to the roof of your mouth:

“Chrollo? Where… am I?” 

There’s another question that clings to the back of it–What happened?--but the low curl in your gut makes you avoid it for now.

Chrollo, for his part, looks appropriately serious for the bizarre situation you’ve woken up in. He leans forward, folding his hands together, as he scans your face. For what? An injury? Is that why you’re here? You fell and hit your head and the only solution was a specialist who is only available in the next city, so Chrollo booked you the first tickets on the next train and he didn’t have time to warn you before–

“Dearest.”

The low curling in your stomach squirms, too. He knows you hate those pet names. It was easier to ignore them back then. When the two of you were strolling through the museum or he was indulgently watching you reorganize your books. When you weren’t suddenly on a train, feeling like you got hit over the head with a hammer.

A strange place, a strange Chrollo.

An answer might come, but your mouth is still too sticky and Chrollo interrupts what you might have said, anyway.

“We’re on a train.”

After a moment, a slow word comes. “Yes.” You swallow. “I know that.”

Chrollo smiles. It might be indulgent, but all you can think is: has his smile always been so condescending?

“Do you know why we’re on a train?”

Well. It would be stupid to say “yes,” when you don’t know the answer. 

So you spit out the runaround thought from earlier, though even to your ears, it sounds more ridiculous with every passing word.

“I fell and hit my head and the only solution was a specialist who is only available in the next city, so you booked the first tickets on the next train and you didn’t have time to warn you before–”

He doesn’t call you an endearing nickname (thank goodness) this time but instead his smile widens, just enough to make it look like he wants to coo at you. It’s gross and sticky and you rub at your arms to make some of the feeling go away.

“Stop that. I’m not a child.” 

His smile doesn’t waver, which only sparks a rush of indignation. The world has stopped feeling quite so heavy and when you sit up, you move to pull aside the curtains, if only to find out where in the world you’re at. 

The countryside that’s rolling by isn’t remotely familiar. All lush and green and pretty. Are you even in the same region? The same country? 

“How… how long was I asleep?” No, that’s not the right question. “Why was I asleep? I don’t remember…” Falling asleep at all. And what you do remember doesn’t fit inside this puzzle. You’d been watching the news, and there was the terrible report about the theft at the museum, and then Chrollo came over, and you drank your tea. One plus one should equal two, not waking up on a train.

Chrollo hums, and the sound brings you back. The ground rolls heavy underneath you two, separated by the carpeted floor. 

“I drugged your tea,” he says, plainly enough. 

It can’t be what he said, though. You’re hearing things. Maybe you suffered a blow to the head. That might actually make things.

“You what… my what?” 

“I drugged your tea,” he repeats. Calm and clear and you’re certain that you’ve heard him right this time, only it’s still all wrong. Because this is Chrollo. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t. But he did. He said so. So the only thing left to wonder is:

“Why would you do that?”

“I enjoy your company,” he says, still leaning forward. “Very much so. And it was time for me to leave town, but the thought of leaving without you, well…”

Now, there are no “right” answers to this question. No one ever catalogs the proper responses to a hypothetical question about drugging one’s tea. Still, what he tells you doesn’t sound like the sort of answer one should give. 

Kidnapping someone for ransom, sure. Kidnapping someone because they found out some terrible secret and no one else can no, understandable. Kidnapping someone to kill them because you’re secretly a murderer, again, makes sense.

Kidnapping you because he likes you? 

It’s so wrong, so out of place, that you don’t answer. Can’t answer. There’s something sticky keeping your mouth shut and that something is Chrollo’s lack of common sense.

And then, of all things, he puts a hand on your shoulder. Firm. Irritating. A touch you want to shake but when you try, his grip keeps you in place. It’s too much. Too heavy and personal. It was something to be brushed off before, swept under the rug while you focused on what you liked about him.

But now? 

You must be glaring. There’s a moment where you take stock of your expressions. Your eyebrows feel low and heavy, so they must be furrowed. Your mouth is dry and open. And your eyes are… well. It’s understandable to cry. 

Worst of all, though, is that Chrollo’s hand goes from your shoulders to your cheeks, and it’s when he wipes at your tears that you finally fling your body backwards with enough force that the back of your head smacks against the wall.

It helps, this pain. This motion. So you do it again. Move your head forward and then back, feeling the firm smack of the wood against your head. 

Thump. Thump. Thump.

An ordinary person might look shocked. An ordinary person might cry out and tell you that you're hurting yourself.

Chrollo, however, simply looks like he’s admiring a painting. He takes in the details, his head tilting just so. 

“I packed some of your favorite things,” he says after a while, over the sound of your skull smacking against the wall. “Once we arrive at our destination, we can unpack some of them. It could help you calm down.” 

“I want to go home,” you reply, between thumps. “I want to go home.”

He doesn’t reply, which is as good as a “no.”

“I’m taking you with me,” he says, still calmly, like you aren’t trapped on a train, like you aren’t banging your head with increasing intensity against the wood.

“I don’t want to go with you,” is all you can say, helplessness straining your voice. “I want–I want–” And when you look around, all you can see are these walls, the window, Chrollo. There are a thousand things that you want right now, and none of them are here.

You want your old microwave with the 7 button that sticks so you have to push it hard every time, you want the pink flower rug in your living room that you’ve had since childhood, you want your pumpkin-shaped mug with the chip on the handle, you want your blankets and your bed and the alarm clock on the side table on the left side, so you can wake up and easily roll over to hit the snooze button–

It’s only when Chrollo says your name that you realize you’ve been saying all of this, to him or to yourself, you’re not sure. There’s something stupidly hungry in the way he looks at you. It’s in the way he listens, too. Like he’s hanging onto every word so he can pick them all apart, splaying them open to reveal something inside.

But what? And why?

He doesn’t tell you. Instead, he hums. It’s a low grounded sound. It makes you feel–and you hate it, it’s gross, this feeling–comforted. Almost. Sort of. The way it used to, when you were feeling out of sorts and he swooped in to get you off the ledge.

Only this time he’s the one who pushed you to it, first.

“I’m not taking you home,” he says with a finality that makes your body jerk. “But you can view me as your new home, if it helps.” The smile he gives is warm and kind and if you were sitting in the museum over a cup of coffee, maybe you’d believe it.

“But you can view me as your new home, if it helps.”

It doesn’t help.

–

Your upper arm hurts from the way Chrollo gripped you in the hotel lobby.

“Don’t try anything, dearest,” he’d said, on the way in. Quiet and calm and sticky on the dearest. He might as well have been telling you that he was ordering in for dinner. “I’ll kill everyone in this hotel if you do. I’d rather not have to clean up any messes tonight. I’m sure you understand.”

The words should have shocked you. Or maybe they did, and you’re still in such an inward frenzy that you can’t seem to react to anything within the freezing utter bewilderment of your present situation. 

So you didn’t say anything, though he gripped you hard all the same. And now you’re sitting on some oversized sterile hotel room bed that smells too much like sharp laundry detergent. There’s a mint on the pillow. You bet it tastes like soap.

“We’ll be staying here for a few nights,” Chrollo murmurs. The pair of suitcases he’d brought in are on top of the bed, and there’s a shock to your system when he unzips one of them and you recognize what’s inside.

It’s filled with your things–your hairbrush, a wellworn paperback copy of your favorite book, a bottle of your tried-and-true face wash.

Your clothes. (Well. Some of them.) Right down to your underwear, neatly folded on top. Chrollo had–taken them. Touched them. Been through your things, clearly. 

“You…” The word comes out all strangled, and heat rises to your cheeks for more than one reason. “You really…” You really kidnapped me, you really planned it out, you really went through my private things and plucked them up. 

He takes the pause in your thoughts to crouch down, peering into your face like he might yank the words out himself.

“Yes? What is it?”

“You... you…” And the words you want to ask are stuck between your teeth until you force them out. “Why did you do this? It’s not just… it can’t be just because you,” and your mind reels to remember what he said on the train. “Because you enjoy my company.”

Chrollo says nothing for a moment. A whole lot of nothing. Your mind is working too fast and you expect him to smile or grin, expect him to give some terribly wicked speech like a villain in a movie you’ve seen a thousand times.

Instead he blinks. Instead he frowns.

Instead his hand reaches out to grip your chin and you don’t have time to register the uncomfortable buzz from being touched when says something so softly that you have to strain to hear it.

“Oh, dearest. Don’t you know?”

When your chin does try to jerk away from his touch, it grows tighter, even as his gaze seems to soften. It’s a strange look on Chrollo’s face. Chrollo has looked contemplative, yes; contemplative and intrigued and annoyed, even, when some museum-goers were being too loud for your liking. He’s even looked sympathetic.

But soft? It’s new. It’s unwanted. And the expression stays on his face despite both of those terrible qualities.

“I care for you,” he says, repeating his earlier words. “Not just as a friend. But…” He turns your head this way and that. It makes you feel like a prized horse at auction. “I believe… as something more.”

Not just as a friend… 

Not just as a friend–

“Not just as a friend.” Your repetition comes out all stilted. Maybe because of the hand on your jaw. Maybe because the words seem to creak out of you, every syllable one step down the staircase you’d rather avoid descending.

Something like a film reel flickers through your memories. Little moments, brought back to the forefront with a disgusting clarity. Why had you brushed him off so often? Because you were lonely; because he was your friend. Or so you thought.

But the way he pushed past what you wanted so often seems calculated now. The times he sat too close and let his thigh brush against yours; the way he didn’t hear you, or so he said, when you’d asked him to please stop calling you those soft, sweet pet names. The times he claimed not to be hungry only to ask if he could share your meal afterwards–the way his fingers brushed against yours when he accidentally (or was it?) reached for a bite at the same time.

“The whole time,” you bite out, acid rising in your throat. Your fingers curl against your thighs and there’s a terrible urge to knock them into something. “Were you like this… the whole time?”

Amusement crinkles through the softness in his face. It’s just as grating as nails on a chalkboard. “Did you really not notice?”

Shame flushes through you, heating up your cheeks, your chest, the very air in the room. “Of course not,” you spit out, words sounding more stilted with every passing moment. “Most people wouldn’t notice–notice that.”

At some point, he’s let go of your chin, and you take the moment of the realization to scoot backwards on the bed. Away from him and closer to the dingy looking headboard, which might have been pretty once upon a time, but was now scratched and chipped.

“Of course they would,” he counters, climbing onto the bed like some sort of terrible cat. “And they have, with far less effort on my part.” He pauses, a smile. “Not out of any genuine affection, of course. Don’t worry about that. Only to get something I wanted.”

He’s closer, now. Too close. His hand cups not your chin this time, but your cheek, and there’s only a few moments in between his face and yours. What if he…? 

“Stop,” you say, desperate, helpless. “Don’t touch me.” He doesn’t stop. He leans in closer and you smack against the headboard. “Why aren’t you listening to me?”

What he says makes about as much sense as jello salad. Which is to say, no damn sense at all. “I am listening.” The almost-coo in his voice makes you want to hurl. “I’m hearing what you can’t say out loud, that’s all.”

