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how do I make you love me? ~ winter soldier

winter soldier x reader

word count: 22.5k

disclaimer: reader is referred to as a woman. usage of knives and guns. lots of talk of murder and death. attempted murder, actual murder, violence, blood. discussions of cheating. depictions of insecurity. fully consensual smut. this is not an exhaustive list of disclaimers, so please read at your own discretion.

note: this is the prequel installment of my james winter soldier series. the last scene of this fic follows déjà vu and will not make sense without it.

a/n: I don't know what to say. this is my longest project ever and it means so much to me... anyways please don't read it.

✩ series masterlist ✩ dawn fm project ✩ how do I make you love me? ✩

~~~

then.

~~~

the job was supposed to be easy.

the objective was straightforward: get rid of the target. plain and simple. find them, eliminate them, and discard of the body. be efficient and get it over with.

it was far too good to be true.

boring, even, by his standards.

particularly because the target wasn’t his typical… demographic, for his jobs. this one was a civilian.

a woman.

there’s little enjoyment to be had in taking out low-profile targets. they’re typically more whiney, less capable of fighting back, and as such there is no challenge for him. the spike of adrenaline that runs through his veins isn’t as potent, doesn’t give him that thrill of excitement that typically comes while in the midst of doing the deed. when it’s too easy, there’s no fun.

because despite the fact that killing people is nothing but a job for him, that it is simply the line of work he has chosen to make a living, what’s the point if there’s no fun to be had?

the client who hired him clearly had a few screws loose in his head, as they often did. it was typical, nothing to bat an eye at. besides; what did he care so long as he was getting paid?

and, shit, was he getting paid.

it was clear the client was desperate, too overzealous in offering a price far higher than he would have quoted for a job as small as this one.

yet it did not matter that the target was not his usual mark when there was too much upside for him to turn the client away.

just as his typical clientele, just as this particular client didn’t, his targets usually don’t have their heads on straight, either. his targets are the kind with IQs far higher than the average joe, the kind of individuals who work in the shadows as they plan secret, life-altering operations that the general public never hear about. the kind of individuals that require extra preparation and planning to execute.

he wasn’t much different than his clients or his targets, he supposed. crazy in his own right, but with a better knack for control and precision.

except with this target, there was no comparison to be made. there was absolutely no manner in which he could see his likeness in this target, because this one was normal.

he knows that even civilians aren’t perfect under the surface. there has to be reason enough for someone to seek out an individual such as himself. even civilians can be screwed-up enough for someone out there to want them gone. but while most would never actually act on it, there are some that so desire it badly enough that they do something about it.

or, perhaps, as was the case in this situation, the client might be the one more screwed up than the target. in typical cases, however, that does not matter when a deal is struck between two interested parties.

there was no point in questioning a client about why they requested his services; it wasn’t just another facet of the job that no questions were to be asked. he simply did not care enough to know.

perhaps that was one of the largest reasons he was good at his job, his inability to empathize with the target. or perhaps it was simply his lack of emotional engagement whatsoever.

so long as he got paid, the fate of the target didn’t concern him.

but despite his lack of concern regarding the client’s explanation behind why they were hiring him, he could always determine a few different answers to that question. these people were the scum of the earth; what reasons couldn’t he determine to answer the question, why?

the why had never mattered to him until now.

not until the target was you.

as he would discover, you were different. you were better than the rest of them, far above all the shady deals and dubious bullshit of the world he operated within.

which led him to the question, why was there a bounty on your head with a price higher than he’d seen ever before?

~~~

James’ gut instinct was one to be trusted.

his instinct was always right, no matter the situation. his logic both guided and followed his intuitive reactions, and never once had he been led astray. he’d figured his way out of many bad situations thanks to his perceptiveness.

not only was this job different from his usual, but something was off. yet that realization didn’t come immediately. it didn’t strike him when the deal was cut; it didn’t even hit as he considered the oddity of the situation, as he determined his course of action.

it hit once he saw you in the flesh.

a quick turnaround time from when the arrangement was made, it wasn’t long before he was seeking you out, prepared to slit your throat in one go. intending to dispose of your body and earn the other half of the promised compensation for doing so.

with his usual targets, it typically took planning, research. it would often require him to travel to wherever the target was located and spend days, even weeks at a time planning out the perfect operation.

it was easy to overlook the importance of this step with a local, a civilian.

so when he entered your home in the middle of the night, he thought he knew exactly what he would find. despite the ease of finding you, it was quite the oversight on his part to overlook the most crucial steps of a job; yet perhaps there was a part of him that knew better than to take a lowly job like this, one that didn’t challenge him and didn’t truly put him to work. perhaps the oversight was simply the result of his ego coming into play upon the realization of how far below him such a task was.

or perhaps he was simply bored by it.

you weren’t asleep when he entered the apartment as he expected you would be. nothing about your home screamed that you might have been a closeted psychopath. but then again, most crazy people seem normal on the surface.

except, you were… actually normal.

he had found you sitting on your couch, eating ice cream, yelling at your television as the drama of your show unfolded onscreen. your gaze never strayed from the screen as he looked at the back of your head, watched you for a few long moments.

he immediately knew that something was wrong, a deep-seated feeling telling him that he couldn’t follow through with this.

the reasons why the client requested for him to eliminate the target never mattered, not in normal circumstances.

he’d known from the start that nothing about this was normal.

his flesh hand holstered the knife he’d been holding as he came to the immediate realization that he couldn’t kill you. not when he didn’t know why, or what it was that you had done to deserve such a gruesome fate.

not when you were so interesting, so captivating, so… regular.

he’d never taken intrigue with regular before, nor had he ever taken intrigue with a target. they were jobs; what did he care of their lives?

nothing.

there’s always a history between the client and target, and upon seeing you in person, the urge to understand the truth behind this situation suddenly became far more important to him than taking care of business.

he would be lying if he said he wasn’t confused by the feeling, if he wasn’t confused by why his mind suddenly shifted in that instant. he’d be lying if he said he didn’t immediately want to know your story.

not once had it ever mattered before.

but, then again, there’s a reason he doesn’t accept civilian targets. not only are they boring beyond belief, but they have no understanding of why his job is important, no respect for the fact that he’s come for them. the reason behind one civilian wanting another killed is always emotional as opposed to the carefully constructed business decisions made by well-respected, hidden criminals who don’t want to get their own hands dirty.

he should have known better than to get involved.

in hindsight, it’s lucky that he did.

and so instead of walking up behind you, clasping a gloved hand over your mouth, and slicing the blade across the skin of your neck, he walked away.

he took the mental image of you and left with a new plan formulating in his head about how to handle this situation, one that he had to approach carefully.

if he were to approach the client, he would freak out and react emotionally, perhaps finding another man to finish the job that James refused to. perhaps taking out a hit on James himself, too.

the client would not know of his change of heart until it became absolutely necessary.

there was a short window of time here, and James wanted nothing more than to know what was supposedly so wrong with you that a hit had been taken out on you.

he’d only watched you for a few minutes, hadn’t even spoken to you once, and yet he couldn’t help but believe that there was not a single thing wrong with you.

he trusted himself and his instinctual reaction when it told him not to go through with the kill, but following through and ensuring that his gut was right was crucial in knowing he had made the right decision.

it was only the next evening when he found himself acting on his need to inquire.

~~~

you stood in front of the mirror as a million thoughts raced through your head, cataloguing all the depressing events of your day. your hands shuffled to properly arrange the mess you’d left on your bathroom counter that morning in your rush to leave for work.

gazing up at your reflection, the exhaustion on your face was apparent, entirely thanks to your own decision to stay up late the night before to binge the new show you’d become enthralled with. as such, your delay in waking had sent you into a frenzy as you scrambled to run out the door on time.

what you didn’t know at the time was that your minor lapse in judgement had been one of the sole reasons you still stood alive today.

you reached for the clip that sat at the base of your head and unclasped it, pulling it out of your hair and setting it down with the rest of your things on the counter. your eyes followed the motion as you continued to fiddle with the plastic between your fingers.

a deep breath in, and out.

your eyes then darted upwards with the intention of meeting your own gaze in the mirror.

instead, you met the eyeline of another.

your limbs automatically stiffened as you stood up straighter, eyes widening as you realized there’s a strange man in my house. the beating of your heart jumped exponentially within seconds as the panic began to set in.

although you knew that you should have done something, anything, you could not help but instantly freeze. not a word fell from your lips, nor did you even try to formulate any. you stood in place without daring to move, simply holding eye contact with the man in the mirror who now stood behind you.

for you, it was the most jarring moment of your life.

what you didn’t know was that it was for him, too.

he’d never been so mortified to see such fear in someone’s gaze before; never had he felt so ashamed of being the reason someone else was made uncomfortable. this was what he did for a living, what fueled him, and yet the moment was one of the most bittersweet of his life.

he wanted nothing more than to soothe your worries. concern was supposed to be a weakness, an infeasible reaction, and yet he still felt so compelled as to do so. he’d never been so confused by his own feelings.

instead of running from it, he leaned into the feeling. he leaned into the confusion he was overtaken by and let himself wonder why it was he felt this way.

it was only a few moments after you had come to acknowledge his presence that he finally spoke, and yet it felt like an eternity for the both of you.

“why does your ex-boyfriend want you dead?” were the only words he spoke to you, remaining monotone and lifeless as ever.

despite the fact that any woman’s worst nightmare was probably about to come true, that this was likely about to be the worst moment and the end of your life, the look in the man’s eyes didn’t put you off. the look was not one that told you he intended to harm you; it was one of intrigue.

curious.

“what?” you questioned, the breath you didn’t know you’d been holding finally escaping from your lungs. “he… what?”

you blinked a few times, trying to remind yourself to stay calm while processing what he’d just said to you.

the man simply stood there, suddenly wordless beyond the inquiry he’d just posed to you. your response wasn’t immediate, either; your gaze fell away from his as you stared down into the basin of the sink, as you looked around your dirtied countertop to see if there was anything you could use to defend yourself should you need to.

but… what had he just said?

within a matter of milliseconds, your already overwhelmed mind suddenly grew fixated on the fact that that asshole seriously wants you dead?

when you found nothing but tiny glass bottles on the counter to be your best bet, you ditched the notion that you could fight back and determined your only choice was to simply talk your way out of this.

“is that why you’re here?” you questioned the man as you summoned a burst of courage, spinning around and forcing yourself to look straight at the very individual who now threatens your entire existence. “to kill me? did he hire you?”

as you glanced him up and down, you could not tell a thing about his intentions. his arms crossed themselves tight over his chest, yet he hunched over carelessly as he leaned against the wall of your bathroom. he continued to stare you down with that same look of mild curiosity in his eyes, eyes that you only then recognized as beautifully bright blues.

upon the true meeting of your eyes, mirror be forgotten, your head tilted ever so slightly and your eyes softened without your conscious awareness.

a belt sat wrapped around his hips, clearly the type that was intended for tactical uses. it rested tightly against the cargo pants he wore as the attached holsters were empty, not a weapon in your view.

another deliberate move on his part. he had no intentions of harming you, not that you would believe him if he told you otherwise.

“yes,” is all the man spoke, and his head tilted backwards as he continued to eye you.

the seconds continued to tick by. you supposed that you should have begun to feel more scared as you learned that he was, in fact, sent here to kill you. that within moments, you could be lying lifeless on your bathroom floor, and you would have no way to fight back. you’d be the helpless victim to yet another one of your ex’s schemes, and not a soul would be the wiser.

but here is this stranger, standing in front of you and asking you why you’re in this situation. unarmed, unassuming.

