Off diddling killing machines

“C’mon, it wasn’t even close. You,” his gaze swings accusingly towards Simon, “were letting her squirm around too much.” Simon shakes his head.

“Didn’t want to break her.” You’re fragile. A little kitten in the jaws of wolves. Breakable like a pane of glass. Even more so now, since you’re sick. The bond corroding away inside your body hasn’t done you any favors.

The smallest amount of guilt pinches in his stomach. They’ve made a mess of everything.

Only right they clean it up.

A small cough echoes from the bedroom, and Simon frowns. You should be asleep. There was enough sedative in that water to knock out a horse. He jerks his head towards the sound. “Johnny.” His mate nods, and silence fills the kitchen as he disappears down the hall.

“So what’s your plan here?”

“Ger her on the plane, get her home, go from there.” There’s more, a methodical step by step plan, but he doesn’t care to elaborate. Kyle can infer most of it already. He’s familiar.

A hand rests on Simon’s shoulder, thumb working slow circles into the tense muscle. “She’s in the closet,” Johnny murmurs, “passed out. Must’ve been feelin’ really anxious, poor thing.” The sympathy is dripping with something darker, something sinister. You’re anxious, you’re fearful, and though it’s their fault, they don’t truly care, not in this moment. Once they get you home, get you settled, they’ll work on it, right the ship. But for now, it’s fuel for a machine that has to keep churning, has to carry you across the finish line. Fear is a powerful motivator, they know. If you threaten someone’s life, scare them into thinking they’re in real danger, they’ll do anything to protect themselves.

Anything.

“Closet again.” Johnny shoots him a mischievous grin. It’s been hours since you retreated back to your room after dinner, tucking yourself away in your nest. “Gonna be a tight squeeze.”

“‘m not crawling into that closet unless it’s to drag her out.” He tells his mate with a flat look, trying to curb his frustration. He knows it wasn’t a conscious decision to build your nest in there, more so your biology urging you to find somewhere safe, your omega trying to retreat, protect herself, but bloody hell do you make everything so difficult. “Did you take her temp?” Johnny hums.

“Borderline high. Think we’ve got one more day before it hits, maybe two.” His mate is almost giddy, the overwhelming happiness flowing down the bond like warmth, filling an empty space in Simon’s chest.

And why shouldn’t he be? They’re getting everything they ever wanted, everything they’ve dreamed. All their planning, their strategizing, everything put into motion finally paying off. If they’re lucky, they’ll get through this unscathed, they’ll bite you, bond you, keep you forever, and you’ll never know the truth. He can taste it, taste you, on the back of his tongue, and it’s more than just perfume, pheromones. It’s clean and buttery and sweet…

and made for his mouth.

Made for their mouths.

There isn’t a gift quite like having a mate. Someone predestined for you, a mate is the only thing in the world that belongs to you before you ever see them, lay a hand on them. There is no ownership greater than the bond, no claim stronger.

There is no choice.

Only fate.

“Bleedin’ christ.” Johnny swears, laser focused on the rear view mirror. He’s rattling in the passenger seat, shaking from the amount of energy it’s taking to restrain himself.

“Stay calm.” Simon grits from a clenched jaw. He’s clinging to shreds of control, his alpha instincts surging to the surface, trying to break free. Johnny sits frozen in the passenger seat, still locked onto the mirror watching you fade into the distance.

“Ghost, Soap. Status?” The earpiece chirps, John’s voice echoing between them.

“Clear. Lost the target, we’re returning to base. There’s been… a complication.” The line is quiet for a moment, no doubt their captain weighing their words, trying to discern their meaning. Eventually, he just acknowledges them, but it hardly registers.

“Copy.”

“I cannae believe this.” Johnny hisses, half mad. His scent has turned feral, rimmed in rage, in confusion, as Simon’s teeters on a similar edge. They’re a powder keg right now. “Of all places…” Simon grimaces.

“Nothin’ we can do about it now.” It’s rotten luck, at the end of the day. Finding their scent match, their omega, should have never happened while they’re on a mission, in some unknown in a foreign country. It’s the perfect storm of wrong place, wrong time, and all he can do is hope that their little show was enough to convince whoever is tailing them you’re not of interest. “We’ll get clear of this, ask for leave, come back for ‘er.” Johnny’s eyes are dark as they flick towards him.

“She’s no’ gonna come willingly, not after that.”

“No.” Simon agrees, his hand coming down to lay atop Johnny’s, their fingers intertwining. “She won’t.” An unspoken certainty settles between them, a silent promise to do what it takes.

Whatever it takes.

Johnny is out for a run during breakfast.

It’s his normal, and they’ve tried to get back into their usual routines, their normal life, without exposing themselves as much as possible. They’ve scrubbed the house clean, anything personal or meaningful loaded into storage crates, cardboard boxes and bags, all of their belongings that made this house their home hidden away. Everything from photos to tea towels, all of it crammed along the walls of their bedroom.

It makes Simon’s skin itch.

The sooner they can move on from this, the better.

“Johnny’s gone on a run,” he tells you, not surprised at the answering silence. You try not to speak to them, insisting on kicking and screaming, digging your heels in like a petulant toddler.

He wishes you’d just give it up already, but he can’t deny he enjoys your stubbornness, your strong will.

It makes everything more interesting. More fun.

You’re worse for the wear this morning, listless, slightly swaying in your seat, pushing food around your plate, scent tinged slightly sour at the edges. Just enough that his alpha bristles, an overwhelming need to fix it, fix you, rolling through his blood like a wave.

“Feelin’ alright?” You blink at him, brow furrowed for a moment before it smooths away and you shake your head.

“I’m fine.” You croak, reaching for the pill bottles. He feigns disinterest as you shake them into your palm, watching you from the corner of his eye. You’re a dutiful patient, clinging to the hope that the medication will help you, ease your suffering, completely oblivious to the truth.

They tossed that poison weeks ago, and what’s left of it is currently burning through your system. The last line of defense disintegrating before his very eyes, castle walls collapsing into dust around you.

He smothers his smile.

It’s not that he’s taking pleasure in your suffering, because he’s not, but he can’t help but silently celebrate the inevitable. Every second, every hour brings you closer to the finish line, to the moment where you’ll be so overtaken by your biology that you won’t be able to fight it, or them. Your protests, your fear, your rational thought will fade away as your instincts take over and you beg them for bites, knots… bonds.

You’ll become theirs, and they can leave this entire mess in the past where it belongs.

“She has it..” Johnny scrubs a hand over her face. “She’s sick, Si.”

They watch from the SUV as you come out of the clinic, zipping your jacket up to your chin. Your eyes are dull, lifeless, and a chill runs up Simon’s spine.