But that’s not true. Is it? There’s too much going on. He’s too close and this room smells like soap and you ought to be home, not here, with yourself, not Chrollo. The muchness of it all has you aching to get away and make sense of it all, some way, some how.

“I always say what I want to say,” you manage, but you can’t hide the question in it. Isn’t that true? Isn’t that how it’s always been? It’s why people tend to look at you strangely sometimes. It’s why you were often too much for them, when it came down to it.

“You think you do, my dear.” His thumb rubs against your cheek. The touch is sandpaper. “But there’s something else inside you, I think. Something stuck that I’d like to crack open and pull out, if I could.” The fondness in his tone is out of place with the world around you. “If you’d let me.”

You need him to stop touching you. You need him to get away. You need this entire room to vanish, the sight of it, the smell of it, the feel of the unfamiliar sheets underneath you. A sound comes out, something short, stacatto–

“No.” 

And Chrollo doesn’t leave and his thumb keeps rubbing your cheek, so you bring your arm up, smacking him away. Only his arm doesn’t move at all. It’s like hitting a pole–sturdy and impossibly strong.

So you try again, and again, and the sensation of hitting his arm isn’t helpful or soothing. It only makes your breath come in faster, makes the world spin. His breath grows faster, too, and you can’t begin to imagine why.

“You’ll grow to like this in time,” Chrollo says, finally, a touch of a sigh in his voice. “You’ll grow to like me.” 

“No,” you say again, even though it doesn’t help. 

In response, Chrollo simply continues to stroke your cheek.

–

In his defense–not that you are defending him–Chrollo said nothing when you’d taken the first opportunity to abandon the bed and build something like a fort in the corner of the room. It wasn’t anything like the pop up tent you used to have as a child (then a teenager and, sometimes, in a pinch, as an adult) but it would do. A fort made from blankets and some of the bed pillows, despite the detergent stink.

Anything to avoid sleeping in the same bed as Chrollo. More than that, anything to be alone, or something like it. You rocked yourself to sleep and dreamt about the museum. 

In the morning, you wake up and remember everything in one great gulping heave. Your body tenses when you hear Chrollo walking around the room–the sound of the sink, the toilet, the rustling of clothes–until his footsteps stop outside your makeshift shelter.

He pops his head inside without so much as a warning.

“Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

The glare he receives is enough of a response. He chuckles it away, easy as a gnat.

“I’d like to show you something. It’s a surprise.”

“I don’t like surprises,” you reply, voice tired and dull. He’s going to show you anyway. He knows it, and you do, too.

He holds open the drape of your fort but you don’t have the energy to be grateful that he at least didn’t drag you out of it. Your limbs feel heavy and awful as you crawl out, and the hotel room in the daylight looks no better than it did at night. 

But Chrollo must have done some unpacking while you slept, because there are a few more things scattered around. His clothing, slipped into hangers. Toiletries–his and yours–on top of the chest of drawers.

And something set against the wall, covered in a plain black tarp. 

The surprise, it seems. Curiosity prickles at you. Maybe it’s a good distraction from everything else. Maybe you’re just genuinely interested in what could possibly lay underneath.

Chrollo’s smile almost looks youthful as he tugs at the edge of the tarp, and you see a flash of black as he pulls it away, revealing the treasure underneath.

The Village in Winter.

It’s all wrong. It’s naked, without the frame, propped up in some hotel room surrounded by chipped furniture and laundry smells.

There is no air left in the room, no water left in your lungs. You could cough up a thousand years of dust right now and still not run out.

“You stole it,” you manage to say. Chrollo simply nods and looks for all the world like he’s showing you something he’s proud of; and he is, you think. Proud of everything. The urge to fall down swims through you, and you grip the wall.  

“You were a great help,” Chrollo says, voice soft and confident and anything but assuring. “We were struggling with the best way to remove it without damaging the work underneath.” He tilts his head, just so, the same way he did that first morning in the museum. 

Nothing is the same as that first morning in the museum.

Swallowing the thick mixture of fear that threatens to clog your throat, you glance at the metal door across the room and Matt tuts, as if he catched the movement of your eyes even though his own are not supposed to work.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” he casually says, toying with the handle of his white cane.

You don’t like how relaxed he is, leaning against the wall with that handsome grin that undoubtedly does wonders with the ladies. 

“Do what?” you push back, playing dumb.

Matt’s grin grows wider and he nods towards the door. He’s closer to it than you are, but you have the gift of sight on your side. That has to give you an advantage…. right?

“I know what you’re thinking.” he confidently declares. “I can hear your heartbeat, it’s going off pretty fast. You’re scared and confused, but let’s not rush into mistakes.”

You scoff, the sound coming out less sharp than intended. “The only mistake here is what you’re doing. I’m leaving this place, I’m not… you can’t force me to stay here.”

“Think of this as your new home. It’s a nice apartment, right? Much better than your old one.” he declares, tilting his head and the dark round glasses twinkle. You press your palms against your pants, rubbing the clamminess away.

One careful step towards the door doesn’t get you anywhere closer to escaping, Matt immediately pushing away from the wall, shoulders straightening up. What the hell.

“What did we just talk about mistakes?”

“I thought you were blind?” you wonder, confused and suspicious at the same time. 

Matt’s lips curl into another smile. “I am. But being blind doesn’t mean my ears don’t work. They do, quite impressively if I may add.” 

He takes a step in your direction and you scramble back, away from him. 

“I’m faster than you are. Stronger too. I’d say those are reasons good enough for you not to try a stealthy escape. Won’t work anyways.” the smile slowly drops and his face turns more serious, more dangerous.

“You’d just be wasting time and energy for both of us and then I’d have to punish you for acting out. Still haven’t quite figured out how I’d do that, but it might involve a few mean words and broken limbs, maybe some blood. Not sure yet.”

Your unsteady legs carry you another step back, feeling your heart in your throat. He’s blind, Matt can’t see. But you can. You have the upper hand here.

Then why the hell are you cowering away like a small child?

“Or you’d prefer if I took it up with your family? That would be some strong incentive for you, wouldn’t it?” 

Your blood freezes at the suggestion, at the darkness that settles in Matt’s face. 

“I bet your parents are pretty excited for their cruise holiday next month. It’d be a shame to ruin their vacations.“ Matt hums, “Or your older sister, who just had a little baby boy. Would hate for anything to happen to them.”

“Please, don’t… just leave them out of this.” you plead, desperate. 

“That’s what I’m trying to do. Really, I’m trying to leave them out but that really just depends on you.” Matt shrugs his shoulders, with a small sigh. “What happens to your family is in your hands. Guess it all comes down to if you wanna do this the hard or the easy way. I prefer the easy one, to be honest, but it's your choice.”

The grin returns to Matt’s face in full-force, charming and confident like the conversation about broken limbs and killing your family never happened, like everything is fine. 

You wake up with post-text message clarity the next morning, but there’s little you can do to backtrack now. You gave the man your name and number. You spoke to him on the phone about it, albeit briefly. Sure you could call John again and tell him that you thought it over a little more and decided against it, but then—

“It’s gonna cost four thousand dollars.”

Your coworker lets out a hissed breath, wincing. “That’s not cheap.”

It’s a pea-soupy summer morning, all hot and humid with the sky tinted a yellowish colour from forest fires up in the country, the hazy light seeping in through the windows in the office kitchen. Not a cloud in sight. You wouldn't call it a particularly pleasant morning, with the weather as overcast as your mood, but it could always be worse.

She’s the first person outside of a few close friends that you’ve told about going to the clinic at all, but she reacts exactly as you thought she would. It’s both affirming and annoying; it’s not so bad hearing from someone else that four thousand dollars is a bit pricey for a single person, but part of you wishes she’d try to convince you to go through with it. You need someone to push you in a direction—in any direction. 

You nod, mouth screwed into a grimace. “And that’s only for a single try. I think she said it would be closer to, like, twelve thousand dollars altogether.” 

“So are you gonna do it? Or are you gonna keep looking around?”

“I have another appointment next week,” you half-answer, getting cagey all of a sudden. 

The truth is, that appointment isn’t the only thing you’ve got on the books. There’s another dot in your calendar for a few days before, one that seems to glow ominously when you stare at the date as it slowly approaches, lumbering forward one ground-shaking step at a time. 

You wonder how long you can go without telling anyone. Theoretically, you could keep up this ruse for the rest of your life, pretend you always went through with the treatment. Lie through your teeth when your friends ask you if you know anything about the donor. No, they didn’t tell me anything, I just picked a profile with a good medical record and family history. 

Don’t think about how you live in the same city. Don’t think about the likelihood of running into him around town with the baby in tow. 

You shake your head. Those are concerns that you can foist off onto a future version of you. All the current you needs to worry about is making this all a reality. 

You don’t know what to wear out to dinner with him. It’s both a date and not, more of a prelude to the later events of the night. Part of you wonders if you should just text him your address and tell him to skip the preamble and come on over. 

The only reason you don’t is because a little voice at the back of your mind insists that you at least do your due diligence and screen him a little more over dinner. You can always back out at the last minute if a few too many red flags pop up. 

(You tell yourself that as if a strange man offering to knock you up within five minutes of meeting weren’t a big enough red flag on its own.)

John meets you at the restaurant looking every bit as handsome as the day you met him, once again nearly taking your breath away. A little more buttoned up this time though, actually quite dashing in a proper dress shirt and suit jacket, even his shoes polished. 

You have a second to think about calling it off. A second to consider turning tail and getting as far away as possible. Maybe, with enough time, you could scrape together the money for IUI. You could wait a year, or take out a loan with your bank, or pray for a decent enough raise to manage it on your own. 

But then, as the time before, he turns his head and locks eyes with you. 

It would probably be a good idea to take a picture of him, maybe even a picture of his ID, and send it over to one or two of your friends, on the off chance that he turns out to be a dangerous man, but you don’t need to be inundated by a barrage of text messages and phone calls from your friends trying to talk you out of it. You’ve made up your mind. 

Walnut and burgundy furnishings decorate the large room, and the amber glow of candlelight and antique wall sconces saturates the restaurant in a dark, sensual bloom. A server guides John and you to a table right in the middle of the room, a better table than you might’ve hoped to get on your own. You eye him sideways when he pulls your chair out for you. 

His demeanour is so relaxed that if you didn’t already know the purpose of this dinner, you could be forgiven for assuming that you were out on a real date. John certainly acts the part. 

“You know, we didn’t have to do this,” you start awkwardly, eyes gliding over the room to look at all the other well-dressed patrons, some presumably out on actual dates. 

“Call me old-fashioned, but I was taught that dinner comes before the rest of the evening.”

“I just mean you didn’t have to. I would’ve been fine just…” getting right down to business, you leave unsaid, hoping that he doesn’t make you spell it out. 

“We’re two civilized adults. I thought we might get to know each other first.”

“Well, what do you want to know about me?”

“This is as much for me as it is for you—don’t you want to know anything about the father of your children?”