James, on the other hand, supposed that he should have felt less enamored with you, less intrigued by the way you stood in front of him and held your ground. the fear he knew you held inside became more difficult to read within your expression, an improvement he silently applauded you for. that was something he could work with.

when not another word was uttered, you began again, continuing on the same line of questioning he had previously begun.

“why do you want to know?” you asked of him, as though this was a test. as though the wrong answer may set him off, and the right answer might secure your safety for the foreseeable future.

he continued to stand across from you without uttering a word, not daring to even entertain your question. had that been that the wrong move? was questioning him in return only going to lead to retaliation?

while your mind continued to remind you that this man was not to be trusted, that you knew not a thing about him aside from the reason he is here, you could not find it within yourself to believe that he was readying himself to kill you.

if you were going to die at his hands, you would already be dead, would you not?

that’s a good argument in a crisis, at least. it’s a far better explanation for letting your guard down for no reason at all than simply presuming as much.

he didn’t react to your inquiry and simply continued to stare at you as he awaited your answer.

“apparently he was too much of a coward to finish the job himself,” is the response you managed. not an answer to the question, certainly, but it was something.

the man across from you didn’t laugh, did not smirk, but it was clear as day that he found your statement amusing. not once had you yet broken eye contact with him since you first looked at him; you thought it criminal to look away.

“is it enough to say that he’s just an asshole?” you asked, and the man’s eyes narrowed in what you believed to be annoyance. not enough, you acknowledged, and spoke again, finally revealing the truth. “he cheated on me, and I kind of… retaliated. I not-so-politely reminded him of the fact that I knew about some things he wouldn’t want to be made public knowledge. he was all, like, ‘you won’t get away with this,’ and I called his bluff. but apparently, it wasn’t a bluff on his part, because now you’re here to… to kill me.”

as your words fell from your lips, the panic began to settle within your chest once more. when you’re forced to hear it out loud, to accept reality for what it is, it’s far more difficult to run away from and pretend it means nothing. it’s far more difficult to delude yourself into believing the little voice inside you that tells you it’s going to be okay.

the complete lack of response from him, still, only made you more antsy. this had to be a game of sorts, some kind of sick and twisted torture to make you believe you might make it out alive. to make you believe what you truly wished for in that moment.

“are you–” you began, only to be interrupted.

“do you want me to kill him?” he asked suddenly, to your complete surprise.

your jaw stuttered for a few moments as you tried to determine your response to the question. your ex hired this hitman to kill you, and now… what?

you’d never felt such pure confusion in your life.

“well, no,” you mumbled. “not if–”

“if?”

“–not if you’re not going to kill me.”

silence overtook the room, his voice continuing to remain quiet as your statement filtered in both of your ears.

what he wanted to tell you in that moment was that you weren’t making sense, that you weren’t thinking clearly because of how overwhelming the news was. that you had to think about this in black and white, not shades of grey. this was a matter of kill or be killed.

and he was not going to let it be you.

something about you…

it was as though he’d already known deep down that he would never be able to let you go.

he pushed himself away from the wall, not coming any closer to you. it was too soon and you were still too shaken.

“I’m not going to kill you. I’ll prove it,” were his last words to you that evening as he stood up straight, holding your gaze as he said it. he took one last look over your figure before silently stepping out of the bathroom and into the hall.

what the fuck just happened?

“how did you get in here?” you suddenly called out, running after him to inquire, except he was already gone by time the words fell from your lips.

and you were left alone with nothing but your confusion and the need to know if you would make it to the morning.

~~~

sleep was your enemy that night. it was a luxury you sought in order to forget about the events of your evening, yet it was a curse as the potential of doing so would leave you vulnerable.

how do you know the man who broke in wouldn’t return and put an end to your life once you fell asleep? how could you have known if he was telling the truth, or if there was some other evil scheme happening behind closed doors that was trying to convince you to trust him, only so that you would end up trafficked, or worse?

how were you to know if your ex himself wouldn’t turn up seeking revenge himself when he wasn’t soon presented with your head on a stick?

the thought of going to the police danced around your mind as your fear and confusion circled around your mind. you could tell them what happened, with what proof? explain to them the situation, only to end up being killed for being a snitch?

that simply wasn’t an option here. not when there was clearly so much more looming beneath the surface that you couldn’t be sure of.

you never did get a wink of sleep that night, despite how you know it would have helped. instead, all you knew was running hypotheticals: what would happen if you were to go to the cops, how it would work out if you were to decide to escape town and find yourself on the run.

if you could trust the man who told you he would prove that he wouldn’t hurt you.

how does one do that? what does that even mean?

you knew nothing of him besides the words he’d spoken to you. words that meant nothing in comparison to his actions of breaking in, however…

he admitted who sent him, didn’t try to harm you, and even offered to kill your ex for you. he had offered to kill the person who hired him to kill you, for free?

it was all way too good to be true, far too convoluted of a story to be real.

your life had always been a normal one. you’d never stepped outside the lines, never done anything to draw this kind of negative attention. for all intents and purposes, you were simply another boring individual who got up and went to work every day, pondered the meaning of life, and dreaded paying taxes.

it wasn’t your fault that you ended up dating a man who ended up being one of the most evil creatures to ever spawn on this planet.

perhaps it was a blessing that the darkest truths and secrets of your next relationship came to light before your love came to blossom.

trusting anyone in this world was a bad idea, as you had learned the hard way. especially given the newfound information that your life was potentially at stake because of a man you had chosen to trust with your body, with your life.

a man trying to take it all away from you.

if your life was to come to an end, the least you could do was release the information you had on him. if he was going to silence you once and for all, then you should at least do whatever you could to get back at him while you were still alive, shouldn’t you?

who wouldn’t do anything in their power to avenge themselves as such?

don’t get ahead of yourself, you thought. it’s not over yet.

one way or another, you’d make it out alive, or so you hoped.

even if it meant you had to trust the one man you shouldn’t, the one person who posed the most dire threat to your being in the moment. a man who had admitted out loud that he had been paid to put an end to your life.

but for some reason, despite everything telling you not to, you couldn’t resist the gut feeling telling you to go against all logic and reason. to trust that he would help you make it out alive.

in any other circumstance, that would likely have been the stupidest decision of your life.

perhaps you just got lucky.

~~~

speaking to you did nothing but solidify what he already knew. whether it was simply the result of confirmation bias or actual logic, he wasn’t quite sure.

yet it did not matter as his mind had already been made up even before speaking to you.

meeting you, though, may have been a bad decision on his part. you both would have been better off if he had made his own decision on how to protect you from afar, how to take care of this without ever dragging you into the mess. without having to worry about you.

worse even, he’d done something beyond stupid. he’d shown you a side of himself that he rarely showed to himself, had shown you a kind of mercy he chose to show very selectively.

he had shown you his face. he had shown and told you far too much, given up too much of himself in order to get what he came for.

it may not have been smart, but he did not regret it.

he knew he had to proceed carefully, but it would be worth it. his main inquiry had been answered, despite the lack of detail you shared surrounding the topic. and as much as he’d like to believe that to be a sign of your trust, it was clearly only a survival tactic.

he told you he would prove to you that he was on your side, and he would follow through on that.

yet worse than the fact that he dragged you into this, worse than giving up too much, worse than the fact that you were likely shitting your pants in fear,

something was wrong with him.

there was something wrong with his mind, a line of thinking and concern he had never experienced before. a way of… feeling, that he has no clue how to navigate.

he could rationally explain to himself what was wrong, what it was he was thinking and feeling upon speaking to you. he knew what it meant that you were now floating around his mind, haunting his each and every thought and decision. he knew what it meant now that protecting you had somehow superseded the importance of doing his job.

he liked you.

yet what was inexplicable about the situation was why he suddenly felt this way about you. these kind of feelings were for civilians, not for men like him. he did not care about anyone else, and to do so was a weakness. he would be opening himself up to even more weakness should he choose to have a sense of concern for anyone other than himself.

yet despite that truth, he was choosing to do so, anyway. he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

despite his rational thinking, the only way of being he had ever experienced before, he could not rid himself of his curiosities.

what would it be like to be normal, like you? how terrible would it truly be to open his mind to something new?

what would it be like to commit yourself to another person, to allow yourself to feel and care for them?

he had never desired normalcy ever before, and trying something new was not always in his nature. following tried and true methods had always served him well.

he was only in this situation because he had decided to try something out of the norm.

and he was already feeling something, choosing to care for you against his better judgement.

but even more than that…

how would your skin feel against his? what kind of sounds would you make with his mouth between your thighs, his eyes on you, gauging each and every reaction of yours?

what would you let him do to you?

something within him needed you, craved you in a way unlike ever before. completely, wholly.

permanently.

underneath all his questioning, all the surface level inquiries he posed to himself, the most important query of all:

how does he make you want him?

~~~

it was a given that you were going to be on edge the next day. running on little to no sleep, trying to determine if all that had happened the night before was simply a hallucination or if it was real.

you wanted to believe it wasn’t real; you wanted to believe that your stupid ex-boyfriend could move on like a normal human being, and you wanted to believe that a murderer breaking into your house was just a delusion you had.

it did not matter how you tried to convince yourself otherwise. you knew that this was happening, that you were not crazy as you almost wished you were. you were in a great deal of trouble, and you had a decision to make.

at least, that’s what you told yourself as you gazed into your own eyes in the very same mirror as the one that had shown you a second set of eyes the night before. that’s what you told yourself as you tried to pretend as though you didn’t already know what you were going to do, as if you had any other option but the stupidest one possibly imaginable.

you had to give the mysterious murderer a chance.

you were going to end up dead one way or another, the result of the actions of a man. a man who you had once loved and believed would be your future, who had betrayed your trust and now believed you to be such a threat that you needed to be executed.

if you ended up dead because of it, you knew that at the end of the day, it wasn’t your fault.

that’s what you told yourself as you forced yourself to go to work, as you chugged cup after cup of coffee to try and make up for the hours of sleep you failed to achieve the night prior. that’s what you told yourself as you tried to justify it to yourself, tried to remind yourself that trusting anyone was a bad idea. what reason did you even have to believe that the man who entered your apartment was telling you the truth?

perhaps you had known your ex was capable of this. perhaps you had known he was not done, that he was way too far off the deep end to simply let you go and take accountability for his fuck-up.

perhaps there wasn’t a single reason in your mind to doubt this mysterious man’s claims.

or perhaps you were simply one of the world’s biggest idiots.

~~~

there was no time to waste in trying to strike a deal with you, in trying to find a way to keep you safe. he simply had to hope that you would find it within yourself to go along with his plan.

civilians were quite stupid, weren’t they?

as a general rule, perhaps. but even if you’re about to make a decision he wouldn’t support in any other case…

at least he knew that he had your best interests at heart, even if you didn’t believe it yet.

and if all went to plan, he would never have to worry about your safety ever again, because no one would dare cross him.

his entrance that evening was predictable, a mirrored image of what had happened the night before. his eyes found yours the same way as they had the night prior as you gazed into the reflective glass where it sat on the wall.

yet the outcome of the encounter was far different than the one of the evening prior.

when he looked at you in the mirror, he noted the lack of fear in your eyes. he noticed the frustration within them, the exhaustion. the bags under your eyes were more telling on that front than anything else.

you appeared far more disheveled than you’d been the night before.

his fault.

this was his fault for bringing it upon you, for dragging you into a mess of someone else’s making. for scaring you into believing that he could ever possibly do anything to hurt you.

he faltered for barely a moment, for a fraction of a second at the realization. at remembering that your pain was his fault, and that the reason he’d dragged you into it was a selfish one. he was the one who wanted to know; he was the one who felt a gravitational pull towards you.

the brief moment was over in the blink of an eye with the need to resolve the issue at hand drawing him back into the present.