Bond corrosion. They’ve felt the effects too, the rot festering under their ribs, their biology slowly turning on them, punishing them. They’re just too strong to succumb.

Johnny taps away at the keyboard of the laptop balanced on his knees, your medical records spread across the screen in a dozen different windows. “Been gettin’ treatment for it for months. Suppressants, blockers, painkillers. The whole lot.” Simon grits his teeth. “Says here she had…” He trails off, focuses through the windshield to where you’re standing on the sidewalk.

“Had what?”

“A heat. After we left.” Regret tinges Johnny’s scent, and it pinches his heart. It shouldn’t surprise him, considering they went through a rut around the same time, but at least they had each other. They always had each other. You had no one.

You look over your shoulder for a second, eyes sweeping across the street. Simon freezes.

“Can she…” Johnny whispers, Simon shakes his head.

“No. She might feel us, maybe. But if she’s this sick, I doubt her instincts are reliable.” The moment passes. You turn away, flipping your hood up over your head, walking in the opposite direction, walking away from them.

“We need to move in. No more waiting.” Johnny pulls his phone from his pocketing, opening their text thread to Keller. A hot flare of jealously rises in his stomach. His alpha is possessive. Alex has no right to see you, smell you. You’re theirs.

“He doesn’t touch her,” Simon warns. “We only want him to spook her. Make sure he understands.”

“Tonight?” There’s hope in Johnny’s eyes, excitement. A little bit of worry too, for you, but overall, this is a good thing. An expedited timeline just means they’re one step closer to bringing you home. Sick, but they’ll fix it. They’ll take care of you. Simon nods his affirmative.

“Tonight.”

“Dove?” A small crease forms between your brows, as Johnny gently shakes your shoulder. “Dove, ye alright?”

“Mmm?” You shake him off, pressing deeper into the cushions of the couch. Simon’s fingers find your cheek, backs of his knuckles brushing upward, over your temple, across your forehead. Hot. Your skin is hot, nearly burning, damp with sweat. Dark satisfaction burns through his veins. How long will it be before you’re begging for them? Crying for them? How long will it be before you forget how they’ve hurt you, all the suffering you’ve endured because of them, and crawl towards them on your hands and knees?

Your scent blooms, flowers into something sweeter as you lean into his touch, lashes fluttering as your eyes open.

“What is it?” You mumble, pushing yourself up on an elbow, shaking your head like you’re trying to shed the clutch of sleep. It’s no use. It’s not sleep that has its hooks in you but heat, biology building to a crescendo, an overwhelming symphony drowning out your rational mind, your logical thoughts.

“You’re sick, sweetheart. Think you’ve got a fever.” He lies easily, and you try to push him off, but there’s no strength in you, your effort feeble.

“No, ‘m fine.”

“Ye’re not.” Johnny argues, propping you up with arm around your shoulder. “Did ye take yer meds?” Simon swallows his snicker.

“Y-yeah, I don’t know why they’re not working.” You moan, attempting to pull away. All it does is give Johnny an opening to hold you closer, and his mouth brushes across the top of your head when you instinctively turn your face into his neck, seeking his scent. “It’s so hot.” You complain, and Johnny smiles, unabashed since you can’t see his face.

“Aye. Want to get in the shower, try to cool off?” You nod miserably, and Simon urges you up, supporting your weight as you struggle to your feet.

“Take it slow,” Simon murmurs as you tackle the stairs, one painstakingly drawn out step at a time. Johnny’s behind you, fingertips at your waist, as Simon shoulders your lack of balance from the side.

Your scent is overwhelming. Burnt sugar turning to caramel, it mixes with Johnny’s excitement, his joy, tangling together in a perfect, heady combination that nearly has Simon’s mouth watering. He can’t wait to taste you, can’t wait to spread your legs and bury his face in your pussy, taste your slick.

The bathroom in their room is large, more than enough room for them to maneuver around you as Simon holds you upright where you’re sitting on the closed toilet lid and Johnny tests the temperature of the water.

“Let’s get you out of these clothes.” You shake your head, try to pull away as they curl under the hem of your t-shirt.

“It’s alright dove,” Johnny reassures you, now kneeling at your feet. “We’re jus’ gonna get ye cooled down.” They synchronize their movements, Simon lifting you slightly so Johnny can hook his fingers in the waistband of your shorts and pull, Johnny holding you at the waist so Simon can get your bra off. You’re left only in your underwear, listing weakly to the side into Simon. “Such a good girl,” he croons, rubbing your thighs, “such a good omega.” You mumble something into Simon’s stomach, an objection maybe. A last line in the sand. “Up ye get.” Johnny pats your waist, and they herd you into the shower, supporting your weight, carefully holding you under the spray.

“Don’t…” You protest, but it’s fruitless. Your body is bared to them, naked while they're clothed, and Johnny grins with a full mouth of teeth, the widening maw of a predator. He drinks his fill, sweeping over you from head to toe, his fingers lightly brushing your nipples as he soaps your skin. When you shudder, Simon can't help himself, can't stop from splaying a hand across your belly, feeling your softness, the goosebumps rising beneath his touch. 

“You’ll feel better after this,” He promises, moving you deeper into the shower, rubbing your back as water cascades over your shoulders. This won’t do much to keep you cool, not for long. It’s a temporary balm, but until you’re panting and presenting, they need to stay the course. Try to keep you cool, keep you comfortable, until you’re overwhelmed by your heat and unable to fight it.

“Cold,” you whimper under the lukewarm water, instinctively pressing yourself into Simon. You fit there so perfectly, and Johnny smiles, sweet and sharp, the loofa in his hand sliding down your spine, soap working into a lather.

“I know dove, I know.” Johnny keeps his voice even toned, pillow soft. “Jus’ a minute more.” You shake your head against Simon’s chest, your nose turning inward, dragging across his wet shirt like you’re searching for him, seeking his scent. You sniffle, fists clenching and then relaxing, a battle unfolding inside your head, your body, a whine growing in your throat as the shift you further under the water to rinse off.

Johnny starts to hum. It’s a gentle, slow rumble building from his chest, and Simon presses a thumb into your nape, careful and firm. You’re powerless against his touch, Johnny’s subharmonics, your muscles immediately softening, turning more pliant by the second. Johnny kills the water and you sag between them, boneless and shivering. “Poor thing,” You shake your head.

“No.” It’s a whisper on deaf ears. Simon reaches for the clean towel they hung on the rack, wraps it around your shoulders. “No.” You say again.

“Aye, we heard ye.” Johnny rubs your shoulders, your arms dry, and you try to take a shaky step away, a small, half attempt that ends with your knees buckling. Months of sickness, meds, futile efforts, has wrecked you, left you defenseless, and he considers it a small stroke of luck. It’s easier, like this.