You wish he’d keep his voice down. He isn’t wrong though; it would be a good idea for you to take his candidature more seriously, actually ask him questions about himself and his parentage. He already emailed you a recent STI panel and bloodwork results, both done through the fertility clinic back when he was still keen on donating, but it wouldn’t hurt to learn a little more about him.

“Alright. How old are you?”

“Forty-six.”

You nod, pleased with yourself for guessing it right. “What do you do for work?”

“Just some work for the government,” he says, brushing the question off. “What else?”

That piques your interest though. “Oh, come on. What are you, M16 or something?”

“No, nothing like that,” John laughs, genuinely amused enough for you to believe him. 

You roll your eyes when he doesn’t elaborate any further though. “Fine, leave me in the dark. Anything else you want to know about me?”

“Where are you in your cycle?” he asks, blunt as a hammer.

A classic spit take moment. It’s a good thing you haven’t ordered a drink yet. 

“I think it’s, uh…it’s coming soon actually. Um. Next week or so.”

He chews on that for a second, mulling over the timing. “That’s fine. We should still be able to make it work.”

There he goes again, making comments that leave you fish-mouthed and stunned, jaw slack with disbelief. Never able to conjure up a good enough retort. 

When the server comes by to take your drink orders, both of you still deliberating over your food, John orders a beer for himself and a mocktail for you, not even bothering to consult you about it. 

“No alcohol,” he reminds you before you have a chance to ask. 

To be fair, the spicy blackberry-basil concoction that the server comes back with a few minutes later is a refreshing burst of fruit and fresh herbs, but that doesn’t excuse the overstep. You ignore it only because you know there’s no use getting worked up when you’ve already made your mind up. It’s a peccadillo in the grand scheme of things considering what he’s doing for you. 

Conversation flows surprisingly well over dinner, but at the back of your mind, you can’t stop thinking about how at the end of the night, he’s going to take you home and fuck you. It creeps back in whenever you let your guard down for a split second. 

So, do you have any hobbies? (In three hours, this man is going to strip you naked and have sex with you)

Do you have any siblings? Any twins running in the family? (In two hours, this man is going to climb on top of you and fuck you until he puts a baby in you)

It’s a lot to keep in your head at the same time.

“How long have you been thinking about doing this?” John asks apropos of nothing, the earlier thread of your conversation evaporating on the spot.  

“I mean, I’ve wanted to have kids for a long time, but actually planning to have them…maybe a couple months?”

“Why now? Why not wait a little longer? Wait for someone to start a family with?”

You’re not sure why he’d ask you that, why it would matter. It’s none of his business, quite frankly. You almost want to tell him that, let yourself get righteous, get angry, but you find you can’t fully commit to the anger. It wouldn’t change anything. You aren’t being forced to answer him. 

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I’m not much of a family man myself. ‘Least not when I was younger, when it counted. Never had the time nor the inclination. Work took me all over—it just wouldn’t have been fair if I had a wife or kids waiting around for me. But since it didn’t seem like having a family was in the cards for me, I thought it would be a waste of good genetics.”

“Oh.” It’s arrogant, but it’s as good an answer as any. 

He waits a beat then lifts an eyebrow when you don’t reciprocate. “So? Why didn’t you wait?”

“I did try, but there wasn’t much out there, and I wanted a baby more than I wanted to be with someone, so…” 

Leave him to fill in the blanks. He met you at the culmination of that longing after all, even changed the course of it, disrupted your plans to place himself at the centre of them.

At the centre for a time, you remind yourself. Not forever. 

After that, he keeps the conversation light, only delving into superficial topics to help pass the time. You excuse yourself after finishing your meal to go to the bathroom, and come back to two coffees laid out on the table with sugar and cream in pretty porcelain cups laid out between them. John must have ordered for you again in your absence. Good thing you like coffee. 

The bill is also there, discretely tucked under John’s napkin, and that makes your stomach flip, realizing that only a coffee now sits between you and the end of this night. 

Then, at a certain point, when all that’s left in your cup is the dregs, sugar spoon bone dry on your plate, John gives you a look from across the table that says it’s time for you both to go. 

Well, here we go, you think a little hysterically as you push back your chair to stand, nearly jumping out of your skin when his hand comes down on your back. 

At your car, you sway back and forth on your heels. “You can, uh…follow behind me, if that works.”

“Why don’t you give me your address and I’ll meet you there?”

You bite your lip, pretending to deliberate, then acquiesce. 

Let him think he’s pulling one on you. You’re bringing him home instead of the other way around because you don’t want to have any memory of a man’s bed when you think about your pregnancy journey. If it’s going to be you alone, then it should be about you alone. Your decision to go out and pick a man to father your baby. 

His participation will be a short blip in your life. A minor footnote. You’ll remember it in bursts throughout the rest of your life: staring at a carton of cream in the dairy aisle of the local grocery store; garden spade buried hilt-deep in a plot of soil, blue bigleaf hydrangea in a pot beside you, sweat dripping down the bow of your lips; your baby’s face, for the rest of your natural life.

In your foyer, his hands glide around your hips, pulling you into his chest, and you realize abruptly that ‘short’ might not have been the most accurate interpretation of what’s about to happen. 

(Honey, you’ve got a storm coming)

“This off first,” John rasps, pulling the bottom of your shirt up and over your head, blinding you for a split second before he yanks it over your arms. 

“Getting right to it, huh?” you joke nervously. 

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks, staring down at you assessingly, as if staring into your soul. That cuts the humour from the moment. Vacuums it from the room, leaving behind only the crackling, blistering heat of his gaze and his intentions. 

“Yes,” you whisper. Neither of you mention the tremble in your voice and how unsure you sound. 

It doesn’t stop him from undressing you though. Bra pulled down under your breasts, pushing your tits up into his face like an invitation, one he accepts without question, pulling your nipples into his mouth one by one, hands on your hips to hold you in place when you try to squirm away. Not that it’s bad—it’s amazingly good after all, toe-curlingly good to have a man run his tongue over your areolas and suck each sensitive nipple to a stiff peak, until you’re on the verge of coming—but it’s a lot, a lot that you have to wrap your head around, your bra pinched off shortly after that and underwear next.  

Your touch is hesitant at first, fingers barely gliding down his arms and fisting in the fabric of his shirt to jerk it up, but he makes it easy for you to get lost in it, your nerves fizzling out in the heat and fervor.  

You don’t even notice that John has walked you backwards into the bedroom until he pushes you down onto the bed, the mattress bouncing under you. “One second, love—need to get all of this off myself.”

You watch transfixed as the suit jacket comes off first, shrugged off and discarded. He undoes only a few buttons before wrenching it over his head, eyes on you the whole time, his stare never breaking. Scalding hot. 

That’s how you know that despite all his lofty words, this isn’t some favour he’s doing you. He wants this just as badly—wants it with a vigour that you don’t even know if you’ll be able to handle, aware that you are just flesh and blood. There’s a prickle at the back of your mind, a whisper reminding you that nobody knows that he’s here, that he’s a hot-blooded man about to slake his lust with your body. 

Then he slides the elastic waistband of his boxers down his thighs and your mind goes blank when you see the flushed, heavy shaft droop between his legs. 

The two of you work together to shove a pillow under your hips, John fetching it from the top of the bed and you lifting your hips to give him easier access. You don’t have to ask why. 

Nestled between your thighs, John looks up at you with heavy-lidded eyes and says, “Let’s get you all softened up to start, alright, love?” 

The first touch of his lips to your sex sends a lightning bolt up your spine, and then it’s practically an open mouth kiss. Tongue running up the seam of your lips, pushing into the clenched hole at the centre, the bristles of his beard scraping up the insides of your thighs and the thin skin of your labia. 

It’s good, but it’s taking too long and your heart is a rabbiting mess and you can barely think or see straight, so you tangle your fingers in his hair and try to push his head away. “That’s okay, John, I just wanna—oh fuck, can you please just put it in?”

“No, baby, it’s good if you come first,” he murmurs. “Helps it take.”

That floods your system with a frenetic, crazed exhilaration. Baby fever bubbling and boiling, frothing spilling over the top like a pot left on the stovetop for too long. 

You gasp when he tucks a couple fingers into your hole to stretch you out, a perfunctory, almost clinical motion. Just enough to loosen you up for him, unmindful of the way you squirm and whine, rolling your hips to get him to go faster. He does not. 

It doesn’t take much effort on his part after that to get you to come, too worked up and wound up, core squeezing his fingers like a vice until he gives your clit a suck and you squeal, oh, too much, breath ripping through your chest.

They’re wet when he pulls them out, and he dries them off by rubbing them on your belly. 

The shadow of his body draws over yours as he climbs on top of you. It’s as physical as it is visual though, John’s hands always on some part of your body, dragging up your legs and over your arms, fingers spreading over your belly before he runs a hand up between your breasts and over your throat, lingering there just long enough to close around your throat and hold for a second, then skating up to cup your jaw. 

And then he’s all big body on top of you, coaxing your legs around his hips, one hand squishing your cheeks when he bends down to kiss you. You can taste yourself on his lips, the tongue pushing into your mouth musky with the flavour of your cum. You’d protest if you could, but you can’t, his mouth slanted over yours and demanding. 

“C’mere,” he mumbles against your lips when he draws you in for another kiss, sawing his cock up and down between your folds, coating his length with your juices, until it’s there suddenly, breaching you. 

You have to grab him, loop your arms around his shoulders and squeeze to ground yourself. It’s a lot to take in. He’s a lot to take in. 

“I know, love, I know,” John murmurs soothingly. “Deep breaths, okay?”

You listen to him, letting a shaky breath out. It helps you relax. Barely, but enough to ease the strain a bit. 

He nuzzles his nose into your temple, his breath fanning out against your ear. “A little more, love, alright? You gonna be brave for me?”

“Oh—just get on with it,” you gasp when he eases in another inch, and John laughs in your ear. 

It feels genuinely romantic like this. Your arms wrapped around his neck and his hips slowly rocking into you, whispering sweet nothings like, there we go, you’ve got it, that feel good, love? When he fits his hand around the back of your neck and lifts your head up for a kiss, you swear you see stars. 

The kiss is too much. Too intimate. You wish you would’ve set that boundary ahead of time. It feels pointless now, trapped under the heavy weight of his body and impaled on his member, sucked into it, lips slotting and melting over each other, his tongue running over yours. He’s a good kisser at least, practiced from a lifetime of it. No awkward schoolboy tonguing. 

Too good. You wonder distantly how many other women he’s slept with (probably more than you have any business knowing). If he’s ever gotten anyone else pregnant. Your nails dig into his back instinctively at the thought and he gasps a wet and guttural sound, hips bucking harder. 

He gets rough enough to loosen a bolt of fear in your chest. All of a sudden, it becomes bright and clear in your mind. There’s a grunting, sweating man over you, all two hundred plus pounds of him laid out on top of you, with no protection between you. Raw cock plunging into your pussy. You can barely get a full breath in. 

“Fuck, I’m close,” John grunts, and your eyes flick down instinctively, trying to see past the dense mass of hair on his chest towards the length of his cock sliding into you. He’s pressed too close though. When he catches you looking away from him, he clamps his hand around your face again, forcing your gaze back up. “No, none of that. Eyes on me.”