“why don’t you want him dead?” he asked of you.

a part of you wanted to scoff at the question, wanted to laugh at the audacity of him to return. you wanted to act surprised and you wanted to pretend like you knew that this wasn’t going to happen again so soon. you wished that you hadn’t prayed all day long that the hitman wouldn’t come back, if only to discover the truth of what your fate would be.

you wished that he would just kill you, if that was his plan, instead of continuing to torment you with questions.

except this time, your inhibitions were lowered. your body felt weak thanks to the lack of sleep and the pure panic you’d been blessed with over the course of the last twenty-four hours.

perhaps in your fear, you’d begun to lose the ability to care about your fate. whether you were admitting defeat or simply trying to cope with reality, it did not matter. you did not have control over how you responded as the words came out so suddenly.

“and why do you?” you snapped back at him, turning to face him head-on, leaning against the countertop behind you and gripping the edge with slippery, sweaty fingers. “why do you want him dead when you’ve been paid to kill me?”

your confrontation and choice not to back down did nothing but fill him with an inkling of pride and sent his blood rushing south.

the choice to react so boldly was quickly proven to be a stupid one as you watched one hand reach for his hip, reaching for a gun where it sat holstered.

shit, shit, shit, you’re done for–

except he did not point it at you, did not even consider it for a moment.

he extended it out in your direction, gripping it by the muzzle, waiting for you to take it from his grasp.

what?

there was not a word you could say that would express the level of confusion you felt in that moment, meeting the eyeline of a murderer as he gave you his gun.

this is another test, right? this is a joke, some kind of sick and twisted game. it had to be.

and yet you played along anyways, taking the few steps forward towards him until you were within arm’s distance. your eyes never fell from his as you took the heavy weapon from his hands, a million reasons racing through your head about why this is a bad idea. your fingerprints are on it now, fuck, how could you be so stupid?

“aim,” he instructed, a single word barked into the silence of the small room, his voice echoing against every wall surrounding you.

it almost felt laughable how befuddled you were in that moment, how insanely strange this entire situation was. in your head, this was no longer real. it couldn’t be. you were sure you needed a scan of your head to determine why you were having hallucinations, visual, auditory, tactile. you had to be going completely insane because there was not a chance in hell that this was real.

you were not entirely sure where he meant for you to aim when he gave the instruction, but after a few seconds of holding the heavy metal in your hands, he jutted his chin downward in a motion that you took to mean, at my chest.

“I’m not going to–”

“you can, and you will,” he encouraged, not taking no for an answer.

trying to prove a point to you.

a point that in that moment, you were still convinced was to teach you a different kind of lesson. that he was about to do something sudden and dangerous and scare the shit out of you, even if he did not have the intention of killing you.

with a deep breath, you looked down to the firearm in your hands. heavy, firm. surely loaded.

you did as you were instructed and lifted it in front of you, extending your arms, pointing it at his chest. the barrel of the gun was only a foot or so away from him, then, still within reach for him to easily pry from your grip. you held it as tightly as possible in your shaky hands so as to try and prevent that from happening, no matter how you knew you could never overpower him in any scenario.

the height of his chest measured just about where your eyeline hit, and you stared down the sight of the weapon, pointing as he’d told you to, not laying a finger on the trigger.

“would you rather be on the other side of the gun right now?” he inquired. your heart rate immediately spiked, and your grip held tighter to the thick metal between your fingers.

“no,” you replied with as much confidence as you could summon, and his response was immediate.

“then it has to be him.”

the thought of it had been racing through your mind for hours. you could concede, let the man do as he seemed to wish to and kill your ex instead of you. but you’re not like him; you can’t just kill someone to get out of taking responsibility. you’re nothing like your ex.

you realized as you held the weapon in your hands that you had a particularly unique opportunity. he was on the other side of the weapon, despite his threat; you held the power now. you could at least use it to get answers.

“why are you here, telling me all this, instead of carrying out the job that you claim you were sent here to do? huh? let’s say I believe every word you’re saying. why haven’t you just killed me?” you begin, word after word falling from your lips with all the stress and anxiety of the last day settling upon you. with a few more shaky breaths, your tone fading, you finished, “why haven’t you killed me?”

his chest rose and fell with the heavy weight of his inhalation and exhalation, not making a sound as he tilted his head at you in awe once more. such a small action, and yet you found it… intriguing. such a strong, powerful man, and it’s this tiny little motion of his that makes him feel more human.

more like you.

“I don’t want to,” he spoke as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. as though that answer is enough to satisfy the fears of a person who doesn’t know who to trust, who doesn’t know what to do next. who solely wants answers and consolation.

what did he expect you to do with that answer?

it did little to answer your inquiry, and yet it felt genuine. somehow, as you stood with the gun between your chests, you believed the conviction in his voice when he said that.

“well, you can’t kill him, either,” you muttered as you finally let your hands fall to your sides, adjusting your hold on the weapon and pushing it back in his direction to get him to take it from you.

he glanced down at it for a few moments before looking back to your face. “keep it. you’re going to need it,” he spoke, and began to make his way out of your bathroom yet again.

the words felt like a goodbye, felt like an indicator that you were going to be on your own to figure out your bullshit by yourself now.

his intonation said otherwise.

he would be back sooner than later, you felt it. just as you had felt you could take a chance on trusting him.

it seemed to be working out in your favor thusfar.

you hoped it would be sooner than later that you would finally get the chance to see the man again and decode the mystery of him.

~~~

you stared down the sight along the barrel of the gun, eyeing the white closet door on the other side of your weapon. your feet remained shoulder width apart, as he’d so rudely kicked them apart, nearly causing you to fall. the breaths you took came slow and steady.

he eyed you as you held the firearm, inspecting your form to ensure your stance was correct. after a few moments of awkwardly standing there and side-eyeing the man next to you, he let out a hum.

was it one of approval? were you doing this right?

there was something so exhilarating about wielding the weapon, giving you a sense of empowerment unlike any other in your life. you were capable of this; you were capable of anything.

yet the notion must have gone to your head far too quickly, and you got distracted far too easily.

he reached towards you and gingerly grabbed at your bicep, tugging it away from you and taking you by surprise. with the sudden motion, you faltered, losing control of your arms and dropping the firearm to the floor.

embarrassment flooded through you as you scrambled to reach for it where it had fallen to your feet.

except when you stood up straight once more and glanced wearily in his direction, awaiting whatever he might say to you, he did nothing but nod in encouragement for you to try it again.

you gripped the metal between two hands yet again, standing confident and tall as he’d demonstrated. this time, you didn’t feel as good as you did the first time. you just felt stupid, staring down the hallway, holding the heavy weight in your hands.

he was a trained hitman, and for some reason, he had decided to take pity on you. but why? why did he think that you would be able to do anything to protect yourself if the chance arose? what in the world did he expect to come of this, to come of you, someone completely incapable and inexperienced in his realm of being?

when he reached out to tug your arm away from you this time, you braced yourself, holding strong in your stance and refusing to let go of the gun.

you almost heard a chuckle from under his breath, faint and nearly inaudible. it was enough to tell you he was pleased.

he walked behind you, out of your line of sight, and a flash of panic hit you. you still couldn’t trust this man fully, still had reason to believe that he may simply decide to snap your neck at any point.

you forced your breath to remain steady and stayed focused on the task at hand even as he lingered behind you.

the desire to speak up and ask about what you’re to do in a situation where someone does come up behind you crosses your mind, but you decide against it. your questions can wait until later. for now, just follow instructions and learn what he’s trying to teach you.

focus.

it paid off when he suddenly tried to kick one of your feet from under you, intending to throw you off balance, but you were prepared. you remained in place with both feet firmly on the ground and barely faltered with the strike.

“good,” he muttered, continuing his circle around you and coming to stand right in front of you, directly in line with the eye of the weapon. another sudden motion caught your eye as a firm hand reached for the muzzle of the gun, gripping it in his fist and yanking it down and out of his face in order to meet your eyeline.

clearly, the force he’d been using to try and knock you off was nothing compared to what he was actually capable of, the pure strength he must hold.

goosebumps broke out across your skin as the thought crossed your mind in the same instant that his eyes met yours.

“if you’re going to use this, you use it. you point a gun at someone, you cannot be afraid to shoot. understood?” he spoke, staring into your soul as he awaited an answer.

the fear that you had felt the first time your eyes met was a panic unlike any you’d ever experienced, fearing for your safety, for your life. adrenaline and cortisol raced through your veins as your body entered fight or flight mode, trying to determine what you needed to do in that moment.

despite your better judgement, despite all logic and reason, that panic was now long gone. the fear you now experienced when you looked at him wasn’t true fear; it was intimidation. it was exhilaration, excitement. you knew that your life may still very well be in danger, but you didn’t fear it. not anymore.

his presence brought to light a side of you that you’d never truly explored before, one that lit a flame underneath you and allowed you to accept the part of you that enjoyed the small bursts of adrenaline that your body released whenever something startled you, whenever you felt mildly uneasy.

“understood,” you replied, nodding lightly as you said so.

you knew that the magazine and barrel were empty, that he’d unloaded the gun as you practiced your form in the safety of your own home. perhaps that was another factor in why it felt easier for your brain to digest the truth that you were holding a real weapon; you knew that nothing could go wrong.

but as he’s just told you, this is a scenario, not real life. in real life, you have to be ready to do or die.

kill or be killed.

“someone points a gun back at you, you do not hesitate. understood?” he reiterated to you, another reminder you stored in the back of your mind as you let him gently take the weapon away from you, relieving you of the mild stress you didn’t know you felt until it was gone.

you took a few deep breaths and ran your hands through your hair as you decompressed from the moment.

to him, this may be nothing. holding a gun, using it on someone else—you know this is his everyday. nothing scary, nothing new to him.

and despite your exhilaration and the boost of confidence it had given you, it was a heavy load for your mind to carry.

“I’m never going to have to actually… shoot anyone, will I?” you ask him as you follow him where he steps away from you. “like, I know this is important. I need to… know it, I guess. but. I won’t actually have to do it, right?”

the trepidation in your voice was likely far more apparent in your tone than you had intended it to be.

“shouldn’t have to, long as I’m here,” he muttered, plopping down on your couch as though he owned it. your first thought should have been that it was egotistical, that it was rude of him to be so presumptuous.

you simply longed to know where he got his confidence from. how long it took to craft this brooding aura, or if it was the only persona he’d ever known. how the gears in his mind worked, especially given his line of work.

hitman. killer. murderer. whatever you wanted to call it, someone who committed the act of homicide without such remorse would typically be evaluated as some sort of psychopath or sociopath.

there was no way that this man, whoever he was, fell into such a category. because despite how odd he was and the insane circumstances under which you had gotten to know him, he really just seemed… normal.

it definitely didn’t cross your mind that he fit the typical tall, dark, and brooding type.

“but I won’t always be here.”

the words slapped you out of your daze, his gaze yet again upon you and no longer on the firearm he was disassembling in his hands.

your mind took a moment to backtrack, remembering the context of which his words followed. the natural flow of conversation meant it was your turn, that you had to say something next, except he had just reminded you of the grueling truth of your reality.

your life was at risk.

“I… well–” you attempted, to no avail. your jaw stuttered as the broken words tried to formulate sentences on their way out and all you managed was to make yourself look a fool.

“which is why I need to kill him before he finds someone else to kill you,” he continued.

he sounded so transactional in the way he spoke about it, as though the decision was that easy. that it was you or him.

it should be that easy, in theory. in a life or death situation, you pick yourself, every time. that’s just how it is; that’s survival.

it did not feel that easy. you should have been more scared than you were, should have been more concerned about the fact that you may not live to see next week.

how were you supposed to give the order for this man to kill your ex?

sure, your ex was a piece of shit who you spent far too many nights crying over and plotting all the ways you would get revenge. keying his car, signing him up for a million online subscriptions, and yes, how you would torture him in your basement if you were an evil mastermind.

but that’s not reality. those are dreams, fantasies of a life that you would never actually explore, all to simply comfort the hurt inside you.

worse than that?

you did love him, at one time. even if he cheated, even if he’s hurt you more times than you can count, you did love him.

and somehow, you got lucky that the man looking at you now, the man who was sent to kill you, has chosen not to.

“why the fuck are you helping me?” you barked back. “huh? I still don’t have a definitive answer on that. do you want something in return? do you think I’ll pay you more money than he paid you? trust me, I can’t afford to beat that rich asshole in any pissing contests. so why are you so adamant on keeping me alive?”

he sat back on the cushions behind him, crossing his arms over his chest. his thick arms.

and your eyes caught on something you hadn’t recognized before.

his hands didn’t match. they were asymmetrical, one of flesh and one that appeared… metallic?

you wracked your brain to try and remember any details from your first two encounters with him, trying to recall if you’d seen any such thing.

you didn’t. the man had been wearing gloves, up until then.

“you don’t deserve to die,” he said calmly, monotone. as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

yet it struck something in you.

this random man, who didn’t even know you, thought you worthy of living?

isn’t he the one who gets hired to kill people? he’s a middleman, why was he interfering? was this a normal thing for him?

that’s what your mind fixated on, what you couldn’t let go of the second the thought came to your mind.

“have you ever tried to… save someone before? someone like–” you began, but you cut yourself off. someone like you is what you were about to say. someone who had been targeted, someone whose fate was picked by sinister men like him and the people who hire him.

“no,” is all he said. his sparsity in speaking continued to grate on your nerves the more confused you grew about the situation, the more you questioned everything you’d ever known.

“but why me?” you reiterated. “you aren’t going to get paid if you don’t kill me, right? and you aren’t going to get paid if you kill him, instead? don’t you care about that?”

maybe you shouldn’t have been negotiating with this man to try and convince him to kill you, but what were you supposed to do? accept his curt, helpless answers about why he is choosing to help you?

doesn’t he realize that maybe you’d be more likely to trust him if he told you the truth?

“you don’t deserve to die,” is all he said as he stood from your couch, setting down the firearm on your coffee table in front of him. when had he put the pieces back together?

“that’s not an answer!” you yelled at him as he walked away, surely to sneak out of wherever he’d entered from. “where are you going?”

and once again, he was gone. out of sight, yet nowhere near out of mind.

you took a deep breath in, and out.

it would have made more sense if the lack of his presence had calmed you, if you had felt less on edge once he was gone. it should make sense that you feel safer once the murderer leaves you alone, right?

instead, you only felt more panicked.

he had told you that you wouldn’t have to shoot anyone, as long as he was here. you wouldn’t actually have to use the few skills he was trying to teach you, as long he was here.

but he was gone.

and you only began to fear for your life once more after he had already departed.