Simon leads you out of the bathroom, an arm wrapped around your waist, as Johnny moves ahead, pulling back the covers of the bed.

Their bed.

Not yours.

Not guest bed, not the little nest you’ve built in the closet, but their bed. The one that’s saturated with their scent, their warmth, the one that will become yours.

“No,” you rasp, pushing against Simon’s chest as he lowers you to the sheets, “not in here. I want m-my room. My...” The rest goes unsaid. Your nest.  Your omega is seeking her safe space, you don’t realize yet that this is where you’re truly safest. With them.

“I know,” Johnny soothes, cupping your cheek. “But we need to keep an eye on ye.” Simon tugs at the towel, your grip falling away, anger igniting behind your eyes for a brief moment before it’s snuffed out again, and you hang your head.

You don’t fight as Simon pulls the sheets and blankets up to your chin, you don’t push Johnny away as he fluffs the pillows behind your head. The heat roiling under your skin has drained your energy, and once they’re done tucking you in you roll onto your side, turning your back, shutting them out.

He’ll allow it, for now.

Johnny is already climbing into bed, over eager, eyes shining, murmuring into the crown of your head sweetly. Lies, probably. False promises meant to relax you, and Simon watches as your shoulders hitch once Johnny’s arm folds over your waist.

You do not have the strength to push him away.

Simon takes the other side. Your eyes crack open, fever heavy and suspicious.

“Close your eyes dove. Sleep.” Your mouth opens, closes, and he waits for your temper, your questions, but your lower lip trembles instead, and you bury your face in the pillow, hiding from him. From them. From everything.

He squeezes your hip, relaxes his palm next to Johnny’s, their thumbs folding over one another atop your body.

This is it. This is right. This is how everything should have been all along, you here, with them, cradled between their bodies, an omega made for her mates.

This is where you belong.

"Johnny- how much was this?" You asked in disbelief.

"Donea worry 'bout it, bonnie."

Your mouth felt dry. This had to have crossed a line. It should've disturbed you that it was the exact set on your wish list- in your size. Fuck, even the color is what you would've wanted, and you hadn't even decided yet. It was weird. He was- is- weird. But,

"Thank you." Is what you said, and you meant it.

Today, you're in it.

This is crossing the line. You should've just declined and stopped going. But you wait in the cold morning air outside your apartment complex, waiting for his truck to round the corner.

Fog curls over the street in a hazy sunrise pink- so his blue truck is not difficult to spot as the roof splits through the morning clouds. He pulls to the front and you jog to his car to get to his heated seats.

You open the door. "Hi. Morning, uh thanks," you rub your hands together and shiver, "Can you turn the heat- the..heat."

Johnny is uncharacteristically quiet, so you turn. He's staring, shamelessly, at your chest. "You're in the set."

You roll your eyes. "It’s good quality."

"Ye- Christ..." He shakes his head, then looks back up at you and the corners of his mouth turn up.

"Ah can turn up tha heat, yea. Ah' can tell yer cold."

You don't get what he means, until you look down, and see your nipples through the set jacket.

You hear a scoff from Johnny's side as he starts the car, but you don't look up, and you certainly don't say anything until you pull into the parking lot. 

He stretches once you both get out. He must’ve sensed your embarrassment, because he offers his hand out for a fist bump before walking in.

You gently knock your hand against his, and he smiles.

"Y'wanna workout w'it me, bonnie? I got a fun one today!"

You swallow as you place your stuff in a cubby. "I don't know Johnny I-"

"Cmon nae. Fun, ah'said. Ye don't enjoy yerself, I'll let ye go."

You weigh out your options. You want to just do your own thing, but you know Johnny isn't going to stop asking. Impossibly stubborn.

You struggle, and then sigh. "Yeah. Yeah okay."

He beams, and you regret it immediately, "But just for today- okay?"

He nods, but doesn't agree.

It was legs for him today. He led you through demonstrations- and you find he’s actually quite talented at coaching. His candance and inflections change when instructing- a directness that you rarely find in Johnny. It was…refreshing. 

And then he started guiding you. 

Crowding your back while you lunge, hand hovering over your tailbone during a deadlift. The closeness isn’t new- but the talking is. 

“C’mon nae, hold’et.” 

“Tha’s a girl.”

“Aye, just like that, you got it.”

You refuse to let it nudge you the way you're sure he’s trying to. You bite your tongue and nod. Pray he mistakes the red in your face and your muscle tremors for exhaustion. Try not to let the coarseness in his voice distract you. 

Your guard cannot fall just because Johnny takes his fist to it. 

Johnny does the same movements while you rest, racking a handful more plates than you. Shamelessly, you watch his muscles move against the weight, and the heavy way his chest falls when he exhales. 

Sometimes, you’d catch him looking at you from his peripheral mid set. Wouldn’t look away until you nod, and then he’ll smile and turn back to the wall. You’d swallow and look at your water bottle. 

Eventually, you’re a little more than an hour in, hands on your knees at the squat rack. 

“Last one.”

“What?” You rasp. He pats your back.

“Last set of squats. Then yer done fer tha day.”

Your brows narrow. “But you said-”

“Ah’ken ye can do one more- yeah?” 

You stand and inhale. You’ve indulged in his weird trainer crush fantasy for long enough now. You turn to him, “Johnny I’m tired en-”

He says your name and your voice dies. The absence of a pet name is almost as overwhelming as the way he’s looking at you. Persisting blue. 

“Ya have one more set. Y’ll be fine,” he thaws, then winks, “ye got meh, yeah?”

You blink. You’re not sure if you hallucinated the look on his face, but the minute you recognized it, it disappeared. You swallow your uneasiness and the layer of mucus that was sitting over your tongue. 

“Okay.” 

The minute you move down, you’re sore. Usually it doesn't set in until the fourth rep. You close your eyes, trying to keep yourself steady, and then-

A hand sits on your waist. “Atta girl- go a little lower.” 

You breathe out. You’re on three. Five more. 

You can feel his breath against your ear. It’s shaky. “Keep et steady. Ah’ken yer tired,” He inhales when you lower yourself again, and you swear you brush against his hips, “But yer doin sa’ good f’me.”

It slips out on accident- a quiet moan. 

You truly didn’t mean to. You can blame it on your dwindling energy, soft mind and loose joints- on the fact there isn’t a filter for the uglier parts of your exhaustion. And how it’s starting to affect your desires. Maybe reveal them.

But whatever the case it slipped from you, and you did your best to bury the rest of it until you finished the set. 

You pray he didn’t hear you as you rack the bar. That even if he did, he wouldn’t say anything. And there's a brief, religious moment where you think that's the case. 

His hand slides to your hip and he leans into you while you rest your weight on the bar. 

“Ah’ken yu' could take it.”

Oh, he heard you. 