You think you must gasp. Some horrified sound must escape you because you can feel the aftereffect of it, the big hollow where it used to be. 

His other arm wedges under your back to pull you closer to him, thighs spreading to brace his weight against the mattress before driving into you harder, deeper, the big, concentrated energy of him inescapable.

You can sense it the second before he’s about to come, his eyebrows digging in and his jaw going tight, the vein in his forehead prominent. 

“Christ, you’re gonna take it, aren’t you?” he snarls. “All this fucking cum.” 

On the next stroke in, you dig an ankle into the muscle of his ass and squeeze your inner muscles around his length, grinning hazily to yourself when that makes him shout. 

And then, oh, he surges in and you feel it, hear it, sense it all around you, his fingers from the hand wedged under your back digging hard into the side of your breast. Hips forcefully pumping into you and pushing his cum in deep, your own orgasm lost somewhere in there, a small, forgettable part of it all. 

Eventually, he stops moving over you, letting his cock slip out of you on the next stroke out. You hiss when he does, clenching up involuntarily. With nothing plugging it inside though, his cum leaks out, dripping down the crack of your ass and onto the pillow under your hips. 

John’s hot breath fans over your face as he pants, slowly winding down as well, the red flush in his cheeks still stark, though gradually fading. It’s only in the cooldown that you realize how claustrophobic it is being trapped under him, the sheer weight and heat of his body flush with yours becoming more and more uncomfortable, almost unbearably so. 

When he slumps off to one side, you can finally breathe again, the air rushing into your lungs. There’s sweat in your skin and tears in the corners of your eyes, everything tacky and humid, the frantic beat of your heart only beginning to slow down. The stiffness in your shoulders only dawns on you after a few minutes like that, and you push yourself up onto your elbows just to try to work some of it out. 

“No, don’t get up, love. We’re just gonna lie here for a bit,” he instructs, pushing your shoulder back down. “Better chance of my boys getting the job done if we keep it all in you.”

Of course he just wants to make sure that it takes. That way, you don’t have to do this again. “Oh yeah. I, uh, I didn’t think about that.”

He doesn’t just mean lie there, of course, though your body would like nothing more than to sink into the plush embrace of sleep. Instead he means keeping your hips propped up on the pillow now saturated with cum, and curling you into his side, separating your thighs again to palm your cunt, sliding his fingers through the wet. 

It’s a goopy, sticky mess that John plunges his fingers into, pushing it back up inside of you and shushing you when you whimper, a little gaped from his cock but sore to the touch. 

For much longer than you anticipated, he lies there on his side beside you and keeps two fingers pushed up inside you, blocking any cum from leaking out. 

“How long do we have to do this for?” you ask, voice all high and tight in your throat. 

John hums, unconcerned. “Ten, fifteen minutes.”

True to his word, he keeps you there for the full fifteen minutes. Only the sound of your breathing fills the room, quiet otherwise aside from the enormously large weight of his presence, too familiar now with the private corners of your world. 

He doesn’t warn you before idly circling your clit with thumb. You jerk, nearly biting through your lip. “John!”

“Relax, honey, I’m just making you come again.”

“I know that, John—ah, ah, ah—”

A leg hooks over yours, his thigh heavy enough to keep you pinned without even much strength behind it. His fingers don’t so much as twitch inside of you, buried to the fattest knuckle while his thumb circles the tight bud of your clit over and over again until you—

You haven’t finished the thought by the time he draws his fingers out, pearlescent strings of cum webbed between them. He hums approvingly when he sees that, pulling your thighs further apart to admire his work. “Gorgeous. That ought to do it for now.”

Your heart skips a beat and you stare up at him, exhausted, the sweat on the back of your neck now cold. 

Your apartment is on the third floor of a walk-up, with a little balcony off the living room, and a decently sized kitchen. The rooms aren’t too small either, and your landlord has never cared about you putting holes in the walls or painting, only that you’re quiet and you have not once been late paying the rent. She lives on the first floor, and you have a sort of pleasant, neighbourly relationship with her. It’s easy enough to like a landlord that doesn’t raise your rent arbitrarily or drag their feet on repairs, but Leslie’s also a handsome, handy butch, and her wife, Amelia, is a wispy artist, and you’ve always been on the cusp of wanting to be properly friendly. You let her know before you head off to work that you have a new roommate moving in today, and that there would be a bit of noise in the afternoon.

“Oh, you found someone? Good. You want them on the lease?” she asks.

“I don’t think she wants to be. She’s just giving me cash so I can pay it. Is that alright?”

Leslie nods. “Sure is, honey. Thanks for letting me know. Oh, and I want to do a check on the radiators before the cold weather hits— Shouldn’t need into your apartment, but the pipes’ll be clanging something awful. It’s supposed to be cold and rainy Monday, so I’ll turn on the heat, and you can text me if your rads don’t warm up.”

“Alright. Thanks Leslie.”

She laughed. “You don’t have to thank me. You’re just saving me paperwork and a trip up the stairs. I’ll be standing by this afternoon if you need the door taken off the hinges to get any furniture through.”

You head off to work, humming to yourself. There’s time to stop for a take out coffee too, something you’d been denying yourself for the last few weeks to conserve money, and the barista gives you an extra shot of espresso, just because she missed seeing you.

God, you would have hated moving away. This neighbourhood has been good to you, and starting over somewhere else would have been hard. You recognize most of the faces around you, and often get a smile or a nod when you pass by, or even a good morning from a few. It feels like being part of a community. You unlock the door to the shop, and you don’t bother locking it behind you while you quickly get things set up.

The bell above the door jingles just as you’re about to go and flip the sign. “You know, you should really keep that locked when you’re not open,” John says. He’s an irregular regular, the sort of customer you see every few days for a couple weeks and then not at all for months at a time. You like him— He’s always polite, and he always takes your recommendations seriously, and comes back to tell you what he thinks. He’s older, but in a non-distinct way where he could be anywhere from 30 to 45. The muttonchops kind of make it hard to tell.

“A customer coming in a minute or two ahead of time is not terribly concerning to me, John. And the shop is open, I just haven’t flipped the sign yet.” You do so, and dust your hands together, like you’ve just accomplished some great feat.

“What if I wasn’t a customer?”

“What, like a robber? I’d give them the money from the till and then ring up the cops so they can stand around and be useless a while.”

His stern expression cracks into a smile, the crows feet around his eyes deepening. “Alright, fair enough.”

“You’re here early. Usually don’t see you until lunch hour. Got a busy day ahead?” You absently straighten a pile of books on the table by the door before you return to your perch behind the counter to sip your coffee.

“Yeah. Helping one of my sergeants move this afternoon. Someplace in the neighbourhood, but you’ll be closed long before we finish.”

You hadn’t realized he was military, but now it seems obvious. He’s got that straight-backed, keen-eyed look to him that could belong to few other professions. “Oh, are you Jamie’s captain?” you ask, connecting the dots. It's too close to be a coincidence.

He raises his eyebrows. “You’re her new flatmate?”

“Yeah! Ha, I guess you’ll get to see how I live. Always weird when a customer crosses the threshold of familiarity.”

“Didn’t realize you two knew each other.”

“We don’t— Not yet, anyway. I’ve had an ad out for over a month, she’s the first person who’s responded that I think I could actually live with. You would not believe the number of guys who responded thinking that a picture of their dick counted as a reference.”

“Did Jamie give you references?”

“Yes, her old landlord, her LT and her Captain— Guess that’s you. But I met Ghost last night, and I didn’t really think I needed to call the other numbers after meeting Jamie.” You shrug. “Although looking back on it, I guess getting a vibe check from a giant in a balaclava is maybe not the most legitimate reference I could have received.”

“You ever think you might be too trusting?” John asked, leaning against the counter. He didn’t have a tendency to use his size to intimidate, but he was looming over you now, giving you a stern glare that you’re sure his newer recruits have nightmares about. You’re not intimidated though. You’re too familiar with him by now to be worried. He’s just got this protective, almost fatherly streak to him, and a bit of paranoia that makes more sense now that you know it’s coming from his military background.

“Have you ever thought that you might not be trusting enough?” you ask sweetly. “Not to sound trite, but I’ve found that when you approach things with an open mind and heart, things work out. But maybe I’ve just been lucky.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t been eaten alive,” John grumbles, moving away from the counter, shaking his head.

You just shake your head too, picking up your phone so you can text Jamie.

I met your captain!! Well I already knew him but I didn’t know he was your captain

The response comes in almost instantly

UR BOOKSTORE GRIL<

GIRL<

NO FOCKIN WAY<

???

caps got a crush on ye. dirty old man >:( <

Dinny wry kitty ill fight im 4 u<

You hear John’s phone ding. He glances at the screen and laughs, and then looks over at you. “Jamie just told me to square up.”

“Wouldn’t be fair. I bet she fights dirty,” you tell him. “Is that why you call her Soap?”

He laughs again, his broad shoulders shaking. “No, but it might as well be.”

John buys a couple of old westerns and heads out soon after, leaving you to putter around the shop. You get a few customers through, though not many. Fridays are never very busy. Saturday and Sunday are always the busiest days of the week, and the days that the little book shop is open the longest. From what you've gathered, Bruce, the owner, makes most of the money to keep the place going by renting out studio space upstairs. The second floor is a wide open room, and the third floor a maze of little studios. There's a bulletin board behind your counter with all the workshops and events listed. Bruce lives at the other end of the first floor, and you rarely see him. The bookstore was something for his wife, who had gotten bored and moved on to pottery, and then glass blowing, and was currently occupying a studio upstairs and writing a novel. Sometimes she asked you to read chapters of it, and you had to come up with polite ways to tell her that she needed to put a lot more work in that wouldn’t get your ass fired.

Jamie texts you updates on the move, mostly complaints about how she didn’t think she’d need so many boxes, she didn’t think she had that much stuff, as well as a picture of her reclining on a couch while Gaz and Ghost lift it into the air, with the caption RIDES HERE that you receive just as you’re locking up the store.

They gonna carry you the whole way here?

no :( LT said im 2 heavy <

rude fucker <

You should reconsider your no killing in your spare time policy Just this once

ur rite. <

only after ahm dun mvoing tho<

hes useful 2 me yet<

You giggle and stow your phone back in your pocket, picking up your pace so you'd have time to do a quick, last minute clean of the apartment and shut Red Herring in your room so he doesn’t make a run for freedom while the doors are open.

He never listens when you tell him he doesn’t have what it takes to make it out there alone.

You happen to glance out the window when a pickup truck pulls up in front of the building. John and Gaz climb out. It’s a smaller model, and the couch from the picture is strapped sideways across the short-box bed with a pile of boxes stacked neatly underneath. A blue sports car pulls up behind it, and Ghost unfolds himself from the passenger side while Jamie throws her door open and hops out of the driver’s side. You head downstairs to meet them at the front door.