~~~

the quandary he found himself debating only continued to grow.

he should have taken care of your ex by now. he should have made the executive decision to save your life without ever dragging you into it and without causing you any more fear than you’re probably already feeling.

but he couldn’t bring himself to, not when it wasn’t what you wanted. not when you told him no.

since when did he ever give a fuck about what other people wanted when money wasn’t on the table?

the more he saw you, the more protective he felt. the least he could do was to give you a means of protecting yourself, but how much good could that really do?

there was no way of guaranteeing your safety unless he was there to protect you. he didn’t trust a soul with your life except for himself.

he didn’t yet know it at the time, but you were growing to feel the same way.

there needed to be a plan to put this to bed, and quickly. the client would be asking for proof of your death soon enough, and he needed to find a way to ensure you stayed alive and that your ex would never try to come after you ever again.

he considered lying, faking proof that he’d done the job. that idea was easily shot down; there were far too many reasons it wouldn’t work. being exes, you’d likely have mutual friends. you might run into one another in public on the off occasion. if there was no obituary and no police hunt for the body after the fact, it would be a dead giveaway that he hadn’t followed through.

he considered simply shadowing you, watching you from a distance. becoming your guardian angel you wouldn’t even know you had. while in that case, he’d continue to get to see you, you would still be in danger. there was a far greater chance of something bad happening to you, and even a slim chance was too high.

he considered simply killing the man who had hired him, torturing him as the life slowly drained from his eyes. berating him for being such a subpar human being, for treating you as anything less than the most perfect, most ethereal entity that you were.

but alas, he could not go against your wishes. it was as though you had him in a chokehold that he could not break out of.

one he had no desire to break out of.

that was the other side of this double-edged sword: the sooner he got rid of your little problem, the sooner he had to leave you alone. the sooner he had to say goodbye.

there was no reason for you to desire a man such as him, a man who does the world’s dirty work. a man who has no desire to change his line of work or his state of being for anyone or anything.

was there a way to make it work, to get you to see him as an equal? as someone you so desire the way he desires you?

could his concern for your safety be enough for you to recognize the fact that he cares about you?

could he prove it to you?

the intensity of his need, of his want for you, only continued to take him by surprise as he pondered it more and more. these feelings were below him. it was stupid, pointless for him to be so desperate for your approval. it was beyond unusual for someone such as him to worry about how he is perceived by others.

but he was truly beginning to care far too deeply about how perceived him.

to him, you had already become all that mattered. he would dispose of anyone you told him to, murder anyone in his path to get to you. decimate anyone who posed a threat to your safety and happiness.

he wanted to do exactly that and show you how much he cares, because heaven knows the words would never come.

yet he was bound by the tethers of what you desired.

and he would do anything he had to in order to make this work.

~~~

you barely slept with the knowledge looming over you that your life still hung in the balance.

the gun sitting underneath your pillow, loaded and ready, did not help, either.

realistically, you were safe for the time being. your ex had not a clue that the hitman was helping you, or so you believed, and therefore no one was coming to hurt you.

right?

instead of staring at the back of your eyelids fruitlessly, you stared up at the ceiling. you traced the patterns of the lines where the walls of your room met in each corner, and you looked at the ceiling fan where it softly spun, generating a relaxing breeze.

you wondered if this is when people pray. in moments of confusion, in moments of absolute terror.

you wouldn’t know how to pray if you tried, you realized, as you considered the notion. you’ve never believed in any god before; what good would praying do when the god you’re seeking out has no reason to help you?

there was only one person who may get you out of this alive, and it was no higher power. it was the man who continued to return to you, offering time and time again to take care of the problem one and for all. the man going out of his way to do whatever he could to keep you safe.

and you didn’t even know his name.

his name. he had to have one, right? would he tell you his real name if you even asked?

whether or not he told you his real name or not, you decided you would ask. you wanted to know something about him, even if it was a falsity, even if it wasn’t real. at least it would be something, some part of him you could pretend to know and understand. another facet of him to analyze as you thought about the enigma of him.

it was normal for you to want to know more about him, right? it’s normal to be curious. it was normal to want to know things about him that had absolutely nothing to do with the situation at hand, nothing to do with his job.

nothing to do with anything, really. just… about him.

does he just go from job to job, or is this a once-in-a-while thing? what does he do if he doesn’t spend all his time working?

it was normal to want to know these things, if only to feel better about the fact that you’re trusting him, if only to make him seem more real than simply this shadowy figurehead he had seemed thusfar.

it was harmless curiosity.

right?

~~~

the next time he mysteriously appeared, he didn’t hand you the gun, didn’t drill you on proper stance.

despite the fact that you were no longer considering a potential harmful scenario where there was a gun involved, this was worse. no, this was far, far more nerve-wracking and frightening.

“you need to know what to do if someone comes at you with a knife,” he had told you, to your complete and utter surprise.

“no way!” you snapped at him, “you’re not pointing a knife at me! it doesn’t matter if I know what to do in this situation, there’s no way I’m strong enough to fight back against you, or whoever the hell else tries to get in here!”

“are you saying you’d rather be killed than try to fight at all?” he maintained, and to your dismay, the logic was sound. your words had come from a place of emotion; he was trying to help you, trying to keep you alive.

you didn’t give him a response, your silence telling him that you knew he was right.

“adrenaline can do a lot,” he offered lowly as he stepped towards you.

his eyes were averted downward as he approached you, his gaze not meeting yours. he’d never looked away before, never backed down from it.

you couldn’t understand why.

his hands extended themselves out in front of you, waiting for your permission to touch you and adjust your positioning before beginning. you quickly complied and reached your own arms in his direction, allowing him to grip your forearms in his hands.

you continued to watch his face as he held your arms up in front of you, moving them into position to protect your face.

the urge to speak up once more came not out of a desire to protest, but perhaps to elicit an emotion from him.

“if anyone comes at me with a knife, I’m dead. you know that, right?”

his eyes snapped up to yours and you could immediately tell how displeased he was by the statement. his expression didn’t change, nor did his demeanor. but that look told you that you’d successfully touched a nerve.

“seriously, why do want me alive?” you asked again, dropping your arms to look at him straight on. the tone in your voice was far too casual for the reality at hand. “you say I don’t deserve to die, but you don’t know me. I could be a terrible person.”

“you’re not,” he replied. he reached out once more and grabbed your arms for a second time, less hesitant this time as he held them up in front of you.

you dropped them again the second he let go.

“but how are you so sure?” you inquired again, walking around him and beginning to pace around the room as you spoke. “none of this makes any sense. you have no reason to be helping me. you’re not actually gaining anything by helping me, or maybe this is some larger elaborate scheme–”

“it’s not.”

“–and you’re going to lure me somewhere, to do god knows what–”

“I’m not.”

“–and I’ll wind up dead anyway!”

you couldn’t possibly fathom the annoyance and confusion he felt at the sound of your words. yes, you were thinking logically about all the possible bad things that could happen in a situation like this.

this wasn’t that, but how was he supposed to get the point across?

“I gave you a gun,” he tried, at a loss for words otherwise.

“that could be a false pretense, you know. all of it,” you told him as you finally stopped in place and looked at him, shrugging your shoulders as you did. “larger scheme, I’m telling you.”

he let out a sigh of exhaustion.

“arms,” he instructed as he walked in front of you once more, glaring you down as he did.

the way he looked at you should not have given you goosebumps.

you did as you were told, holding your arms back up in front of you once more. you held them firm, same as he had told you to do so with the gun. you watched as he slowly reached for his utility belt with one hand and tugged one of his knives from its holster.

“this is how I planned on killing you,” he spoke casually, and your heart rate spiked in an instant. within milliseconds, he began to come at you with the knife, giving you no time to even try and run.

you had no choice but to defend yourself, even though you knew it would be pointless. you couldn’t win against him in any situation.

and yet, as the knife was coming towards you, instinct took over and your forearm came into contact with his, batting his arm and the weapon away from you. before you could think, the knife was coming at you from the other direction, and you were forced to do the same yet again.

he only swung a few times, careful to not accidentally slice your skin as he did so, before he finally quit his attack on you.

for you, it was beyong alarming. in the immediate seconds afterward, he stood across from you yet again with a blank look on his face, waiting for you to say something.

“what the hell?” you yelled at him, all of your panic turning into anger. “what was that? are you actually trying to kill me?”

“it worked,” he replied with a complete disregard for the rage in your voice.