He pulls away. “Clean up and I’ll see you in the car!”

You clean up, and the ride back is quiet. He doesn’t move his hand from your thigh the entire time. 

Tomorrow, he will come to your door instead- with a new matching set. This one is just a bra and leggings. You’ll eye him, and make the mistake of inviting him in while you go to change.

But when you go to close the door, his foot meets it. He’ll smile at you, open the door, and sit on your bed. 

The field behind your apartment building is open and dark and the grass is slick and knee high in places, whipping against your shins as you crash through it, and somewhere behind you something is moving at a pace that doesn't match yours.

You're sprinting. The thing behind you is not. The thing behind you is covering the same ground at a walk, maybe a jog, the unhurried gait of something that understands the end of the pursuit better than you do: that your speed is borrowed from adrenaline and adrenaline has a half life and the distance between you is a loan you're taking out against a body that will come to collect.

The tree line. You can see it in the lightning, ragged dark mass, oak and ash and whatever else grows in the scrubby, unloved patch of urban woodland the city council hasn't developed yet. You've walked past it. You've never been inside it.

The dark between those trees is absolute and unknowable and you are running toward it anyway because the open field is killing you. Open means visible. Visible means found.

You hit the trees and the world changes.

The rain doesn't stop but it fractures, breaking against the canopy and reaching you in fat, cold drops that fall from leaves instead of sky, landing on the back of your neck.

The ground goes soft. Mud swallowing your foot to the ankle on the first step, the earth making a sound around your slipper that is wet and when you wrench free the shoe stays behind. You keep going. Barefoot on one side, the mud pressing between your toes.

You can't see. The canopy hides the lightning. What was blue white and blinding in the field becomes a dim, grey flicker in here, enough to show you shapes, trunk and branch, before the dark closes back over.

You navigate by collision. Bark under your palms as you bounce off trees you don't see until you're hitting them. Your shoulder clips an oak hard and something tears and you catch yourself on a low branch and the bark strips the skin from your palm in a hot, wet line, blood bubbling between fingers, and you keep moving.

Behind you, a branch breaks.

Something heavy stepping on something small, and the crack travels through the trees with a clarity that cuts through the rain and the thunder and lands in the base of your skull like a nail. You don't turn around. Turning around means slowing down.

A root catches your foot- the bare one, the one with no slipper- and you go down hands first, and the mud is cold and deep and your fingers sink into it to the second knuckle and the impact jars through your wrists and into your shoulders and your chin catches a root knuckle and the pain is bright, a flare of white behind your eyes, a copper bloom across your tongue where your teeth meet the inside of your cheek. You're on your hands and knees in the mud and the rain is hammering the canopy above you and the thunder rolls through the ground beneath your palms.

You push yourself up. Your hands slip. The mud gives and doesn't give back and your arms are shaking, not fear, not just fear, but the muscles beginning to fail, the glycogen stores emptying, the body starting to make panicked desperations your brain won't: how much farther, at what cost, for how long.

You get up. You run.

The woods thicken. The trees are closer together now and you're weaving between them with a gait that's barely controlled, pinballing off bark with your forearms raised to protect your face, and the branches catch you everywhere else, across the collarbone, the bicep, the soft skin at the inside of your wrist, leaving lines of heat that surface as welts, thin red marks that swell and sting in the rain.

Your bare foot finds something sharp. Glass, maybe, or a stone with an edge, and the pain blooms upward from the arch and you feel the skin open and the heat of blood mixing with the cold of mud and you don't stop. You can't stop.

The trees thin. You stumble out of the dense growth and into a gap in the canopy where a tree came down years ago. Rain returns full and direct, hammering the crown of your skull and running into your eyes. The ground is more leaf litter than mud. Your feet find traction for the first time in minutes.

You stop.

Not because you decide to. Because your body stops. The quadriceps seize, the calves lock, and you stand in the centre of the clearing bent double with your hands on your knees and your mouth open and the rain pouring down your face and into your gasping mouth, and the sound of your own breathing is the loudest thing in the world, ragged, wet, the desperate bellow pump of lungs operating past their margin.

You listen.

Rain on leaves. Thunder, further now, rolling east. Wind in the upper canopy, moving through the branches with a long, low hiss. The drip of water from a broken trunk to your left, rhythmic, metronomic, almost soothing.

No footsteps. No branches breaking. No displacement of air or weight behind you. The woods are empty. The dark between the trees is just dark. You turn, slowly, a full rotation, and every shadow is a shadow and every shape is a tree and the clearing is a clearing and you are alone in it.

The seconds pass. Ten. Twenty. The thunder moves further east and the lightning becomes occasional, distant, a flicker on the horizon rather than a detonation overhead. The rain eases from hammering to steady.

The breath comes out of you.

Not a sigh. Something deeper, something that originates in the locked down muscles of your lower back and travels upward through the ribs and the shoulders and the clenched, aching vice of your jaw. Your hands unclench and the tendons in your fingers straighten with the slow, creaking reluctance of something that's been locked too long, and your shoulders drop a quarter inch, and the shaking changes, less adrenaline, more cold, the tremor shifting from survival to exposure, and you straighten up and push the wet hair off your face and you breathe. In. Out. The rain is cold and clean and tastes like nothing and you stand in it and let it hit you.

You're out. You're alone. Whatever was behind you is gone, lost in the trees and the dark and the rain, and you're going to find the edge of the wood and a road and a light and-

The hand comes from behind you.

It covers your mouth and nose in a single motion, a seal, the palm wide enough to close over the entire lower half of your face with no gap, no sliver of clean air, and the cloth against your skin is wet and cold and sweet in a way that is immediately, viscerally wrong. The other arm locks around your waist, and your back meets his chest and the air leaves your lungs in a scream that doesn't make it past the cloth.

His cock is hard. Pressed against the base of your spine, unmistakable, the obscenity of it, that this is arousal, that the chase and the catching and the feel of your soaked body pinned against his is doing something to him. His breathing doesn't change. That's the worst part. The breathing stays steady, metered, controlled, even as the evidence of what this is doing to him presses against you with a bluntness that is almost conversational, almost casual, like a fact stated without shame: this is what you do to me. This is what catching you does to me. 

His arm around your waist tightens, a fractional shift of pressure that brings your hips flush against his, and the adjustment is small and deliberate and possessive in a way that has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with the specific, private, unhurried pleasure of a man pressing a caught thing closer because he can.

The cloth stays where it is. The chemical is sweet and heavy and it's in every breath now, saturating the fibres, filling your sinuses, coating the back of your throat with a taste like overripe fruit left in a closed room.