As soon as she sees you, Soap runs over and throws her arms around your waist, picking you up bodily and swinging you around, like she’s a soldier returning from the war and you the long suffering wife awaiting her return back home. You shriek with laughter and hold on tight, worried that she’ll drop you. Not that it’s all that far from the ground. Maybe it’s just kind of nice to be manhandled by a big strong woman.

“Missed ye,” she says in your ear.

“Jamie, we just saw each other yesterday,” you remind her, still laughing. “We just met yesterday.”

“Pff. No matter.” She gives you one more spin before setting you down. “Awlright, let’s put these big strong lads to work, aye? If ye ask nice Gaz’ll prob’ly take off his shirt.”

“I think he should keep it on, actually,” you say dryly.

“Yer right, kitty, don’t want to get distracted while there’s a job to be done. I’ll take my shirt off for ye later, since yer insistin'.” She loops an arm over your shoulders and presses a quick peck to the side of your head before letting go and dashing back over to the vehicles, giving you no chance to say that you most certainly had not been insisting.

No one lets you help, beyond opening doors and helping them navigate corners, but you suspect that you really only would have slowed up the process. They make carrying the couch up the stairs look easy, and the whole job is done in under an hour, despite the three flights of stairs. Soap moves her car to the lot, taking the space Leslie indicates, and you walk up together, Leslie telling her the laundry hours and letting her know that she was welcome to paint her room any colour she liked.

“Hey, John,” Leslie says peering in the open door with a grin. “Haven’t seen you around in a while.”

John turns a curious shade of pink. “Ah, well. Things have been busy. No time for workshops.”

“Well, you’re welcome back any time. Bring your friends, even.” She claps Soap on the shoulder as she turns to head back downstairs. It strikes you that she only came up to say hello to John, who had done his best to avoid her the whole time they’d been moving boxes. “Nice to meet you, Jamie. You’d best be good for our girl.”

“Ahm always good,” Soap protests. “Ask anyone.”

Leslie glances over at Gaz, Ghost and Price, who shake their heads in unison.

“Awlright, ask anyone except these bastards. They dinnae appreciate me. Even when I was going to order them takeaway and git ‘em a few pints.” She pouts, leaning against the doorway dramatically clutching her chest. “Ahm misunderstood in my own time.”

Leslie chuckles. “Well, she’s a handful. Good luck with that one, honey,” she tells you as she trots back downstairs.

You shuffle Soap into the apartment and close the door so you can release Red Herring from the confines of your bedroom, where he’s been yowling his displeasure for the past hour. She flops over the back of the couch, landing upside down with a sigh, and pulls out her phone, head tipped over the edge of the seat. “What do ye lads want? A Chinese? Or somethin’ else?”

“We also don’t have to stick around.” Gaz looks around at the others. John is looking at your bookshelf with interest, and Ghost is crouched in the hallway, greeting Red Herring. Gaz gives you a sheepish smile. “Or, uh. Maybe we do.”

Soap hauls herself into a more upright position, both hands still holding her phone. Her core strength must be unreal. You briefly wonder if she has actual, honest-to-god abs. “You want ‘em gone, kitty? Hens only?”

It strikes you that whatever this group has going on, it’s more than a little codependent. Better to get used to them now. “It’s alright. I’ll hang out in my room if I run out of social battery. Used to do that when Fern’s friends got to be too much.”

Soap tosses her phone down and flips her legs over the side of the couch and then to the floor. “Oh no, kitty. Dinna start off bein’ accomodatin’ when ye’d rather not be. I can tell ‘em to fuck off. Weal. I can tell Gaz and the captain to fuck off. I have ta drive LT home. No cabbie in his right mind will take the poor fella.”

“Not even the one’s not in their right minds,” Ghost says mournfully. Somehow, he’s coaxed Red up onto his shoulder, and is wearing the fat orange cat like a fur stole. You can hear the cat purring from several feet away. “For some reason, I make people nervous.”

“Couldn’t be the eye black and the fuckin’ skull motif, LT,” Soap says.

“Couldn’t be the size of you either,” Gaz adds.

“Sweetest pup I know,” John agrees. “People just don’t trust these days. Sign of society collapsin’.” He winks at you.

“What’s the word, kitty?” Soap drapes herself over your shoulders and nuzzles against your hair. Her nose runs along the curve of your neck, and it doesn’t seem to bother her even a little that the other three are watching with fascination. They're trying to be subtle about it, and failing miserably. John has a book in his hands, holding it upside down. Gaz is pretending to study a picture on the wall. Ghost is… Well, Ghost isn’t pretending to be subtle. “Want ‘em to go?” Her voice sounds a little breathy against your ear, and you’re not at all sure what to do with the electricity that shoots through your whole body. “Have us some girl time?”

“They did just help you move,” you say slowly. It’s taking a moment for you to collect your thoughts enough to speak. “Would be rude to send them away without a meal, right? Plus Red just got settled into his new nap spot.” You gesture at Ghost, who’s carefully walking over to the chair to sit, holding his shoulders very still so as not to disturb the cat, his eyes still turned your way.

You're not totally sure what Soap thinks is girl time, but you think it might be several shades more intimate than you're used to.

“Aw, yer too good ta my lads, kitty.” Soap kisses the spot right in front of your ear and lets you go. Without her solid body holding you up, you briefly consider melting into a puddle all over the floor, but manage, somehow, through sheer force of will, to keep your knees from buckling.

You had put an ad up online.

Your best friend had moved in with her boyfriend, leaving you with more apartment than you could afford. You had enough savings to get you through till the next month, but things were going to be dicey if you didn’t find someone to take over Fern’s half of the rent soon.

You’d had plenty of responses, mostly from men that gave you creepy vibes, even through digital means. You’d actually met with only one person, and she was allergic to cats, which made her a no go.

She’d been nice enough, though. If it really came down to it, maybe Fern would take Red Herring. She did love that fat orange bastard. And so do you. The thought of giving him up, even to Fern, doesn’t sit right.

Red meows loudly through the door as your key scrapes in the lock. You nudge him away with your foot while you enter the apartment, wary of any escape attempts. You feed him so he stops yelling at you, and boil water so you can feed yourself some instant ramen for dinner, and boot up your laptop to check the ad again.

A few more creepy responses, one of which is just a slightly blurry dick pic. You delete them. One that looks promising.

>Hey! I’m interested in the room if it’s still available! Can we meet soon? I’m a military gal and I’m being deployed again next week and I already gave notice at the last rat-hole I was renting. Seemed like 60 days was plenty of time for apartment hunting 60 days ago, but I haven’t found anything lol. Hopefully we get along! You can give me a call any time in the next few days, and we can set up a meet’n’greet. Thanks a bunch! Jamie MacTavish

Her number is in brackets below that, next to the soap emoji, for whatever reason.

No sense waiting around. You call the number right away.

“Hello?” The voice is a woman’s, a dusky alto, which is a good first sign.

“Hi, Jamie? I’m calling about the apartment. Or, um, from the apartment.” You give her your name as an after thought, feeling silly that you hadn’t led with that.

“Yaldy! I was hopin’ ye’d call. I’ve got a friend I can move in with if it comes down to it, but I really don’t want to. He lives in a worse rat hole than I do. Are ye busy now? I’ll buy ye dinner if you like, just for the short notice and the trouble.”

Anything would be better than ramen for dinner a second night in a row. “Yeah, alright. There’s a decent pub down the street, Keeler’s? It’s close so I can give you an apartment tour if you pass the ‘not a murderer’ vibe check.”

There's a beat of silence. “Does killin’ people in the line of duty count?” she asked. “Because, er, I have. But I’m not like, prone to doin’ that kind of thing in my spare time.”

You think about it a moment. State sanctioned violence does feel different than personal time violence, although you're pretty sure that speaks to some sort of unaddressed bias. Something to think about. “I appreciate the honesty, at least.”

She laughed. “I can meet ye at yer pub in half an hour. That work for ye?”

“Yeah. That works.”

“Great. I’ll text you a picture of me so ye know who tae look for. See you soon.”

You get the text a minute after you hang up. A picture of a gorgeous woman with big smile and bright blue eyes, the sides of her head shaved, the rest of it left long and braided back from her face. She looks normal enough.

You get ready and head out, texting Fern to let her know where you’d gone, just in case Jamie actually was a murderer in her spare time.

Jamie’s already there when you get to the pub, sitting at the bar with a pint, watching the door intently, her leg bouncing. You give her a little wave, and she beams at you. She’s even hotter in real life, wearing tight, ripped up jeans that cling to her muscular thighs, and a tight black tank-top under a cropped leather jacket. She has almost no jewelry, other than the dog tags around her neck and the silver hoops in her ears. She looks, well, normal. Friendly.

You go up and introduce yourself, earning a firm handshake. She’s strong.

“Hi!” she says excitedly. “Nice to meet you. I’m Jamie, but my friends call me Soap. I’d tell ye why, but it’s classified.”

“Is it really?”

“No. But it’s fun to say.” She flags down the bartender. “A pint for my friend here, if you don’t mind. You want to grab a booth? Or stay up at the bar?”

You look around, and there’s a few empty booths, but it’s early yet, and they tend to fill up quickly. “Let’s move. If we stay up here the single dads are going to start hitting on us.”

"We are a couple of dolls, aren't we?" She flashed another big smile at the bartender as he set a second pint out. "We're movin' to a table, if ye don't mind."

"No problem, love," he says, obviously besotted already. "I'll send Jenny around to take your order."

"Thanks, pal. Appreciate it."

You pick up the pint and follow her over to a booth, sliding in on the opposite side.

"So, you said you're military?"

"Ah am. SAS no less. Best of the bloody best. Not many jobs where ye get tae blow things up awl the time." She sheds her jacket, revealing impressively muscled arms. "I could just live on base, if things don't work out here, just so ye ken. No pressure on ye. But I hate stayin' on base when I don't have to. It's the communal showers. Most of the lads are, well, lads. Gotta shower in the middle of the night, and I keep bumpin' into my LT when I do. And he said I could move in with him too. I’m in a rush but I willnae be homeless, so ye don’t need to worry about me if you dinnae think we’ll get along."

You wince in sympathy. "That sounds terrible. I don't think I'd ever be comfortable showering in front of other people."

"Is naw so bad, if it's someone ye like seein' naked. But most of em are munters anyway. Wouldnae mind so much if more of 'em looked like you." She winked over the edge of her pint glass and took a swig.

You laugh at her little joke. She's fun, and you already feel at ease with her. She tells you about her old rat hole apartment, and a little about living on base, although she's a bit vague on the details of her actual job, beyond blowing things up.

She asks you about your work, and you tell her about the used bookshop you work at down the road. You're basically the only employee, and it's usually not too busy, although it can be annoying when you get a rush in the middle of pricing 'new' books. But it pays the rent, more or less. You talk a bit about Fern, and about Red Herring too.

"I love cats," she said excitedly. "Never been able to keep one, bein' away so much. LT had a dog, and he was awlright, but I'm definitely more of a cat girl. Got bit by a few too many pups in my day."

"Well, Red's a real love bug. Once we're done here you can meet him. I think we're going to get along fine."