“it worked? what the fuck is that supposed to mean? are you trying to scare the shit out of me?” you screamed back.

“told you. adrenaline can do a lot,” he reiterated, the same comment he’d made only a few minutes before.

you stood there, fuming, your fists clenching and unclenching over and over again.

you understood then the lesson that he was trying to teach you, and clearly he had succeeded. you didn’t know when something bad was going to happen, and you could never properly be prepared for something like this.

it did not matter to you as you came down from the cortisol spike, the words he’d spoken right beforehand coming back to you.

this is how I planned on killing you.

“I hated every second of that. you scared me,” you snapped at him. “and I don’t want to know anything about how you plan on killing me, or anyone else for that matter. if you’re going to do it, then just do it.”

the very last thing he could ever want is for you to be scared of him.

unfortunately, your circumstances hadn’t allowed for any scenario where you had never feared his presence. but he needed to know that you had it in you to fight back if anyone were to ever try to hurt you. if your horrible ex-boyfriend ever tried to hurt you.

the thought of it alone left him fuming.

“I don’t want you dead,” he hissed back at you, telling you absolutely nothing of reason, still. all it did was stir the emotions and confusion within you, causing you to snap back.

“why?” you nearly screamed back at him. “I don’t get it. why?”

he didn’t know how to respond to that, because he didn’t know either.

all he knew was how drawn to you he was, how strong the urge was to protect you. how something about you compelled him in a way he’d never experienced before.

you sighed in frustration when he didn’t say anything at all, only continuing to stare you down like you were the only thing in the room worth looking at.

to him, you were.

before you could walk away, his flesh hand reached out to take yours, his metal hand finding the knife where he’d holstered it only moments prior. he moved so quickly that you barely understood what was happening before he was shoving the handle of the blade into your palm, wrapping his fingers around your fist where you now held the knife.

his fingers around yours pulled your hand and the blade towards him until its sharp edge was pressed up against the skin of his neck. he stared into your eyes as you were forced to step up close to him, realizing that you were now holding a knife to his throat. you tried to pull your hand away, but his grip remained strong around yours, not letting you go.

“what the hell are you doing?” you yelped as your gaze rapidly darted back and forth between his eyes and where the blade was resting against his skin.

“trying to get you to realize that you can trust me,” he gritted back.

with the sound of those words, your eyes finally settled upon his.

here you were, standing face to face with a man whose job had been to execute you. who only stood here now because he refused to do so, who was trying to help you. a man who offered repeatedly to take care of the monster who wanted you dead. a man who refused to do so, because it was against your wishes.

there was no purpose in him exerting all this effort if the words he was saying weren’t true, you thought, as you stood so close you could feel his breath on your face.

you weren’t quite sure when his hand had fallen from yours, how long you stood there while holding a weapon to one of the most vulnerable parts of the human body. one deliberate movement and it would be over for him.

you looked between his deep blue eyes, trying to gauge what laid behind them, trying to study him. to figure him out, if even possible.

“I,” you began, the intensity of the moment falling upon you as you finally broke the silence, “I don’t even know your name.”

he didn’t even have a chance to respond before your eyes were falling from where they met his, glancing down to the dagger still in your hand that had started to shake. a few droplets of red had started to coat the shiny metal where you had unintentionally begun to slice his skin.

the sight of it jolted you out of your trance, immediately letting go of the knife and letting it fall to the floor while jumping back as far as you could. your fingers flew to your face as you realized what you had done.

he was unfazed, bending over to pick up the knife from the floor as you began to ramble.

“oh my god, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I swear. I didn’t even– I didn’t know that I was doing it! I swear! you had to have felt it, why didn’t you stop me?” you cried, your hands and body beginning to shake involuntarily.

“papercut,” is all he said once he stood at full height again, shrugging his shoulders as he wiped the edge of the blade clean.

your breathing remained heavy, each inhale and exhale coming far too quick.

he noticed your panic as you tried to settle, looking back and forth between your eyes as you stood frozen in place.

yet again, he’d scared you unintentionally. but he could see it in you, underneath how alarmed you were: it had yet again worked.

he would never do anything of the sort ever again, he determined, not for any reason. he wished that your circumstances were different, that he hadn’t found you in the way he had. he wished that he could be normal, if only to be able to talk to you, to touch you like a normal person.

more than that, he wished that you weren’t still actively in danger.

his choice to continue returning to you, to continue providing you with the most basic of knowledge in how to protect yourself, was still a selfish one. the smart thing to do would be to eliminate the threat entirely.

but then he would not have a reason to see you again, nor would he have the time to try and figure out how to make you a permanent fixture in his life.

“you’re okay,” he spoke, his tone barely overpowering the sound of your blood pulsing in your ears, and you were sure that you had never heard him sound so quiet or careful before. he returned the knife to its spot on his hip and took a tentative step closer to you.

you knew by this point that he sucked with words, that he had no concern with speaking the thoughts on his mind. if he didn’t want to say anything at all, he wouldn’t; each word was a deliberate choice he made.

his response, no matter how short, was him trying.

the sentiment settled in your mind as you naturally came back to yourself, standing more confidently in front of him.

“I’m sorry,” you repeated yet again, and he nodded once in acknowledgement as the dust settled and you both came to an unspoken mutual understanding.

he soon began to walk away, stepping out of your view, making his way to use the front door instead of sneaking out for the very first time since you’d met.

he paused at the door before he exited, speaking clearly as he told you,

“James.”

your head whipped around, lips parting in mild shock as you heard the name in your head, repeated it a million times in a matter of seconds as your eyes locked with his again.

you faltered for a moment before stuttering out your own name in response.

it didn’t matter that he already knew it. as the syllables passed your lips, he realized how deep his care for you truly ran.

you were his life’s purpose.

and he would do anything necessary to keep you safe and sound.

~~~

he knocked the next time he graced your presence.

it took you by surprise when you heard it, given that you were not expecting anyone. you were so used to this man, now known as James, simply entering your home in a way that you still could not figure out.

anyone could have been at your door. it could be a solicitor, or it could be your crazy ex-boyfriend here to put an end to the job that James hadn’t finished.

you had barely known this man for two weeks, but you knew that something such as this had to be a time sensitive matter. how much longer did you have to come to a decision before your ex started hounding James for proof of your death?

his presence was beginning to make you feel more safe than you felt when you were alone, and the realization that it was him when you looked through the peephole of your door made you breathe a sigh of relief.

neither of you said a word when you opened the door to him. you both stood in the doorway in silence, the events of your last encounter having completely turned everything upside down.

realistically, you should never have trusted this man. you still should not have.

but by that point, he was the person you trusted most on the planet.

he took a step closer to you, and you had to avert your gaze upwards to account for the fact that he was so much taller as he now towered over you. you didn’t flinch, didn’t dare step away.

your eyes held one anothers’ for far longer than any onlooker would determine to be normal, something unbeknownst to either of you transpiring. a moment that felt as though you were starting anew, a moment that felt more intimate than even the one you shared the last time he stood in your home.

you could not be sure how long you stood there looking at each other before you finally stepped away to allow him inside, quietly shutting the door behind him.

this time, he didn’t immediately jump into hounding you about your situation, about whatever the next lesson was that he intended on teaching you. this time, you watched as he looked around your home, simply taking it all in.

the last few times you’d seen him, he’d been wearing a sleeve that covered the metallic of his arm, the only indication that his arm was not flesh and bones being the silver of his fingertips. only in that moment had you realized that it was a prosthetic of sorts, clearly a very high-tech one.

you wonder how long he’d had it, where he had it made given the high level of capability it wielded. until then, you never had any reason to believe that his arm was fake other than his silver-plated hand. it acted exactly like a real arm, as though it was a natural part of him.

can he feel things with it?

surely the answer was no. that couldn’t be possible.

but you wouldn’t put it against this insanely complex and powerful man.

what would he do if you asked him? would he tell you, or would he grunt and ignore the question?

the real question you had been deliberating since you last spoke, however, was whether or not the name he’d given you was real.

you intended on finding out.

“James,” you spoke firmly, and his reaction was immediate. his head spun to look at you in less than a second, the look in his eyes indicating that he was quite taken aback, as though hearing his name on the tongue of another human being was out of the usual for him.

you would eventually learn that he hadn’t heard anyone speak his name to him in years.

you couldn’t help but smile softly at the realization that he’d told you the truth, that you had just found a way to surprise him, too.

with the newfound information, your confidence soared, and you took advantage of the opportunity to ask him your far too personal question.

“your arm,” you began, unable to hide the smile on your face as you indicated to the metal, “seems like you can do a lot with it.”

his brow furrowed as he looked at you, not saying a word as he tried to gauge where you were going with this.

you continued after a few moments, “how long have you had it?”

the deadpan stare he gave you in return was enough to tell you that he wasn’t going to answer. at least, not yet.

“okay, well, can you feel things with it?” you asked, continuing to poke and prod in your curiosity. if he didn’t want to answer, then he wouldn’t. no harm, no foul.

he, too, found himself curious. why were you so gleeful in asking about it? the sight of it often aided in his jobs, instilling fear into his victims. he assumed you would at least be hesitant of it.

you may have been normal when he first saw you, someone undeserving of being caught up in his crosshairs, but there wasn’t a thing about you he wouldn’t describe as special.

instead of responding, he extended his metal hand in your direction as though telling you, why don’t you find out?

your feet padded softly against the flooring beneath you as you closed the distance between your bodies, slowly taking his hand in both of yours. your eyes followed the lines of the metal plates, your fingers soon following as they traced the patterns embedded in the metal.

he simply let you inspect, let you touch as you pleased, nothing but silence to be heard as he revelled in the feeling of your hands on him.

sensations that would be far more heightened with your hands on his skin.

when your eyes eventually darted back up to his, you realized he’d already been looking at you.

part of you suddenly felt the urge to apologize for being so pushy. except his eyes had softened and his focus began roaming over the planes of your nose, your cheeks, your lips.

you’d learned how rare his words were, how unexpressive he was as a person. yet you knew that all you had to do was look into his eyes and it was like the gates to his soul were unlocked, just for you.

you held one another’s gaze as your hands gently cupped his, the silence nearly deafening.

that was until he quietly spoke up, telling you, “we’re running out of time.”

the spell broke as your heart sank into your stomach, anxiety rising once more in your throat. you immediately took a step back without thinking about it and your hands fell from his.

he regretted it the second he said it. he did not wish to push you away, did not wish to rid you of the peacefulness you seemed to embody as you stood together. yet the moments you’d shared that day told him one thing: perhaps, after this whole thing was in the past, it may not be the end.

perhaps all he had been dreaming of would come to fruition.

he felt cold as you stepped away, looking away from him and beginning to pace around the room yet again. your distress grew as you tried to consider your options and tried to think of a solution that would keep you out of danger and keep the blood off your hands.

“look, I just– I don’t know what to do,” you began, your hands moving broadly with each word you thought out loud. “I know he wants me, gone, or whatever. but I can’t do that. I can’t be the perpetrator, I can’t ask you to kill him just to keep me safe.”

“I’d kill anyone if it meant keeping you safe.”

that stopped you dead in your tracks.

you didn’t know how to feel about that. on one hand, death was exactly what you were trying to avoid here. on the other,

would he really?

the words settled, and you elected to ignore them. the sentiment, however, was not lost on you as you failed to tamper down your giddiness at hearing his loyalty to you spoken aloud.

“I don’t want it to come to that. I don’t want to be like him,” you said quietly.

despite the fact that he didn’t respond, the anger that those words stirred within him was insurmountable. how could you possibly think you were anything like him, a loser who hurt the most perfect woman in the world, who probably gets off to the idea of you being dead?

“he’ll hire someone else to finish the job I didn’t do,” he told you firmly, and your eyes fell shut in exasperation.

it was not James’ fault, you reminded yourself. he’s on your side. he was helping you.

but how are you expected to be put in this position, to take it into your own hands to decide who lives and who dies? that isn’t up to you. one life isn’t worth more than another.

“fuck,” you muttered under your breath, repeating the utterance a few more times as your palms came to rest atop your eyes.

you almost wish James had just killed you from the beginning just so that you weren’t in this position, so that you didn’t have to spend any of your time on this earth actually worrying for your safety.

“I need to–”

“no!” you interrupted. your voice rose as you turned to look at him once more, asserting, “I’m not doing that! are you listening to me? my answer is no!”

he admired your devotion to your morals, to doing what you believed was right.

but this wasn’t your everyday. you didn’t see the gross, disgusting things that people are capable of, didn’t see how this isn’t a matter of right and wrong. it’s a matter of survival. one way or another, he was going to prioritize your safety over anything.

you were not going to fall victim to the evil desires of your ex, and he would make sure of it.

“if you don’t make a decision, then I will,” he informed you before making his way to your front door, suddenly walking out of your apartment and leaving you alone all over again with no warning.

the panic within you grew the second he was gone, your entire body once again feeling entirely on edge and losing the sense of safety you felt while he was still here.

this is what he does for a living. he knows what he’s doing, and he’s going to do whatever he decides needs to be done.

you were going to have to live with that on your conscience one way or another. it was going to be your fault, one way or another.

you already felt so guilty, even though you’d done absolutely nothing.

but even worse, there was a deeper part of you that solely hoped you hadn't pushed James away.

your curiosities only continued to get the better of you when it came to him. he didn’t think you deserve to be killed, sure, but that’s a pretty low bar. you wanted to know what he actually thought of you, what he actually saw when he looked at you, which might be the worst part of all of this.

he was doing this for you, sure. but he’s a killer by trade.

and yet it still didn’t put you off from wanting to know more about him, from wanting to keep him around after all of this was laid to rest.

why do you even care? what do you even want from him? companionship, with a man like him?

you felt beyond stupid for thinking of something so simple, something that’s clearly so below him. his sense of obligation to you was nothing more than that: obligation. his care for you was nothing beyond keeping you safe.

anything more than that is off the table. your happiness, your wellbeing, your pleasure, even, is obsolete to him.

even if a small part of you desired to put it all in his hands, it wouldn’t matter.

you did not matter to him.