Your hands are on his forearm, both of them, gripping, pulling, nails digging into skin that doesn't give, and the strength in the arm is not reactive, not straining, just there. Your feet are sliding in the mud and you're pushing backward, trying to use his weight against him, but his weight doesn't move and your weight is leaving you, draining out through the soles of your feet.

Your knees soften, the tension that holds you upright dissolving. The chemical is fast. Faster than it should be, which means the concentration is high, which means the dosage was calculated, which means someone did the math on your body with an accuracy that implies knowledge of measurements you've never shared with anyone. 

Your arms drop, fingers uncurling from his forearm one by one like petals off a dead flower, and your hands hang at your sides and your weight shifts backward into him and he takes it. He takes all of it. The arm around your waist becomes the only thing left in your body, the single point that keeps you vertical while everything else goes soft and dark and far away.

The rain is still falling but it sounds like it's happening to someone else, in a room you've already left. The thunder is just vibration. His chest behind you is just warmth. The cloth is just cloth and the chemical is just a taste now, fading, everything fading, the clearing going grey at the edges and then dark and then nothing, and the last sensory information your brain processes before the dark takes the rest is not the storm or the cold or the pain in your foot or the blood on your chin.

It's the smell of cigarette smoke. Old, stale, ground into the skin of the hand over your mouth- the same smoke that you swore you could smell inside your flat for weeks. And underneath it, faint, almost imagined: your own shampoo. On his skin. In the creases of fingers that have been inside your home, your bathroom, your bedroom, opening and closing around objects that belong to you with the slow, ritualistic patience of a man cataloguing a collection he hasn't finished building.

The dark doesn't fall. It rises. Up from the ground, up through your feet, up through the muscles and the bones and the blood, filling you from the bottom like a vessel being submerged, and the last thing you feel is his mouth against the crown of your head and then the vessel fills and the dark closes over the top and there is nothing left of you that is yours.

Simon Riley lifts you out of the mud.

The storm covers the sound.

No one sees him leave.

***

Several weeks ago…

Finding your address takes Simon Riley eleven minutes.  

You don’t exactly do anything to hide your social media presence after all. Two photographs from your public account, backgrounds cross referenced. A corner shop's CCTV feed he shouldn't have access to and does and he has everything he needs. The flat number. The floor. Which windows are yours.

He parks the truck across the street one evening and doesn't move it for three nights.  Doesn't need to. Does it anyway. Watches your lights. Learns the routine of your evenings- when you eat, when you shower, when the last light goes out. Flies it all away, memorized completely, until it's as indistinguishable from the air. 

He waits until he sees you leave for your shift. Watches the way you pull the door, checks the handle twice, a thing you probably don't know you do. Watches until you round the corner and are gone.

Then he crosses the street.

The lock takes nine seconds.

(Wet ground. Gravel digging into a bleeding back. A sky the colour of poured concrete, no depth, no distance, just grey pressing down. The sound his own breathing made when the next one becomes a question of ‘if’ not ‘when’.) 

The flat smells like vanilla lotion and laundry still holding warmth from the dryer and coffee that brewed hours ago and hasn't fully left the air. He stands in the doorway for a moment longer than he needs to. Just breathing it. Then he closes the door behind him, cock twitching, heat pooling low, infatuated hunger.

He moves through the living room slowly. No urgency. Your place is small, everything in reach of the sofa, everything angled towards comfort for a person who comes home tired and wants to stop. An empty mug on the coffee table, lipstick on the rim. He picks it up. Holds it for a moment, turns it in his hands, brings the stained edge to his face and runs his tongue across the porcelain.

Sets it back in the ring of condensation it left.

(Pressure. Hands. Small, delicate. Pressing down. Warm against his skin.)

The bookshelf. He runs a finger along the spines without pulling anything until he finds the one with the broken spine, the cracked glue of a book read too many times in the same place. He opens to the bookmarked page. Reads filthy words about a man taking what he wanted. Hums when he imagines you touching yourself, fingers sinking into your cunt while you fantasize about strong hands pinning you down. 

Every room feeds the obsession and he’s rock hard by the time he reaches your bedroom, the air thicker here, soaked in your scent. The bed is unmade on one side only, the pillow still holding the impression of your head, the duvet pushed back, the small evidence of a morning abandoned to the alarm. He stands beside it and looks at it for what is probably too long and then he steps inside. 

(You hadn't spoken to him the way people speak to someone who might be dying. No performance of calm. No hollow reassurance. Just looked down at him like his death was just a minor inconvenience in your day.)

He finds the vibrator tucked inside your nightstand, still faintly sticky. A low, guttural groan rumbles in his chest. Naughty thing, fucking yourself after a long day. He turns it on for a second, the quiet buzz making his cock strain against his pants, before switching it off and returning it as if he was never there.

He opens the hamper, his own little treasure chest, and finds a worn pair of your panties- soft cotton, crotch still damp and stained with your slick, makes his mouth water. He brings them to his nose and huffs deeply, eyes rolling back. 

(Stay with me. Maybe you said it. Maybe he built it later. Memory at the margins of consciousness is unreliable, the brain filling negative space with what it needs. But the hands he would know. Would know the specific weight and purpose of them anywhere.)

“Fuck…,” he mutters, voice rough and depraved, takes a step backwards, then another, another, until he’s sitting on your unmade bed. He lays down, presses his face into your pillow, grinds hips until he’s rutting against your bedsheets, imagining you beneath him. 

Pulls out his thick drooling cock, veins pulsing on the underside, and fucks your pillow hard enough that the headboard taps onto your wall. Imagines your face right there, flushed and needy, lips pulled wide around the head of it, so pretty under him, taking every inch down your throat every night. Pre smears across the fabric and his breath comes heavier, more animalistic, huffing your panties again, again as he chases the high. 

(You hadn’t looked scared of him. He remembers that specifically. Whatever you’d seen when you found him- the mask, the gun, the scars- you’d moved past it in about a second and a half. Inconvenient details. Not your problem.)

The pressure builds fast. He grabs the bottle of lotion from your night stand, the one you slather on your soft skin every night- He wants his teeth in that skin. Wants to bite down to the bone and hold on- and unscrews the cap with shaking hands. 

At the last second he pulls his cock off your pillows, presses the swollen head onto the bottle and cums, ropes spurting heavy. He milks every drop, stroking himself through the aftershocks, watches his cum mix with the bottle you’ll use later, rub onto your skin without even knowing, carry him with you. 

(The way you'd sighed through your nose. Not fear. Not shock. Just the exhale of a person whose evening had just become more complicated and who was already calculating the cost.) 

He straightens up.

Tucks his dick away. Buttons his trousers. Stands in the centre of your bedroom for a moment, just looking- the pillow, the nightstand, the lotion bottle returned to its exact position- and something in his chest settles.

He checks the room once. Twice. Leaves nothing out of place. Tucks your panties in his pocket and leaves.