"Och, really? Just like that, aye? Thought I'd have to work harder."

"Honestly, I thought I was going to have to accept some weirdo or give poor old Red away. You're a much better fit than I expected to find. I think we could be friends."

Her blue eyes track something behind you and narrow slightly. "Well, I'm holdin' ye to that. We're about to be accosted by my lads. Don't let them scare ye." She shoves her plate across the table into the spot next to you and clambers out of the booth. "Oi, what're you munters doin' here? I'm gettin' interviewed for an apartment. Dinnae need you scarin' my girl."

You look behind you, spotting a giant wearing a skull-print balaclava, and a more regular-sized (though no less muscular) black man with a brilliant smile. "We wanted to make sure she wasn't an axe murderer," he says pleasantly.

"Or a chainsaw murderer," the giant adds.

Soap cuts him off before he can take the seat beside you. "Over there," she orders, pointing at the opposite bench, where she'd been sitting. "I'm not lettin' you box her in." She grimaces at you apologetically as she drops into the spot beside you. Her thigh presses against yours for a moment, before you shift further down the bench. "They're sweet, in their own way. Think I need lookin' after. The big guy's Ghost, or LT. This handsome pain in the arse is Gaz. Don't let him sweet talk ye intae callin' him Kyle unless you want him tae put yer ankles up by yer ears. Made that mistake before."

"You don't have to bring that up every time you introduce me to a woman," Gaz says, clearly exasperated.

"I do. How else are they gonna know to call you for a good time?" She smacks his hand away from her plate when he reaches for it. "Oi! Order your own chips ye bastard."

"I only want a couple," Gaz protests.

"Ye always say tha' and ye always lie. Ah umnae fallin' for it again."

"You can have a couple of mine," you offer. "I wasn't going to finish them anyway."

"When do we get to see the place?" Ghost asked.

"Ye don't, unless yer carryin' boxes for me. I willna ask her to let three strangers in her home when she's only just met me."

"Well I guess we're helpin' ye move," Ghost said. "Was gonna leave it all to Price."

"Lazy cunts. Ne’er around when there’s work tae be done.”

“I was gonna help,” Gaz protests. “I already told you that.”

“And I did tell you that you could move into my place if you didn’t find somethin’ in time,” Ghost points out. “We’re not all bad.”

“Well, they’re not bad lads tae have watchin’ yer back in a fire-fight,” Soap admits. “But they dinnae know how to be normal about anythin’.”

“Are you supposed to be the normal one?” Ghost asks.

“Aye. And I willnae have you say otherwise in front of my new friend.”

She finishes eating long before you do, with the speed and gusto of a woman who often has to defend her plate against hungry scavengers. Gaz, true to Soap’s complaint, eats the majority of your chips, although he does thank you and give you a big, wide smile, the sort that could sell someone a bridge. He’s definitely a charmer.

Soap asks for the bill while you’re finishing up. You reach for your purse, but she puts a hand on yours and gives you an intense blue stare. “No, kitty. I told ye I was buyin’ ye dinner, I’ll no’ let ye make me a liar, especially when Gaz ate half your plate.”

God she’s strong. You’re not sure that you could shake her off to insist even if you tried. “Alright. I just—”

“Oh I ken. But I wouldna offer if I didna mean it. I’m a woman of her word.” She pays with cash, and offers you a hand up and out of the booth. She points a warning finger at her friends. “And dinnae follow us, ye creepy bastards.”

They laugh, like they hadn’t followed her to the pub in the first place.

“They really do mean well,” Soap says, linking her arm with yours as you step out onto the street. “But they’ve go’ a bad habit of thinkin’ they dinnae need to respect my space just ‘cause we’ve all spent nights crammed into one room sharin’ cots. I think if the captain had his way we’d all live in his house and sleep in a big fuck-off pile like dogs.”

“Sound a bit claustrophobic.”

“Aye. Ye understand why I’m so eager to make this work with ye, kitty-cat. If I move in with LT it’s just a matter of time before Price comes over tae help us fix somethin’ and says ‘Oh, I dinny know why ye both stay in this shitehole. Whyna stay with me a while, till we find ye somethin’ better?’ And then before we know it we’re all sleepin’ in the same bed and usin’ the same toothbrush.”

You giggle, hoping that's just a joke. “That’s gross.”

“I ken! Horrible men, they are. I need some girl time before I go mad.” She squeezes your arm and knocks her head against yours gently. “We’re goin’ tae be best friends in no time, kitty. I wish I wasna goin’ away so soon.”

“You haven’t even seen the apartment yet!”

“Och, tha’s a formality. I was more wurried about us gettin’ along, kitty. The apartment doesna matter all that much, so long as it’s got a workin’ shower and a place for my bed. If I pass Mr. Herring’s sniff test, I’ll give ye cash on the spot, aye? For next month an’ half of this one, since you’d be lettin' me move in before the first.”

_____________________

White whisps danced and swirled in the air before you, your breath given substance in the chill of the night.

You shuffled from foot to foot, cold air and anxiety swirling in a discomforting soup that sunk down to your bones  A glance up and down the street confirmed that yes, your taxi still hadn't arrived. You unlocked your phone once more, foolish in the hope that staring at the screen would make the car appear sooner. The little black icon on the app mocked you. Your driver is 2.6km away!

A sudden cheer split the silence, flooding from the frosted windows of The White Hart. You and your friends had agreed to leave by 8 p.m., hoping to avoid the jeering and jostling of impassioned football fans. A quiet drink after work was one thing; you hadn't, however, planned on lingering to catch up with the Premier League. The noise of rowdy punters and drunk men spilled once more into the street behind you, making your heart race a little. They were just watching a match, just in their cups…

But standing solitary as you were in the dimly lit street it reminded you that you were alone.

A single streetlight buzzed and flickered its dim companionship.

You could see your breath puffing out in front of you, white on black as the night stretched on. Perhaps you should've agreed to the lift that your friends' offered, cursing your politeness. Don't want to inconvenience you! I'm headed in the opposite direction - let me just call a cab. Dark nights weren't often kind to lone women. Winter, too. It left you shivering, trussed up in fleecy fabrics as the wind bit at your numb nose and made your eyes stream. You looked like some soft, gentle thing huddled in a doorstep, hoping to pass the night safely. You panted a little, unease quickening your breath. The misty vapor furled upwards; you imagined it carrying off your hopes. Your desperation. Please, let this car arrive. Let me get home.

A nondescript black car slowed along the curbside, wheels slick and splashing in the stagnant water gathered by the gutters. You caught the tail end of the license plates, mud splattered yes, but you could see some numbers and letters shining through. Finally. You puffed out your relief, tucking your phone away as you reached for the door. Prayer answered, it seemed.

A wave of warm air kissed your cheeks as you slid in, dry and comfortable.

'Hi, how's it going? 2350, right?' You sent a half-glance at the driver, pulling your seatbelt on as you waited for confirmation.

The gears of the belt buckle clicked in the silence. Heavy, noticeable silence.

Turning back towards the front seat, your polite smile wavered slightly. The driver was a big man. Strange that you hadn’t noticed it before, but he was hulking in the seat, shoulders stretching beyond the limits of the side panels. You swallowed slightly as you noticed the headrest barely brushing the nape of his neck.

Two unwavering, dark eyes met yours in the rear-view mirror.

'Uh…' you faltered slightly, perched like bird in the backseat eager to take off, feathers ruffling and twitching. 'This is- you're the car I called? Confirmation number 2350?'

You could feel your face heating -from the chill outside, the AC inside, the mounting embarrassment - skin feeling itchy and tight. Still, you were reluctant to break his gaze. Your instincts sparked, flared to life illuminating only the thought to keep him in your sights. You felt altogether too cramped in the car, his presence spilling across the back seats.

'Yeah, 2350,' his voice rumbled over the hum of the engine. 'Tha's right.'

He made no move, didn't even blink as he stared you down. You could just about make out the arch of blond eyebrows, the craggy lines of a well-worn face but a black barrier mask halted any further consideration. You cracked first, glancing down to his thick, gloved hand resting on the gearstick. The entire dash was dark, no blue light or luminosity from his phone. No digital dials or screens anywhere.

'Aren't you gonna type it in the app? Confirm it from your end?' You hoped he didn’t notice the shake in your voice, unease plucking at your vocal chords weaving nerves into noise.

'Waitin' on yer rideshare, aren't I?'

'I didn't book a rideshare, this is just-' You cut yourself off as your numb, clumsy fingers groped for your phone. 'Let me check, I should've just booked a solo journey-'

'No need, 's'a busy night. Friday. Match on, lots of punters.' His voice was deep, tumbling like gravel from his chest. It was disjointing, actually, with his mouth covered and the lights off. His voice seemed to echo around, filling all the dark curves and corners of the car's interior. Coming from nowhere but this beast of a man with no mouth.

You shook off the thought like waterdrops from your hair. He was just a working man. Big, yes, gruff, but no need to tar him with the sticky, resinous pitch of your paranoia.

'Yer lucky to get a ride,' he continued. 'Car pool's better than standin' out in the street by y'rself. S'not safe.'

You relaxed a little into the seat, tension trickling away. Slightly. It lingered still at the base of your spine, on the back of your neck.

'Right,' you puffed out a breath as you slid your hand from your pocket. 'Do you know how long they'll be? It's just that I've been out since work this morning and I'm looking to get home sharpish.'

He snorted at that, loud and curt, "'e'll be out when he's out. Someone waitin' for ya to get home, or wot?'

'No,' you hesitated, awkwardness cutting you short, 'sorry. Just tired.'

He hummed at that, flicking his eyes around the silent street outside. Murky, orange light cut through the condensation of the pub windows, casting a faint haze on the shutters and bars of the nearby shops. All closed for the night. All empty.

'Wot you doin' out by y'rself anyway?'

Odd. He didn't seem the type for small talk.

'I wasn't out by myself,' you cringed at how pandering it seemed. How you felt you had to justify yourself. 'Was out for drinks with some colleagues and friends.'

He huffed at that, muttering something too low for you to hear. It made you prickle, for sure that it was at your expense. Maybe you should stick in your earphones, stop talking and just treat this like the transaction that it was. You drummed your fingers against the door panel, breath fogging up the window as you stared out aimlessly.

A few beats passed like that, quiet settling uncomfortably in the car like an itchy blanket. You could feel it, wanted to shift away or throw it off or something, but a glance outside at the damp, litter-strewn street kept you still. Better just to endure the discomfort if it got you home.

The snick of the locks disengaging made you jolt, drowsiness dispersing at the sudden shock of cool air from in front.

A man, almost as tall and broad as your driver, settled into the front passenger seat. His eyes, flinty under his stern brow, mapped the length and breadth of your bundled form. His lips twitched under his mustache, amusement or disbelief carved into the burgeoning smile.

'What's this, then? Picked up a stray?'

You bristled a little, scintilla of apprehension raising the hairs on your arms. They shared a look, something warm and familiar passing between them as the idling engine hummed back to life. They sat in front, black-clad and broad shoulder to broad shoulder nearly blocking your entire view of the dash.