~~~

the smart thing to do was to ignore your desires, disregard your wishes. the smart thing would be to listen to his own rationale and do what needed to be done: taking care of the idiot who has put you in this situation and ensuring your safety once and for all.

but he’s selfish.

he could not fathom what would happen if he went against your instructions and pushed you away in doing so. he could not fathom what would happen once it was inevitably time for you both to part and for him to disappear into the shadows once more.

he simply could not let go.

the excuses he had used to keep coming back to you were just valid enough for him to be able to sell them to himself, but it was not enough anymore. it had been weeks and the client was going to come calling any day now.

he never should have taken the job in the first place.

but if he hadn’t?

if he hadn’t taken the job, someone else would have. someone else would have been sick enough to go through with it and take your light away.

he couldn’t let himself dwell on the fact that he had ever considered it at all. he would kill himself before ever laying a hand on you.

but what’s done is done, and he had no choice but to deal with the circumstances of the situation at hand.

he could tell you to run. he could tell you that your best bet was to pack up your life and run far away from here, if only to keep you safe. he would even go with you, find the smallest corner of the world to hide in and keep you safe forevermore.

that’s not the life you deserved to live. for someone as full of life as you, that would be a fate worse than death.

he had to figure something out.

and he had to figure out how to not lose you in the aftermath.

~~~

your life still had to go on as normal despite the lingering threat looming in the back of your mind, in the shadows of every corner you turned every time you went somewhere.

the world didn’t stop turning just because your life was on the line.

you walked down aisles of canned goods, wondering if the contents inside of them would last longer than the pulse pounding underneath your skin.

it was crude to think that way, perhaps, but weren’t you the one preventing this from being over with? James had posed a solution that you continued to shut down time and time again, a solution that would put an end to this once and for all. you were the one dragging this out longer than it needed to be.

you put a few of the cans into your cart mindlessly as you continued down the aisle, mind distracted.

what would happen if you told him to put an end to this? then what? surely the police would come knocking at your door. you would be incriminated one way or another.

James would protect you, though. you were sure of it. he knew what he was doing and he would most certainly keep you out of it.

as you approached the produce section, your mind wandered to the possibility of never getting to see James again.

that couldn’t happen. maybe you were trauma bonded to him, you theorized, or perhaps you were simply stockholming yourself. this was certainly the most strange way to find yourself relying emotionally upon another person, but…

it did not matter.

none of it mattered when you thought about how gentle he’d been every time he touched you, how deliberate and thoughtful he was with his actions and words.

maybe his job went against every moral you held deep in your bones, yet you could not help but fantasize about how it would feel so good to give yourself up to him, to let him do as he pleased with you. to let him take control and let him make you feel so good that you forgot anything other than his name, anything other than how good he was to you.

would he speak more, or less? would he put you on your back, or even–

your shopping cart collided then with another patron in the grocery store, knocking you out of your distracted, dirty thoughts and reminding you of where you were.

“I am so, so sorry,” you began, shaking your head and directing your gaze upwards to look at the person as you apologized. as you looked up to see who stood in front of you, your heart sank lower than you believed possible.

no.

“so now you’re purposefully trying to hit me? that’s what we’re doing now?” he asked you as his eyes met yours.

your godforsaken ex.

“it was an accident,” you tried, and every ounce of confidence that you felt you’d gained in the last few weeks was nowhere to be found. “I’m sorry.”

if you hadn’t known the truth, you wouldn’t have recognized the look in his eyes, the one that screamed I know something you don’t. the one that told you he was surprised to see you here, not because of an accidental run-in of exes, but because he was surprised you were still standing. he was surprised you were still living and breathing to this day.

you had been with him long enough to know about his temper, to know how insecure he was and how explosive his actions were as a result of it. you knew that even if he didn’t let anything on now, there would be repercussions. massive repercussions to him discovering that James still had not carried out the job the man in front of you hired him to do.

you summoned all the energy in your very being to stop yourself from freaking out and letting on that you knew.

“yeah, I’m sure it was,” he said, rolling his eyes and muttering, “fucking bitch, gonna regret this,” under his breath as he walked away from you.

as he did, you forced yourself to stay calm. staying calm was the only way you would make it out of this store alive, the only way you would make it home alive.

you proceeded as normal, even though inside, your mind was reeling and your stomach was doing backflips. act normal. don’t freak out. not yet. continue as though nothing had happened, check out as usual, and get the hell home.

but as you finally made it out, finally made it to your car and sped home, you realized how truly fucked you were as the tears spilled from your eyes against your will. he knew where you lived, and there was no way you would be able to protect yourself from him even if you tried. James may have tried to help you, but you’re not him.

you don’t even have any way to contact him. you can’t even tell him that you’re in danger, that any of this has happened, unless you get lucky and he shows up at your doorstep tonight.

what if your ex reaches out to him? surely, then, he would know and would take care of it. but even then, your ex knows that James hasn’t finished the job yet. what if he decides to take it into his own hands and put your life to an end before you even see James again?

you wouldn’t put it past him with the temper he had. even if he did show up at your place that evening, even if you lost the chance to see the rest of your life, it would be alright. at least you saw it coming, and it would be your own fucking fault.

it would just be a shame that you never got to see him again.

~~~

you sat around for hours just waiting. for James to arrive, or for the other foot to drop, you weren’t sure.

you waited for something, because you knew it was over. you’d long understood what it felt like to have anxiety and to worry about the improbable becoming probable, tried to talk yourself out of all your concerns.

this wasn’t that. this was your gut instinct telling you that something was going to happen, and you just had to pray James would show up.

your groceries never even made it out of the trunk of your car, instead sitting and stewing in the heat that would surely ruin them. you had closed every curtain and locked every door and window as though that would stop anyone who truly wanted in from entering.

you sat on the floor of your bathroom, clutching the firearm James had given you tightly in both hands, waiting. you sobbed and shook for at least an hour, expecting this to be it. you should have listened to him, how could you have been so stupid?

your body finally forced itself to settle, forced you to calm down despite the continuing worry racing through your veins. all that you felt after the fact was exhaustion and regret. regret for standing up to him when he cheated on you, regret for not being smarter.

you never should have gotten involved with him in the first place. your friends had told you as much, and you had blown them off. where were they now?

oh, right. you lost them when he forced you to cut them all off.

your gaze, blurred by the tears lingering in your eyes, landed upon the metal that you held in your now sweaty hands. James had told you, you remembered, that you had to be willing to shoot if you pointed it at someone.

did you have it in you? would you be able to follow through, even with your safety on the line?

you truly hoped so.

~~~

when the knocking on your front door finally came, you were drifting in and out of sleep as a result of the toll your panic had taken on you. the sound startled you awake and the full force of your panic settled in your bones within seconds.

someone was at the door, and you had to answer it. you had to answer to whatever your fate was about to be.

it had to be him. it had to be James, right? there was no way anyone else would show up here and knock politely on your door as the person who stood on your doorstep had just done.

you hoped with everything in you that it was James as you forced yourself up from the tile flooring, your whole body stiff and creaking as you stood to full height. the gun remained firmly in both hands as you walked to the door, looking through the peephole to determine what the hell was about to happen. to determine whether or not you would be getting ready to fire off the weapon in your hands for the first time with the intent of hurting another human being, even if only to protect yourself.

you steeled yourself as you gazed outside, trying to keep your cool for as long as possible.

upon seeing the person on the other side, the weapon immediately fell from your hands to the floor as you whipped the door open as fast as possible.

“James,” you pled, reaching to grab at the leather on his chest. your tears began to fall once more as you begged, “James, please, I–”

his first reaction was to assess your state as quickly as possible, taking note of how shaken you were, how the weapon sat on the floor next to you. something had to have happened. something had finally broken.

he hurriedly wrapped his arms around your waist, urging you back inside your apartment, kicking the door shut behind him.

“what happened?” he asked, trying to meet your eyeline. you were so shaken, your focus wandering everywhere but to his eyes as your body shook under his grasp.

he knew in that moment that he was done. he was going to do what he should have done weeks ago and put an end to this one way or another, and it was going to happen that night.

if you thought that you had broken down before, it had only gotten worse now. now that you were finally safe with him, your resolve broke, and all the tears and panic that had subsided before only came back with a vengeance.

he wanted nothing more than to hold and comfort you until you were better, but he couldn’t do that, not yet. he had a job he had to do first.

he had every intention of coming back and never letting you go afterwards.

“hey,” he spoke. he wrapped his metal arm tighter around your waist, just firm enough to try and ground you in reality as his flesh hand came to the back of your head, fingers tangling in your hair as he gently guided you to finally look at him. “tell me what happened.”

“he saw me,” you cried, your hands flexing and relaxing repeatedly as they clutched at his vest. “he saw me, in the store, and I– he knows now, that I’m alive, and he is going to try to kill me–”

“I’ll take care of it,” he assured you, remaining as calm as ever as you continued to mumble under your breath.

his fingers in your hair gently massaged your scalp as he waited for you to calm down enough for him to be able to leave you and take care of business.

seeing you this distraught was the worst thing he’d seen in his entire life. worse than all the blood, brains, and guts he’d seen spilled before.

seeing you like this was worse than any of it.

when you finally settled just enough to nod in agreement, he reluctantly let go of you. he bent to the ground to retrieve the firearm where it lay on the hard-wood flooring and placed it back into your hands.

“take this. hide. when I come back, this will all be over with,” he instructed you.

leaving you in that moment felt like hell on earth, but he didn’t have a choice.

“please come back,” you whispered as he stepped back, your sad eyes still on his. “please. please.”

he had every intention of doing just that, of coming back to you and making sure you knew how important you were to him.

“I promise,” he assured you, and the next thing you knew he was gone. the door closed behind him, and you hurried to lock it despite how badly you wished to open it once more and call him back inside, to beg him never leave your side ever again.

instead, you did as you were told no matter how it hurt. you went back to your spot in the bathroom as you contemplated the fact that your ex was now about to be killed, that the exact thing you tried so hard was about to happen.

you tried to justify it to yourself. it was your only option; this was the only way you would be able to live. the only way you’d be able to see James again.

you briefly mourned the loss of a part of your morality that day, but you did not have it in you to care as much as you previously believed you would have in that moment, in the moment you realized it was happening.

the fear you felt that day ate you alive, and you knew you couldn’t continue to live this way. something like this was always going to happen.

you should have known from the start it was always going to come to this.

you silently thanked the universe for giving you James, even knowing what he was about to do. you thanked whatever gods there may have been for giving you the opportunity to live on, for the opportunity to see tomorrow.

of course, you couldn’t be certain of that until James returned and confirmed that tomorrow was a given for you.

but you already knew one thing: James would handle it. James would return, and that guarantee would happen. you trusted him with everything in you.

you just had to sit there and wait, stirring in your thoughts, waiting for the moment he’d come back. waiting for him to tell you that you were safe, that this was done and over with.

you were never going to let him go. you would do anything to keep him around, even if it meant begging and pleading him. even though you barely knew this man, he had so quickly become your everything.

even with your doubts, you were sure that it wouldn’t come to begging.

he had to have felt exactly what you felt.

you were sure of it then.