(Civilian hands. No calluses in the right places, no muscle memory of this. Tearing fabric without being asked to. Figuring it out as you went.)

He lets himself out. Pulls the door closed behind him until the latch clicks soft. Stands in the corridor for a moment, existing in spaces he was never invited into.

Lights a cigarette on the way down the stairs.

He doesn't smoke it inside.

He's not a fucking animal afterall. 

***

The man outside the pub doesn’t know Simon Riley exists. 

That’s fine. That’s usually how it goes. 

He's been watching him long enough to understand what kind of man he is. The type. Broad in the shoulders and soft in the middle, who moves through the world with the loose, unexamined confidence of someone who had never once been made to feel small. The kind who followed women to their cars and called it a compliment. Who'd saw you existing after a late shift and had decided that constituted an introduction.

Simon had watched him outside the chippy a week ago. Had watched you clock him from twenty feet out, the way your pace adjusted, fractional, barely perceptible (How loud. How fast. How much trouble.) Had watched the man's hand close around your wrist for just a moment, fingers wrapping with the casual presumption of someone who had done this before and found it went fine, before you'd pulled free and he called you a fat bitch in response. 

(The torch in your teeth while both hands worked. The angle of your head. Completely absorbed. He'd been a problem to be solved and you were solving him and the indignity of it had been the most alive he'd felt in years.) 

You hadn't reported it. Simon had waited three days to be sure, watching for the signs of someone who had- the variation in route, the hypervigilance, the particular flattened stillness of a person who has filed a thing and is waiting to see what happens to it. Nothing. You'd absorbed it and kept moving. 

He understood that too, in a way he couldn't have put language to, couldn’t have articulated.

He follows the man from the pub at closing. Last out, loud with his friends until he isn't, splitting off at the corner with the bac slapping ease of men who don't think about walking home alone at night because they never have to. He navigates with the rolling gait of someone three pints past sensible, loose in the joints, nodding to himself about something, unbothered.

The night is cold and damp, the pavement still wet from earlier rain, the street lamps doing that particular thing they do where they light the ground directly under them but not the spaces between. 

The man doesn't look up. Doesn't look behind him.

(You'd told him to stay still in the tone of someone who expected to be listened to. He had- god he had- a soldier through and through.) 

The man makes a sound, at the end. They usually do. Something small and bewildered, the realization a person makes when they understand all at once that the night has a different direction than they thought it would go. Simon holds on until the understanding passes.

Then he steps back.

(The quality of your silence. Not frightened silence. Not careful silence. Just… you had nothing to say, so you said nothing. He hadn't known what to do with that for weeks.) 

The van is parked at the alley's far end. Simon had left it there this afternoon. He'd known, by then, how the evening would go.

The man is breathing when Simon puts him in the back. Zip ties at the wrists, tape across the mouth, a canvas hood that smells like other jobs in the city. Simon closes the doors without urgency.

He drives for forty minutes.

The lockup is on an industrial estate that stopped being used for anything legitimate around 2019, the kind of place that gets planning notices taped to the fence for months before anyone acts on them. Simon has used it several times before. It has a drain in the floor and the walls are thick enough.

(At some point you’d sat back on your heels and just waited. Watched the wound. Your breathing had been even throughout. His hadn’t.)

The man is awake by the time Simon drags him out of the van. Awake and making sounds behind the tape. His eyes above the tape are blown wide. Simon looks at them for a moment.

Finds he has nothing in particular to say as he drags him inside and straps him down.

It's quiet work. It always is.

(Afterwards, you wiped your hands on the back of your jeans, methodical. Then you’d stood up and that had been that.)

Checks his hands. His jacket. Rolls his neck once, the vertebrae popping in a slow sequence from the base up. His breathing hasn't changed. It never does, the body learned a long time ago that this doesn't warrant elevation, settled it into the same category as any other task completed, any other problem resolved.

He looks at what’s left of the man for a moment; eyes above the tape still blown, chest still instead of panicked, a body now and not a person.

And finds he has no particular feelings about it.

(Left without waiting to see if he'd be alright. He'd watched you go from the ground. Decided something then that he hadn't put words to until later. 

Hadn't needed to.)

***

Present…

The first thing that comes back is smell.

Cold metal. Old damp. Something chemical underneath it, industrial cleaner, thick and lives in the back of the throat and doesn't leave when you swallow.

The second thing is the surface beneath you.

Not soft. Not a bed. Something hard and flat and slightly raised at the edges, the metal seams pressing into your shoulder blades and the backs of your thighs through your wet clothes, and the cold of it has been working its way into you long enough that you can't feel the distinction between the table and your own skin anymore. Just cold. Just hard. Just the weight of a body that hasn't been moved in a long time.

You open your eyes.

The ceiling is wrong.

High. Concrete. A single bulb on a wire, the light it throws pooling down onto you in a jaundiced circle and leaving everything past its edge in deep, pressurised dark. Something hangs from the rafters. You blink. Focus.

Chains. Heavy gauge, looped through iron rings bolted into the beam above you, hanging in loose coils, some ending in hooks, some ending in nothing. Just chain. They catch the light in segments. They don't move.

You sit up.

Too fast. The room tilts, the chemical still moving through your blood in slow pulls, your vision lagging behind your head by a half second, and you put both palms flat on the table and look at your hands and think: table. You're on a table.

You look down at it.

Metal. Stainless steel, or close enough. Dull with use and age. A drain at one end and channels running toward it, worn smooth, the edges of them a colour the rest of the surface isn't.

The walls.

You make yourself look at the walls.

Covered. Arranged, and that's the thing that takes a moment to process, that it isn't chaos, that there is a system here and someone maintains it. Metal implements on pegboard hooks. Shapes you have names for and shapes you don't. Coils of rope hung in neat loops. A length of heavy plastic sheeting folded into a rectangle with creased edges. Zip ties in three sizes on three separate hooks.

Your brain moves through it. Moves past it. Files it somewhere it isn't going to open right now.

You get off the table.

Your bare foot touches the concrete floor and the cold shoots upward through your ankle and you remember the wood and the root and the skin opening on the arch and you look down. Someone has wrapped it. Gauze, tight and clean. You stare at it for a moment longer than makes sense.

You wrap your arms around yourself. Your clothes are still damp, stiffening now as they dry wrong against your skin, and the cold is bone deep and total.

Somewhere behind you, a door opens.

You turn.

He's bigger than the room should allow for. That's the first coherent thought- not fear, or not only fear, but the lizard brain focusing on the right thing or the wrong thing or the only thing that matters in that half second delay. Tall. Broad. The balaclava still on, the eyes above it catching the yellow light. He's not moving fast. He's not moving with urgency at all. He steps inside and closes the door behind him and stands there for a moment, looking at you.