'It's your rideshare, in't it?' the driver grunted as he pulled away from the curb.

'Booked a cab, did you sweetheart?' the stranger turned to you, strong face in profile. You could make out fragments - high nose bridge, dark hair, mutton chops obscuring most of his face. The darkness veiled the details, like staring at a painting through gauze. He was the image, the impression of a man, yes, but distant. Unsettling.

'Clearly,' tiredness and nerves made you sharp. Brittle. You sunk further into the seat, clutching your bag on your lap. As if it could act as a barrier. A shield.

A string of tension hummed, taut and quavering. You tried to ignore, watching streetlamps blur together outside, it but it whirred high and distracting. They noticed it too, you thought, shoulders squaring up as muscles tensed and flexed. The stranger huffed through his nose, proud and steady as an ox. You swore that you heard the driver chuckle under his breath, a low hehehe as he indicated right and turned off from the M60.

'Testy one, I see,' he hummed, disapproving. 'Gonna have to fix that attitude.'

The string snapped, you snapped, 'Look, Sir, I'm not trying to be rude, but I don't fancy a chat. I'm just trying to get home.'

You fumbled in your bag for your earphones, hoping to drown out any awkward silences or terse comments.

'Alright, that's enough of that. Simon, pull over.'

You looked up, half in alarm and half at the authoritative tone of his voice. The driver, Simon apparently, swerved into the hard shoulder with a 'roger that'.

The tattoo beat of your heart drowned out your thoughts, heavy thumps rushing past your ears and thrumming down to your fingertips. You scrambled for the doorhandle, scratching clumsily like a mouse.

'What are you doing? Is this some kind of Chuckle Brothers double act because if so, it's not funny,' your words fell like fragile little shards, hoping to cut but shattering in the air. Your pitch rose, 'You want the bag, my things? I'll report you, you shouldn't be fucking working this job.'

Your phone felt heavy in your hand, shaking fingers missing the keypad as you tried to type the password.

The stranger sighed heavily, patronising. Like you were inconveniencing him in some way. You licked you lips and glanced up, ready to run your mouth again as the app loaded.

A steely glint by the central console strangled the words in your throat.

'Didn't want to have to do this sweetheart,' the stranger's lips quirked up in a sad, half-smile. You scanned his face, seeing no note of hesitation. Just cool, steady eyes and that stupid, fake smile. 'Hand that over, nice and easy.'

Neurons fired, trying to make connections or plans. Trying to assess. Here you were, alone in a car with two strange men. You shouldn't hand your phone to them, you could barely feel your fingers anymore, never mind unfurl them from the edges of the case. If you handed over your phone - your lifeline- then what?

If you didn't hand it over, you had the answer to that question from the barrel of the gun pointed your way.

You stared at it, dull silver in the dark. Like a cynosure, it pulled your gaze towards it. A sick facsimile of the North Star, leading you away from safety and further into the den of the wolves ahead.

Your animal instincts screamed, struggled, but lost as you passed your phone into his large, calloused grasp.

'Good girl,' he smiled fully then, round cheeks and bright eyes masking the coldness beneath. 'Don't get fussy now - Simon, the locks - just sit tight and you'll be home in no time.'

You tugged futilely at the handle, useless now that Simon had engaged the child-safety lock.

'I don't live down this way, I- this is not the right way,' you licked your lips again, mouth dry and bitter with the taste of rising bile. You could see, now, that you wouldn't be going home that night. Your next words tasted acrid, tinged with defeat.  'Why are you doing this?'

'Thought ya wanted to come wiv us,' Simon's gravelly voice cut in, amusement warming the pitch into something mocking. 'Why else jump into a strange car?'

'You said you were my taxi, you confirmed-'

'Did I?' you saw his eyebrow quirk, dead predator eyes meeting yours once more through the rear-view mirror. 'Not very good at lookin' after y'rself, are ya?'

Your quick little breaths fogged up the window beside you. It was hard to see, hard to think. But clearly, not thinking had brought you this far. You didn’t think to accept your friends' offer, didn’t think to properly check the license plates, didn't think open the app and check the journey status.

There must have been something of surrender in the tremble of your lips. In the flickering of your wide, glossy eyes. It scented the air, whetting the appetite of the beasts in front of you, swirling around their chops.

'S'alright, love. We'll get ya home. Get ya taken care of.'

Lacrima painted your lash line, salty and hot as it brimmed over and down your cheeks.

You heard a rustle, felt a rough thumb brushing at your tears. The stranger had reached back, large hand nudging your face back up to look at him.

'No more tears, now, c'mon,' he dug his into the corner of your mouth, tugging your lips into a coy, marionette simper. 'Smile, sweetheart. The rest of the boys are dying to meet you.'

________________________________

Until he's crouched and leaning over you, your shadow blocking out the blight. He's breathing hard again.

"Keep it on."

His elbows dip into the water first, finding balance on your shoulders and pinning you to the porcelain bottom, as his mouth comes down to yours. His mouth through the mask — shrouded, a suggestion of one — is frustratingly intangible until the fabric touches your top lip. Until you feel the breath come through, clouded and frantic, into your opening mouth. You don't wrap your hands around his face, although your fingers tingle with it. They let him lead and hold his hiddenness against your openness. The sound he makes when you open wide for him is something you will never recover from. Restraint tugging at its leash.

You wet the mask with your saliva and the bathwater on your lips alike. Mutually assured suffocation.

Your head tips back against the porcelain. He tastes vague, not right. Sometimes, he would bring beef jerky back from the butcher's and then kiss you, and the smoked meat would invade every particle of you when his face would crowd yours. "Give us a kiss," he'd laugh tauntingly, hot hands climbing under your shirt.

His hands clasp your exposed throat, and his thumbs stroke the thin skin where your pulse lies helpless and wild. Your sigh is hitched and breathy and he inhales it from you. His eyes now are feverish and glazed over, hotter than the bathwater, hotter than a cigarette crushed to a boy's open collarbone.

Someone makes the first move, or maybe it's both of you, but you are pulled from the tub and wrapped dripping in your men's bathrobe because you like how it feels to be swamped up in thick fabric that could belong to someone else, and he's dabbing a towel against your hair. He learned: must remember you yelling at him, cranky with sunburn, when he tried towelling your hair off like you were a dog after swimming in the quarry.

You watch as he brings the towel into the bedroom ahead of you and lays it down on the pillow. Part of you wants to open the front door and just walk away when you see it. Watching him do it peels a layer off you.

He retrieves you from the doorway and brings you silently to the side of your bed. You stand, the backs of your knees pressing into the quilt that's been spread over the bed — you hadn't put it there — and wait. He opens your bathrobe and pulls it off you.

He kneels in front of you, the towel between his two tattooed, curled fists, and begins to dab and rub your feet. Ankles to shins. Knees back and front. Quads and hamstrings, thoroughly, the flesh moving under his ministrations. Your ass, but not long. The hair above your cunt, a soft absorbing press. The soft skin of your stomach and where it meets the underside of your breasts. Your lower back, the crease of your spine, the rounded shoulders and underside of your jaw. Your breastbone and the fat of your breasts. Another gentle press to wet hair, then laid across your shoulders so the hair won't make you cold.

He pulls the bathrobe back up over you, tucking the towel beneath it, and ties it shut at your waist. Maneuvers you into the bed — your side — under the clean bedsheets and thick duvet and then the quilt. He unbuckles his belt and the sound makes you shiver. He removes his pants and keeps his sweatshirt on, then comes round to the other side — his side — and crawls in behind you. You're dry and warm but shaking.

He bullies up against you, your face to the window, his huge arms encircling you from behind. An owner trying to stop a shaking dog by holding it.

"C'mere," he clucks so softly, you almost miss it over your chattering teeth. Pulls you in tighter. His leg hikes up over yours, so even your feet are tucked into him. "Shh, shh now."

He keeps shushing and eventually your eyes close.

—

The sky is dark when they reopen, the only light coming through a hazy city glow from towering apartment buildings. And it's a relief — you're not ready for light and words.

When you turn over to him, his eyes are watching you. Wary.

When you climb on top of him, his hands keep you steady, gentling on your waist. He loosens the tie, and when the knot gives, it feels like everything spills forth; your breasts and your little sighs. You collapse forward to him and press your mouth against his before sitting back up.

Both of you pull his shorts down so that his cock surges up to read the bottom of his sweatshirt, weeping and glistening in the night's winter glow. Both of you hold your breath as you use his precum to slick yourself up. Both of you gasp, his sharper and darker than yours, when you hoist your hips higher and then sink all the way down onto his cock until he's fully seated inside you.

You keep your eyes fixed to his, unfocused but unmoving, as you angle your cunt, finding what you need. His hands reach up from the bathrobe tie to stroke your nipples. You ride him slowly, your breath stuttering out, your hands floating down to land over his. You grip them as they clasp over your breasts, holding them to you. His thumb and forefinger flick and pinch your nipple.

He lets you set the pace: a fallow field, slowly coming back to life after seasons. Not languorous and sultry; this is a silent conversation simmering between bodies. An arduously restorative scraping of strata from artwork.

Who's holding the knife?

Sweat builds where the bathrobe hugs, but you won't remove it. You lay your hands on his stomach, no longer a skinny ribcage with some fat wrapped around it, but a thing of its own. The dark coarse hair meets your fingertips, curling over your nails as you dig down. His hips jerk up, driving his cock deeper inside you, punching a groan out of your diaphragm.

He settles his palms — one ridged — over your thighs as you work him, squeezing the fat until it dimples under him. He's close.

You lean forward toward his face, hands braced on his chest.

You see it in his eyes, where you didn't see it before. It was there all along.

Instead of I'm sorry I left his hands trace up to bracket your neck.

Instead of I had to leave you because I thought I was saving you his eyes get liquid-soft.

Instead of I thought I was the poison in your life he cups your throat with such devastating tenderness, you could wail.

Instead of I didn't know his hips drive into yours with his mouth open beneath his mask, coming in you with an anguished cry.

Instead of I am in love with you he fucks you through a slowly annihilative orgasm.

Instead of I will take care of you he pulls his mask off when the tender winter sky lightens.

Instead of I will never leave you again he says nothing at all.

-

You can't say his name — you feel the shape of it in your mouth, but saying it will make you cry or throw up. It's too real and unreal.

Steadier than they should be, your fingers reach out to his mask and he pulls back. You jackknife your body up to get closer, not letting him escape this. Your brain cannot process this until you see it for yourself.

Fingers at the hem of the mask, tucked into his sweatshirt. He must see the knowing in your eye because he doesn't fight you. He's breathing like a bull, the air snorting through fabric hard and strained. You don't know what to look for exactly, but you see it: the cigarette burn —the worst one, one you had kissed once it healed more, one that you nursed when your mouth would find the crease of his neck during the nights in the treehouse — on his collarbone.

There's a tattoo, grey-green and old, mottling over it now. But it's still there, never fully gone. And that's him: your boy, grown up, not dead. Mottled over but here, not gone.