~~~

when he returned, he wasn’t sure what to expect.

were you going to thank him for taking care of all this, or berate him for it? were you about to tell him you never wanted to see him ever again? he was the one who dragged you into this, who brought you all this distress and pain and fear. he wouldn’t blame you for despising him.

he was the one who was supposed to end your life.

could you ever actually trust him? could you ever actually forgive him for that, forgive him for ever even thinking of hurting you?

he would never hurt you, ever.

he was grateful that it was him and no one else, that he was able to protect you and put an end to all of this. he was grateful he got to know you, even if you were about to throw him out forever.

even though he hoped you wouldn’t.

“it’s me,” he called out when he knocked on your door, the situation finally having been dealt with after everything you’d already suffered.

he prayed you would answer, that you would let him in.

the relief he felt when he heard the door opening was immediate.

you didn’t say a word, simply stood there looking defeated as you opened the door to him. you looked so sad it nearly broke him.

you didn’t stop him as he took the weapon from your hands, holstering it in the empty space in his utility belt. you didn’t stop him as he shut and locked the door behind where he now stood in your doorway.

when you reached for him, he didn’t hesitate.

he couldn’t stop himself from selfishly wrapping his arms around you, couldn’t hold himself back from engulfing you in an embrace when you had accepted him back in. your hands didn’t hesitate to find their way around his shoulders, clutching onto him tightly and allowing him to pull you in tight.

he soon adjusted his arms to wrap themselves under your legs, picking you up from the floor and taking on your weight himself. you buried your face in the crook of his neck as you leaned into him, clung to him, still softly shaking as the last of your tears spilled out against his skin.

he didn’t say a word as he slowly walked you to the bedroom, listening to your breathing as it slowed, holding you firm and hoping you knew that he had no intention of ever letting you go.

he soon laid you down against the soft sheets of your bed, looking into your eyes as he pulled away from you.

he placed a soft kiss to your forehead as he stepped back.

you watched him kick off his boots, remove his utility belt and placing it and all of his weapons out of sight. he then reached to tug the leather from his chest, yanking it over his head and revealing his toned chest and torso to your gaze.

you stared shamelessly even as he turned around, beginning to shuffle through your drawers in search of something you weren’t quite sure of. the muscles of his back rippled, and your eyes caught the sight of where his prosthetic arm met his skin.

he was so beautiful.

when he turned back towards you, he held in his hands a pair of your sweatpants and a worn-down t-shirt of yours.

with anyone else, the scene would have been too much too quickly. too intimate too soon.

but you somehow felt so comfortable with him that the thought didn’t even pass your mind.

when he knelt on the side of the bed, urging you to sit against its edge, you listened. you didn’t protest as he slowly tugged your jeans from where they sat on your legs, replacing them with the soft sweatpants he’d retrieved from your drawer. you lifted your arms above your head to allow him to remove your shirt before he even asked, looking softly into his eyes as he pulled the large shirt over your head to cover you once more.

he slowly surged towards you after that, standing from his place on the floor and wrapping you in his arms once more as he laid both of you down in your bed.

neither of you spoke another word that evening. you clung to him, and he let you, massaging his fingers through your hair as he did.

how had this man become your safe place in such a short period of time? how had all of these pieces fallen into place as they did, causing you such torment but leaving you with someone you trusted more than anyone else on the planet?

all of the worry and fear you had felt over the past few weeks finally dissipated for good. your mind finally calmed, finally settled now that you were here with him.

sleep had never come easier for either of you than it did that night.

~~~

when you woke the next morning, the first thing you felt was heat. then, the weight of someone next to you, resting atop you.

as you blinked your eyes open, beyond swollen after the amount of crying you’d done the night before, he came into your sight. James was still there, still laying next to you. still holding you close and protecting you through the night.

you smiled softly to yourself, bringing a hand to run through his hair, pushing it behind his ear and looking at his face as he slept. even asleep, he was the most gorgeous man you’d ever met. he truly looked peaceful in his sleepy state as he allowed himself to rest in your arms.

after laying there for a few minutes of watching his face and listening to his breathing, you slowly unravelled yourself from the tangle of both of your limbs, careful not to wake him. you slid from the bed and made your way to the bathroom, shutting the door behind you as quietly as possible.

the vision of yourself in the mirror was wretched. the bags under your eyes were the darkest they’d been in ages, the sclera of both your eyes completely bloodshot. your hair was a mess and your mascara was smeared all over your face after having failed to wipe the mess it had left from your tears.

the lukewarm water on your skin as you splashed it over your face was refreshing, cleansing yourself of the teary mess you’d been the night before. the mint of your toothpaste was a blessing as you remembered, you made it.

you made it to today. it may have been under less than ideal circumstances, but you were alive.

and now you had a man in your bed that you somehow trusted would never leave.

as your mind settled on the remembrance, a soft knock came at the door. you hated how gross you looked then, how much of a mess you were, but you had already trusted him in seeing you at your lowest moments.

you opened the door slowly, and his eyes immediately found yours.

you stepped backwards until you leaned against the granite countertop, and he followed each and every step you took until his chest was nearly touching yours.

as he looked down at you, your eyes returning the same gaze, the mutual understanding was obvious. you’d gotten through this together, and now?

when he began to take one last step forward, you smiled softly and immediately brought a hand to press against his lips.

“morning breath,” you said with a laugh, the smile plastered on your face widening as you did.

when he reached to pry your hand away from his mouth, you giggled still, allowing him to return your arm to its spot next to your torso before he finally leaned in and pressed his lips to yours.

it was like a breath of fresh air.

your arms snaked their way around his shoulders as he lifted you to sit on the countertop behind you. you smiled still against his lips as he deepened the kiss, pressing his body closer to yours, his hands resting softly against your hips.

you parted your legs, tugging him closer until he was pressed entirely up against you, kissing you with the devotion of a man who wanted nothing more than to be in this moment.

he tried to be cautious. the mental stress you’d endured the day before and over the course of the last few weeks was unlike anything most people would ever experience, and he was scared to push you too far.

but you felt good. you felt anew, like your lease on life had just been renewed, because it quite literally had been.

when he pulled back a few moments later, his metallic hand found its way to the base of your scalp, fingers tangling in your hair. his eyes remained firmly on yours as he gently twirled your hair into his fist.

“I can’t just have you once,” is all he said into the silence, the words falling on willing ears.

“then don’t,” you encouraged, yanking him back in and crashing your lips to his again.

your ankles tied themselves around the back of his thighs, holding him as close as humanly possible as you began to grind your hips up against the obvious bulge in his pants.

you mentally patted yourself on the back when he gasped into your mouth at the sudden sensation, immediately returning the motion as he ground back down against you, eliciting a moan from the back of your throat.

he did it again, using his grip on your hair to yank your head away from his so he could watch your reactions as he rutted up against you.

“fuck, James,” you whined, your eyes falling shut with how good the sensations felt.

“look at me,” he instructed you. “open your eyes. now.”

you did as you were told, blinking them back open and looking at him despite the haze in your vision.

“good girl,” he whispered, and the noise that erupted from your throat was beyond humiliating.

within a few seconds, you felt the loss of his warmth as he dropped to his knees in front of you for the second time. his hands eagerly reached for the hem of your pants, his eyes finding yours once more as he awaited your approval to remove them.

when you nodded your head yes, he didn’t waste another second before yanking the fabric down your thighs and past your ankles, pushing them out of the way and returning his hands to the sides of your thighs. you gasped when he suddenly pulled you to sit on the very edge of the countertop, his fingers soon reaching to draw away the lace that sat on your hips, and then–

he didn’t even wait to finish tugging your panties from your thighs before diving in, dipping his tongue between your folds and finding your clit in an instant.

“oh, James,” you moaned, clenching one hand into a fist and biting down on your knuckles to keep your cool.

that didn’t last long before he pulled back, ripping your arm away and hissing, “don’t do that.”

you could’ve orgasmed on the spot just hearing his voice sound so forceful, seeing the look of lust in his eyes. you immediately nodded in agreement, and his mouth settled back on your cunt, making you see stars in a way you had never experienced before with a man.

the whines and whimpers that fell from your lips were beyond debauched as you allowed yourself to let yourself go, just for him. the sounds were like music to his ears as your pleasure remained the only thing of importance on his mind.

he could spend a lifetime here, with his mouth between your legs. he would do anything for the chance to do just that.

would you let him?

“I’m gonna come,” you breathed, your voice coming harsh with how heavy you were breathing.

he made no effort to respond and didn’t dare pull away from you. his fingers gripped your thighs tighter to hold you in place as he doubled down, his own eyes staying shut as he continued to revel in the taste of you, in how good it felt to have you like this. finally.

you didn’t even try to stop yourself when your hands suddenly reached to grip the back of his head tightly, your nails digging into his scalp as you ground your hips against his mouth. he didn’t protest as he let you rut against his face a few more times before your voice broke, your entire body shaking as you finally reached your climax.

he didn’t stop, guiding you through your peak until you were overstimulated and whining, gently yanking him away to let you come down.

when his eyes fell upon your face, he was beyond pleased to see the relaxation and pleasure painted in your expression. your eyes opened after a few more heavy breaths, meeting his once more, the sight was beautiful.

there he was, on his knees for you, his face messily covered with your slick. you bit your lip between your teeth, running your hands through his hair as he eyed you.

“I’ve been dreaming of this,” you admitted softly.

when he finally stood to full height in front of you, he licked his lips clean, continuing to stare you down. your hands found their way to his bare chest, the warmth beyond comforting.

“me too,” he mumbled, pushing your hair behind your ears and out of your face as he admired your beauty up close and personal.

you were beyond grateful he was here with you.

forever, you hoped.

“I don’t usually sleep with guys before the first date,” you joked, continuing to teasingly tug at his hair as you spoke. “but I think I’ll make an exception. just this once.”

“just this once,” he whispered back to you, his tone closer to amusement than you think you’d ever heard from him, and his lips found yours once more.

you eased yourself off the edge of the countertop, standing on your own two feet in front of him as you tasted yourself on his lips. before you knew it, his hands were gripping you by the hips and spinning you around so you were facing the mirror.

he stood behind you, his chest pressed up against your back and his hands snaking around your waist and up the front of your shirt. his cheek pressed softly up against your temple as he found your gaze in the mirror, and you nodded softly against him, encouraging him to go on.

he drew the hem of your t-shirt up, up, and over your head, then leaning in to nip at the skin of your neck. each pinch sent shivers through your whole body as your hands rested atop his, following each and every one of his movements as he explored the expanse of your skin now revealed to him.

the last thing to go was your bra, which he nearly tore in his efforts to remove it from your skin, to remove the last barrier between you.

“eager?” you teased, but he wasn’t having it. his metal hand came to grip your hair once more, yanking your head back just enough so he could look directly into your eyes. you gasped in surprise at the motion, holding his gaze as you awaited whatever came next.

two flesh fingers found their way to your lips and pressed against them, telling you to open up, to which you complied without hesitation. you willingly accepted the intrusion passing your lips, his fingers pressing down on your tongue as he continued to stare into your eyes.

he nearly gagged you on them a few times, and each time your eyes fell shut, he reminded you of the obvious: keep them open. he wanted to see what you were thinking, what you were feeling as he went. making sure you were still okay and enjoying yourself.

his inspection came to a quick end, his wet fingers soon removing themselves from your mouth and moving to grip your chin tightly between his thumb and forefingers.

“mine,” he whispered as he looked down at you, and your chest grew giddy at the implication

you were his.

you liked the sound of that.

even with his firm grip holding your head in place, you gently nodded and affirmed, “yours.”

he then let go of you all together, both of his hands falling from your skin and beginning to work open the buttons on his cargo pants before shoving his pants and boxers down in one go.

your only mild regret from that morning was not getting to look before you felt him. there was plenty of opportunity for that yet.

he looked down between your bodies, his flesh hand finding your hip once more and holding you steady as he stroked himself a few times before stepping in close.

“yeah?” he confirmed, eyes finding yours in the mirror yet again.

“yes,” you spoke. “please?”

the sound of that word falling from your lips made his eyes nearly go black with lust.

he didn’t wait a second longer before leaning right up against you, quickly lining himself up with your entrance and pressing forward.

and fuck, was he big.

“jesus,” you muttered, placing your palms down on the countertop in front of you and leaning all your weight against it as you struggled to take him.

“shh,” he hummed as he eased in.

your jaw fell nearly to the floor as he kept going, slowly stretching you open on his cock as he sheathed himself inside you.

it was so overwhelming, yet it felt so good that you were nearing the edge already.

“shit, I–” you whined, embarrassed with yourself for it. but, fuck, you needed to come. you pried one of your hands from its seat on the counter, intending to use your fingers to send yourself over the edge.

his hand caught your wrist before you could.

“please,” you begged of him yet again, except this time, he didn’t give in. he placed your hand back where it had been on the counter and each of his hands laid themselves atop yours, pinning you in place and preventing you from touching yourself.

you didn’t have any words left, your desperation growing as you hovered near the edge. you whimpered as he held you there, unmoving, before speaking again.

“you ask,” he murmured into your ear, a direct order.

a debauched moan fell from your lips immediately upon hearing that, and you forced yourself to answer as you remained in limbo.

“please,” you breathed, beginning to feel beads of sweat dripping down the back of your neck and your knees. “can I come?”

he must have been pleased by the request because soon after, his flesh fingertips found their way between your thighs, rubbing up against your clit while still not moving his hips into yours. he listened as your breaths hitched and kept his weight firmly against you, preventing you from falling as your knees wobbled beneath you.

with his warm fingers on you and his breath in your ear, the drop was impeccable.

you didn’t stand a chance as he began fucking you through your orgasm, crying out his name into the echoey space. he didn’t stop moving even as you came down, forcing you to push through the overstimulation.

it overwhelmed every one of your senses, and yet it was heavenly. your greed began to grow yet again as you reveled in the pleasure he was bringing you, dreaming of all the millions of ways you hoped he might take you.

“James,” you groaned, your head falling forward. his free hand came to your chin, gently holding your head up high enough for him to watch the way you fell apart for him in the reflection of the glass in front of your face.

he didn’t know exactly how he had gotten to this point, how he had come to have you.

but he knew he wasn’t going to let you go.

“let go. give it to me,” he ordered, continuing his ministrations upon you, staving his own orgasm off as long as he could until you’d finally come again.

something about being told to do so immediately sparked the peak within you, and the pleasure overtook you as you practically yelled out into the room as your orgasm crashed over you. the second it happened, he quit holding his own release back, pulling you tightly against him and holding you down on his cock as he spilled inside you.

he continued to hold you up, preventing you from falling as you took breath after breath to calm yourself.

when your eyes finally met once more in the mirror, you both instantly knew. no matter how your relationship had come to be, you trusted him more than anything in the world, and he’d reciprocated in equal measure.

a sense of loyalty he had never felt before, and would never feel for anyone or anything else for the rest of his life.

you saw him, and he saw you.

that’s all you could ever need.