You say nothing.

He says nothing.

The chains hang in the space between you. The drain sits at the edge of your vision. The table presses cold against the backs of your thighs and you are standing in the middle of all of it in stiff damp clothes with a wrapped foot and a mouth that tastes like chemicals and copper and your heart in your chest is doing something loud and relentless that you are not going to think about right now. 

He takes a step toward you.

You take one back and your hip catches the edge of the table and you stop, your hands coming up not quite in front of you, not a fighting stance, just the instinctive, trying to make yourself account for the space it needs.

He stops. Looks at your hands. Looks at your face. Something in the set of his shoulders changes, a small adjustment, a fraction of something releasing that you couldn't have explained if asked. 

"Sat up on your own." His voice is low. Manchester flat, the vowels worn down, consonants that don't waste themselves. The voice of someone for whom speaking is a tool and not a pastime. "Good." 

You stare at him.

"Where am I." Not a question. The grammar of a question with the punctuation of a statement, because some part of you has already decided that the answer is less important than the act of speaking, of making the room contain your voice as well as his.

He looks around the space briefly. Back at you.

"Somewhere no one's lookin’ fer you."

"That's not an answer." The chains catch a draft from somewhere and shift, a soft metallic sound, barely there. You don't look at them. You keep your eyes on him and your hands where they are and your back against the cold edge of the table and you breathe.

In. Out.

"No," he agrees. He says it without apology, without particular interest in your objection. Just a fact acknowledged and set aside. 

The rain outside hammers the corrugated roof in waves, loud then quiet then loud again, and the single bulb swings a half inch in the draft and the shadows move and then settle.

He takes another step toward you.

You don't move this time.

"You wrapped my foot," you say.

He says nothing.

"Why."

He looks at you for a long moment. The pale eyes move over your face with the same unhurried attention he brought to the room, to the door, to everything. Like assessment is just how he exists in the world. Like everything he looks at is being filed.

"Didn't need it gettin’ infected."

"You chloroformed me in the woods."

"Mmm."

The flatness of it. Not defensive. Not guilty. Just the confirmation of a man who sees no contradiction between the two facts and isn't going to pretend otherwise.

Your hands are still between you. You lower them slowly. Not because you've decided anything. Just because holding them up is starting to feel like a performance for an audience that isn't here.

"What do you want," you say.

He takes another step. You stay where you are this time, hip against the table, and he stops close enough that the space between you is no longer large. Close enough that you can see the pale of his eyes properly now, the way they haven't moved off your face since he came through the door.

"You know what I want," he says.

Your heart does the loud thing again.

"I don't," you say. "I don't know you."

Something moves across his expression. Not quite a smile. The ghost of something that might have been one in different circumstances, on a different face.

"You've known fer months."

The rain. The chains. The single bulb throwing its yellow circle down onto both of you now, the shadows pressed back to the edges of the room.

You look at him.

He looks at you.

The table is cold against the backs of your thighs and the gauze on your foot is tight and professionally done and the room smells like metal and old damp and somewhere underneath all of it, faint and almost imagined, cigarette smoke.

You don't say anything.

Neither does he.

The silence stretches, thick and charged, until the air between you feels like it might snap. The single bulb sways overhead, dragging yellow light across the sharp cut of his jaw beneath the balaclava, across those pale eyes that haven’t left your face once. Heat rolls off his massive frame in waves, bleeding into the cold of the room, into the cold of your soaked clothes, until your skin prickles with it.

Your heart slams against your ribs like it wants to crawl out and hand itself over. The metal table bites into the backs of your thighs, the gauze on your foot is tight pressure, but none of that matters when he finally moves.

One big hand curls around your wrist, rough calluses scraping over your racing pulse. His thumb strokes once, like he’s tasting the fear and the want underneath it and then he lifts you like you weigh nothing and slams your back down onto the table. 

The impact jars through your spine, cold steel shocking against your skin as your soaked shirt rides up and your joggers bunch at your hips. He’s on you in the next breath, caging you completely, the thick, heavy ridge of his cock grinding hard against your cunt through the wet fabric.

You gasp- half protest, half broken moan and his mouth crashes down on yours, claiming, devouring. The balaclava is shoved higher now, just enough for his lips and teeth and tongue to bite through your skin, blooming blood against your tongue. He tastes like stale tobacco and rain, and he kisses like he’s starving, tongue fucking into your mouth in time with the harsh, obscene roll of his hips. 

His cock is massive even through his trousers- thick, burning hot, the fat head already leaking and smearing precum against the soaked seam of your joggers.

One massive hand shoves under your shirt, palm rough and scalding as it palms your breast, callused thumb dragging over your nipple until it’s aching and peaked. He pinches hard, twisting just enough to make you arch and whimper into his mouth, tears splashing down your cheeks and then he’s yanking your joggers down your thighs, wet fabric catching at your knees; he doesn’t bother pulling them off all the way. Just rips them down far enough to bare your dripping cunt to the cold air.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he breathes, pulling back just enough to look. Two thick fingers drag through your folds, spreading the slick mess, circling your swollen clit until your hips jerk helplessly. “Soakin’ already. Knew you’d be a greedy lil thing fer me.”

He frees his cock with his other hand, the thick, veined length springing out heavy and flushed dark, the head glistening with precum, a fat drop beading at the slit. 

It’s obscene how big he is, how it throbs in his fist as he strokes himself once, twice, smearing the wetness. Then he’s lining up, the blunt head nudging against your entrance, stretching you open before he even pushes in.

Your eyes widen, panicked. “Wait-!”

He drives in, bottoming out in a single stroke that punches the air from your lungs in a high pitched whine. The stretch is vicious, burning, your walls forced wide around the thick girth of him until you feel every vein, every ridge dragging against your insides. A broken cry tears from your throat as he bottoms out, tears spilling, balls heavy and tight against your ass, the head of his cock kissing so deep you swear you feel it in your throat.

“Christ, tha’s it,” he groans, hips grinding deep, holding himself there so you can feel every inch of him pulsing inside you. “Takin’ every fuckin’ inch. Been dreaming about this tight cunt swallowin’ me whole.”

He starts to move slow at first, dragging out until just the fat head is stretching your entrance, then slamming back in so hard the table creaks beneath you. 

Every thrust is wet and filthy, slap of skin on skin echoing off concrete walls, your arousal coating his cock and dripping down to soak the metal beneath you. His hips snap harder, faster, the thick head battering that spot inside you that makes white hot sparks explode behind your eyes.

Your hands fist in his jacket, nails digging in as he pounds into you. One of his hands pins your wrists above your head, the other grips your thigh, yanking it higher so he can drive even deeper. His mouth finds your throat, teeth sinking in.