His breathing is erratic now. He's trying to fight it down in his barrel chest, control it, but your fingers skimming the mask upward his scarred and marked throat is pushing him too far. Perhaps you would've been sympathetic once, but not to the man returning to you now.

Instead of why did you leave you lift the mask past his working throat.

Instead of how could you leave me behind you drag it up over a stubbled jaw and scarred chin.

Instead of how could you not know what was happening to me you discover a bottom lip.

Instead of where did you go and why didn't you bring me with you you pull the fabric up over his mouth, which you do know — you've always known — is on the fuller side, now dragged a little where a stitch went bad.

His mouth is open a little, his jaw tightening and clenching too quickly.

Instead of I was in love with you and you left me behind with him you kiss his mouth. You force it on him. Forcing this to be real, for yourself, and for him to taste that realization on your lips.

Then your legs are bringing you to the washroom where you dry heave into the sink. You collapse onto the toilet, shaky-legged and sweating like you've got the flu. Stand back up to lock the door, just in case. You have nothing to do in here, but you cannot go back out there. So you run a bath. You're grateful for the sound blocking out any sounds from your apartment. Maybe he's left. Maybe all that remains are the slippers, or maybe he left and took those with him.

You strip down. Unlock the door silently. Climb into the hot bath. You stare at your toes and ankles and kneecaps. Look at the scar you got with him when he was chasing you through the woods and you tripped on a dead coyote. You'd asked him anatomy questions, curious if coyotes were similar to the pigs or chickens he cleaved at work, and then asked him to bury it with you.

You know it will happen, and it does, eventually: the door opens. He enters the bright space, his eyes looking washed out and all wrong. You keep your eyes fixed to his face, no more deference. He closes the door to keep the steam contained and keep you warmed. He lowers his big body to the tile floor, knees up, arms locked around his legs to keep them upright.

Adding bubbles to your bath had felt like a cruel joke, so he can see all of your watery nakedness, the way your hair looks wet, how brightly lit and vulnerable you must look.

"Take that stupid thing off," you say, some of the words slurred by the bathwater hitting your lips.

His eyes are imploring: don't ask me that.

You flex a toe into the porcelain, pressing a toenail as hard as you can to make yourself hurt. "Then speak."

Even his voice is scarred. He had a funny accent, one that you'd always imitate, especially when he's get red-faced with fury and start swearing at you with the stupidest words. But he always sounded pleasantly full-voiced, the corners just scuffed up.

Now, his voice is a smoker's cough layered under both disuse and overuse.

"Y'always been the smarter of us two."

Before you can even blink, your hand is curving up, away, and then down to slap out a wave of water at him, splashing all over the floor and his clothing and mask. You don't recognize your own voice spitting, "Don't you dare make a fucking joke."

He doesn't brush the water off his pants or mask. His eyes glitter at you, and you can no longer read what they're saying. Didn't you once?

He always stared. His dad would make fun of him for it — how he'd stare, at you, after you where you once stood. When you were old enough to make shape of it, it made sense to you, even thought he would never be able to put it into words for you: you were the good thing he had. Seemingly out of reach for a boy like him, but still found within his arms. Tucked into his lanky body when he finally started outgrowing you.

Wouldn't you stare at the one good thing you have all to yourself?

"Come here," you say instead of crying.

The girl insisted that the scar occurred when the boy refused to listen to her, deciding to hang off the edge of the old footbridge to scare her. The boy insisted he got the scar when the girl got mad at him and ripped an open pop can out of his hand. The boy and girl fought more than they got along, as snarling and inseparable as newborn puppies.

At first, it started like this: the families wanted to stay up late. Party. The music was too loud and hurt the children's ears if they slept too close. You didn't always know which stranger might try the doorknob, jiggling it too hard and the doorkob was often not strong enough to keep them out. The girl and boy would hide like mice where they wouldn't be found. They would fight but they were together, bony spine pressed to bony spine. Keeping one another safe. This is how the sleepovers began — necessity.

The adults would eventually raise their eyebrows in between long pulls of skunky weed if it was an easygoing night, or something harder if it wasn't — a knowing look watching a boy and girl scrap around, spitting epithets at one another. Waiting for the inevitable collision. Jokes about the two families eventually joining at the hip.

The adults stopped teasing about the sleepovers, and the children knew it was time to begin hiding them altogether. The alternative was to lose them, and that was inconceivable.

The girl's house was the easiest choice. She had a small treehouse that gave them both splinters, but it was high enough up that most adults forgot about it. It didn't always stop a wayward drunk from climbing up, though. When that happened, the boy found scrap boards and nails and some gnarled lock, and created his own lockable door they could use. Drunk hands stayed away after that.

A twin mattress got hauled up in there in the middle of the night. The girl and boy, after years, were very good at keeping secrets from their families; very good at hiding what needed to remain hidden.

But some secrets festered in between the boy and girl. She did not tell the boy about her older brother. She knew the boy, with his reddened cheeks and teary eyes and frightening fists, would rescue her; she knew what that rescue would look like. She did not tell him.

The boy told the girl she could get into a good university and study hard and get away. She would laugh and throw a hand over his mouth to shut him up, but he'd yank it away, his face so serious and upset. For her. On behalf of her. He begged her to apply for scholarships. Told her he was only good enough to butcher meat and that he would never forgive her if she didn't go be smart.

Then one morning, the girl went to the boy's house and he was gone. The boy's father acted like he had never existed at all. Told the girl she was lucky to get rid of that poison.

If there is a universe in which small decisions branch off like constellations, an infinite map of what-ifs, there surely was a path once for that boy and that girl. They might have travelled the path together, stone to stone, keeping one another upright.

He's just looking at it — whatever winter light still exists past four o'clock comes through the window, letting you see his eyes flick over the short, rectangular bag with tissue paper wisping out the top and a silly ribbon holding the strings together. Just as you're about to offer to cut the ribbon, he leans forward, lifting one hip, to remove a complex Swiss army knife from his pants pocket to slice through the ribbon like water.

You take the tissue paper from him as he pulls it out. You don't watch his hands, you watch his eyes. The dark rut between his brows is sharp and almost studious. Puzzled. He pulls out the nubuck leather slippers, lined with real sheepskin shearling. They're buttery soft and luxe. Something you don't think he would ever buy himself.

"I hope they fit," you say softly, desperate to see his eyes in full light. You'd spent a long time debating his size. "I can retur—" He chucks the empty bag to the floor and pushes himself forward, past the edge of the chair. He clasps his gloves around your face, pulling just so — stand up — until he's towering over you now, the warm leather gripping your chin, tilting your head up, letting this lead you back to the bed. He lets go and flicks a finger at your coat — unzip — so you unzip the cartoonishly long zipper from neck to knee, letting it puff slowly to the floor. You're wearing a big t-shirt and yoga pants that practically meet your nipples. Long, wool socks pulled up your shins.

Gestures you to the bed — get on.

You're not sure what position, and your heart is racing to not get it wrong. To just know intuitively what he's asking of you in his silence and his stature and unknowable eyes.

You get it wrong, but he doesn't punish you for it. His dense weight pulls down the mattress, causing you to tip backward, but he rights you with a hand — bare! — so you are on your side, head on pillow, facing the wall. He comes in behind you, heavy, his heat layering over his pungent smell; you've never been one to know scents, sometimes lemons smell like limes to you, but you want to bottle him up in a cap and keep him on a shelf for you to buy. There's no deodorant available that smells like him. It's musky and dark and it makes your cunt clench in rhythm and anticipation of him. Just him, in whatever form, whatever he has to take from you. Or give to you.

You wonder if he thinks he only takes from you: your orgasms, your toys, your privacy, your dignity, your sense of safety.

Behind you now. Hot air, smoky and unclean, against your neck. He's breathing hard, but the mask is preventing you from being able to inhale it like you crave. He pulls your leg up and over his, so you're almost spread-eagled to the wall.

Your hips are squirming backward, trying to find him behind you, seeking his solid wall of muscle and fat and bone. Is he hairy? Does he have whorls of hair around his nipples? Does he have a moustache? Does he wear a chain necklace? Is he sensitive around his hips? What sounds does he make, or is he silent? Are his lips thin or thicker? What does his tongue feel like? How will his cock feel inside you? On your tongue? Beneath your fingers, wrapped carefully, nails painted pretty for Valentine's day maybe.

It feels like you're a pair of jeans he's fitting against himself, the confident and assured way he moves you into place against his torso and waist. Your foot dangles uselessly, hitting dense part of his leg. Touch me. Your cunt clenches low and hot and impatiently. His hand coasts along your clothed hip and heat chases to the surface of the skin to find him, like his hand is a magnet dragging up little metal particles from a sea bed or something. Your brain is fogged, anticipation rolling over you in thick engulfing waves, and you don't even know what you want, except this: anything he'll give you. You'll feast on any morsel he deigns to give you. Perhaps there was a time this would humiliate you down through the floorboards of your shame, sense of self, but you want to stay alive.

You want to feel alive and this is how you do.

So you let him fit you how he wants, because it feels better than your own hands and machinery and silicone, because it could never compare to his dark eyes and watchful gaze and thick hands moving you, touching you, keeping you here, and you feel no shame. You want his knee in your spine and your drool in your mouth and his cock anywhere he wants and his slippered feet stepping on your throat if he wants.

His hand trails up, not down. You keen. Middle finger in your mouth and you could cry. It tastes so salty and sour and perfect. He doesn't let you suck on it, pulls it back after you wet it sufficiently, then it comes down to your cunt, where your clit is desperate, and begins a slow rotation of middle fingertip to nub. You shiver endlessly, your shoulder blades moving like you're trying to shrug something off, your mind blank.

His fingers pull apart your lips. You feel a huff of air against your ear and you push your face back into it. This is when he notches his other arm under you, where your head is wedged against the pillow, and brings it up around. Wide hand over your open mouth. You can't feel much, but you can tell the sleeve of his sweatshirt has pushed up from wedging between bed and you. You want to see it and lick it and feel it more. This feels better than the finger on your clit.

The skin of his palm is calloused, dry, ridged from the cupped position and something else.

You squirm more, moan trilling out from beneath the palm, and his other hand slaps your clit. Not soft. Not a love tap. Enough to make you cry out. And keep moving. You're not good at this, whatever this is, you're much too impatient and greedy now to listen or obey or whatever else he wants you to do.

Punishment is still attention.

"Oh fuck, please," you whine.

He slaps again and you buck away from it, against where you can feel him harden. A third time and your leg, dangling around his, is locking up. Trying to chase this, morph it into a shape enough to orgasm with.

A fourth slap and then you hear it: a dark, ugly, English laugh. It's textured, layered with bitterness and whiskey and too many cigarettes: something that someone coughs out.

Your brain freezes, like an animal being stunned. You're not sure if your body has stilled as well, but your brain does.

Your hand, fisted into the bedsheet, comes up. Pulls his hand away from your mouth, just enough.

The winter's light has faded. The room is dark, but not enough.

The ridge you felt in his palm. A ridge you'd given some fifteen years ago. To a boy you loved. To the boy who left.

To the boy who died and never came back to get you.