~~~

now.

~~~

the sun burns brighter the next morning as your eyes wake to the light seeping in between the cracks of your curtains.

whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, you’re not sure.

all you know is how shitty you feel. how your entire body is sore and likely covered in deep bruises from where your attacker grabbed you, how your jaw feels stiff thanks to the assault from the night previous.

you’re not sure for how many hours you’ve been asleep, but you still feel as exhausted as you did just two days previous, the sam as you had felt after nearly a week of not sleeping properly without James by your side.

at least you’re not alone this morning.

as you begin to sit up in bed, you feel like nothing more than a bag of bones and flesh as every one of your joints creak with your movements.

your gaze turns towards the window, staring at the light that sneaks inside, yet it only worsens the headache you’re beginning to develop. you take a deep breath as you adjust your positioning. your knees finding their way to your chest, and your arms wrap themselves around your shins as your head lays against the uncomfortably bony surface of your kneecaps.

one of James’ t-shirts covers your skin, fabric with which you don’t remember dressing yourself in the night prior.

it will not matter how much you try to cover yourself. the bruises are everywhere, you know they are, without even having to look. you can feel them from the sorer spots on your body, your mind not letting you forget for an instant about the horrid ones painted on your face.

the bed shifts underneath you as the sheets move, and the sound of his breathing deepens as he wakes beside you. you don’t turn to look at him as he rouses; you already know his gaze will be on you, watching you. worrying about you in his own weird way.

however much time passes, you’re not sure, before the silence you’re so used to suffering in finally breaks.

“there’s something you need to know,” he says, his tone as gruff and calm as ever.

you hum in response, too tired and careless to redirect your focus back to where he lays. your gaze is transfixed on the curtain, the way the world outside continues to move on as normal. as though what happened to you last night has no bearing on anything. as though the acts James committed last night, despite the fact that it was to protect you, to save you, have no bearing on the way the world continues to spin.

because it’s true. it doesn’t.

but how come you still feel so shitty?

you’re not ready when the next words fall from his lips.

“I never killed your ex, back then.”

you don’t even have to ask him what he’s referring to. in the context of the events of the night prior, it’s a given that there’s a reason someone attacked you. targeted you. there had to be something strange happening, some underlying reason that this would happen to you, of all people, given the events of your past.

there’s not a part of you that’s confused by his words, but every part of you is scared by them. your adrenaline immediately spikes when he says them, your heart nearly stopping in your chest as the pieces fit together in your mind.

of course this is all connected. of course this isn’t some random, one-off event that happened to you.

“excuse me?” you hiss under your breath, anger quickly bubbling to the surface and clearly evident in your words.

“you didn’t want me to,” he replies. too calm. too careless.

you hold yourself back from letting out the harsh sigh you want to, holding yourself back from going off the rails and screaming at him at the top of your lungs. why does he act like he doesn’t fucking care?

you know that he does. this is not nothing to him, otherwise he wouldn’t be bringing it up.

that still doesn’t change the fact that his monotone intonation is pissing you off, as it tends to.

“then what the hell did you do that night?” you bite back.

the only answer you get in response is, “you don’t want to know.”

god, does he know how to piss you off.

you have to force yourself to remain calm and hold your shit together. what’s done is done; it’s been over a year now, and you can’t rewrite the events of your history.

the silence returns for a few brief moments as you consider your next words, consider how you want to deal with this, since apparently he’s incapable of making decisions for you when it actually matters.

except he must soon realize the error of his message as you don’t say a word, as he ponders the argument of the day before that forced you out of the apartment, that forced you right into harm’s way.

“I gave him his money back, told him to get lost forever. didn’t kill him, just… debilitated him,” is all the explanation you get.

you want to ask him how he could be so naive, why he didn’t follow through on what he had always said he was going to do. but you’re just grateful to know the truth, to hear him offer up the information without having to argue with him for it.

“take care of it. make this be over with, already,” you instruct. “I don’t want to live the rest of our lives with this looming over us, do you understand me?”

he hums in acknowledgement. if it were anyone else, it would feel like you were being ignored, your thoughts and concerns brushed over.

you know him better than that by now.

“finish this, and you’re done. I’m done with all this bullshit, we are done with all this bullshit.” you bark.

he should be pissed off at your words. he should be mad that you’re effectively telling him what to do, ordering him to give up the career he built his entire life on.

but some things are more important. you are more important.

and hearing you speak with such conviction only makes his cock so damn hard between his legs.

“it’s already done,” he tells you once and for all. “it’s taken care of. I’m done.”

it’s done. for real, this time.

the admission should take you by more surprise than it does. you should feel more relieved than you are to know that your ex is finally gone, that it’s officially over. you should feel something, anything at all. you had been beyond worried about it back then, so why didn’t you have it in you to care now?

perhaps because the worst had finally happened. perhaps because the exact scenario you’d both fought to prevent finally happened, and you learned the hard way that he had always been right.

but now, it’s over with, and he’s finally telling you that he’s done.

that’s what you focus on. that’s what you allow yourself to settle on, leaving all the horrors of the past alone, because there’s no good in ruminating on it. there is no point in trying to unpack all your millions of thoughts about through narrow tunnels in your mind. there’s no good in going back in time.

but hearing his willingness to leave it all behind calms your sudden spike in anger as you finally begin to think about the future. a future for the both of you where there will be no more bloodshed, no more killing. no more losing him for weeks on end to missions that you don’t know if he’ll come back from.

he’s going to leave it all behind, and he’s going to do it for you.

as you cling to yourself, his hands come to your waist and gently pull you to lay back down, urging you to relax as he wraps himself around you.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers to you once you’re both laying down, uttering two little words you never expected to hear from him.

and yet it means everything to you.

you know that despite his lack of emotion, despite the fact that he doesn’t know how to show it, he’s hurting, too. you know that he’s likely beyond upset with himself for letting this ever happen in the first place.

you don’t tell him it’s not his fault, don’t say anything of the sort. that’s a conversation for another day.

“thank you,” you whisper back, leaning into him as close as you can.

as you shut your eyes once more, you know things are going to be better now.

you know that no matter what, you’re going to have each other for eternity.

that’s all that matters.

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