Your orgasm crashes over you, walls clamping down around his cock so hard he snarls. Your back arches off the table, cunt gushing around him, soaking his balls and the metal beneath you as wave after wave rips through you. 

You’re crying out, shaking, tears leaking from the corners of your eyes, and he fucks you through it, chasing his own release.

“Fuck- good girl, squeezing me so fuckin’ perfect- ” His rhythm stutters, turns sloppy and desperate. He buries himself one last time, grinding deep as his cock pulses and throbs inside you. Thick, hot ropes of cum flood your cunt, spilling deep, so much it leaks out around his shaft and drips messily down your thighs onto the table.

He stays buried inside you, heavy and twitching, one hand sliding up to cup your tear streaked cheek almost tenderly. His thumb brushes the wetness away as his breathing slowly evens out.

The chains overhead sway softly in the draft, clinking like they’re keeping count.

***

Several weeks ago…

You can’t prove it, but someone has been in your apartment. 

You stand in the doorway of your own flat for a long moment. Coat still on. Keys in your hand.

Then you step inside and close the door behind you, and you don't change anything about your face. 

You notice the mug first.

Not displaced… that would be too obvious, and whoever came through your door is not obvious. It's the ring. The condensation ring on the coffee table is wrong, slightly, the way a thing is wrong when it's been lifted and replaced by someone who understood the importance of replacing it but didn't account for the fact that you always set it down on the same quarter inch of worn lacquer, the same groove. You've been setting it there for two years. The ring is two millimetres off.

Your shampoo. The bottle on the shower shelf that you could swear was turned slightly. And underneath all of it, you stop in the middle of your bathroom and just stand there, breathing in something like cigarette smoke. Old. Ground into skin.

You are not scared. That's the thing you keep examining, turning over, looking at from different angles. You have every reason to be scared and the feeling that surfaces instead is something more like…  recognition. The specific recognition of something that has been true for a while finally making itself legible. Someone has been watching you and the part of you that should be running is instead sitting very still and watching back.

You think about what kind of person does this as a matter of course.

You think about this more than you should.

(And then you stop thinking about it altogether when your landlord- the one with the master key and the habit of using it “accidentally” when you’re showering or laying on the couch with your vibrator between your legs- goes missing on a Wednesday and turns up dead in a Birmingham car park on a Friday, and the police use words like opportunistic and random and you use no words at all, just stand at your kitchen window with your mug and watch the street below and breathe. And then the man from HR who cornered you in the stairwell stops showing up to work, and a week later someone finds him in a canal in Leeds with his wallet still in his pocket. And you stop thinking about it when the pervert who harasses women on the way to work and who rubbed himself against your ass for seven stops isn’t on the bus one morning and doesn’t get on it the morning after that either. You think “huh” and stop looking for the stories in the local paper after that)

You put this information somewhere quiet inside yourself and you close the door on it.

Then you make decisions.

The next morning you put on lipstick before your coffee. Not the lipstick you wear to work, the dark one you only put on when you're going somewhere worth the effort, a rich, specific red that leaves a clean mark on porcelain. You drink slowly. You set the mug down in its groove. You leave it on the table when you go. (Smeared now when you come back)

You buy a new book. Cracked the spine yourself, deliberately, over the place you wanted him to open to. Bookmarked the right page. (And the book mark is not exactly where you measured it when you put it in the pages, tucked down three millimeters more.)

The panties took more consideration. You stood in front of your drawer for a long moment, the particular cold logic of the thing settling through you. Then you put on the soft cotton ones, the worn pair, and you wore them for a full day, and you touched yourself in them until the gusset was soaked, and you left them near the top of the hamper. (Gone when you change out of your work clothes and go to throw them in the dirty laundry)

Rewards, you were beginning to think of them as, for the ledger that someone was keeping on your behalf, without your asking, without your knowledge of the specific terms, but not, you were becoming increasingly certain, without your participation.

You hadn't asked for any of it.

You hadn't not asked for any of it either.

This is the part you sit with. The part you turn over in the small hours when the flat is quiet and the street below has gone still and the cigarette smell has faded but not entirely left.

You are not innocent. You are not sure you want to be. You put on the lipstick and you left the mug and you walked close to the city drunk long enough that the message was legible, and three days later he ceased to be a problem.

The ledger exists. You are on it. The question you haven't answered- the question you keep not answering, keep setting aside- is whether you are the subject of it or the cause.

The night you saved his life is the night the ledger tips.

You don't think of it that way at the time. At the time it is simply a matter of logistics: a man bleeding out in the alley behind the Tesco Metro, the specific dark of blood, a wound that is going to kill him in four minutes if someone doesn't intervene, and you are there with your hands and your knowledge and the particular absence of panic that your colleagues have always found slightly unsettling in you.

You don't think about the balaclava. You don't think about the gun- empty, or he'd have used it- that you'd stepped over to get to him. You think about the wound and the pressure and the count.

Stay with me.

He lives. That's the metric.

Afterwards when the sirens got close and radio chatter from the paramedics were nearby, you stood up and wiped your hands on the back of your jeans and the calculation is already running somewhere below the level of words: he owes you something now. Not gratitude… you don't want gratitude, gratitude is soft and symmetric and what exists between you is neither. What exists is something that runs deeper than the ledger of your landlord and the others, something that reorganises the terms entirely and you’ll take advantage of it for as long as he’ll allow you and you’ll reward him for it for as long as he does.

He watched you go.

You knew he was watching.

You didn't look back.

(And you do not let yourself think about what happens when crumbs stop being enough. When the man who has been living on the edges of your life decides the edges are no longer satisfying and wants th full thing, everything you can give to a man like him.)

The storm comes on a Thursday. You've been watching the weather for two days, the way the pressure dropped, the way the air went close and electric and tasted faintly of iron- meteorological preconditions for a power cut in this part of the city, the grid unreliable, the substation two streets over that goes out whenever the rainfall hits a certain rate.

You go to bed with your phone charged.

The lights go out at half past eleven.

The thunder is already overhead, close enough that the flash and the crack arrive almost together, and you sit up in the dark and breathe and wait for the backup on the hall light to kick in the way it usually does and it doesn't kick in this time, and the flat is completely dark, and then lightning fills the window for a single white second- 

-and there is a shape in your bedroom that is not furniture.

The thought arrives lie lightning does: total, white, gone before you can hold it. Whether your name was always on the ledger too. Whether you were ever the one keeping it. 

Your body moves off the bed, through the door, navigating your flat entirely by memory because the dark is total and the thunder swallows the sound of your feet and somewhere behind you something large and patient shifts its weight and doesn't rush, and that is the worst of it, the not rushing, because it means he already knows how this ends-

You hit the stairs. You hit the rain. Your slippers begin to fray.

You can’t breathe.