#twdubcon

It was a Monday and you were excited. How long had it been exactly since you could remember waking up excited for a Monday morning? Surely not in the length of time between this very moment and when you’d first picked up the grueling nine to five axe grind. Not through college, or high school, nor middle or elementary. Maybe in those first very early, toddling formative years, when even the concept of the days of the week were foreign to you.

That had to speak volumes of the severity of the situation. You can hardly believe he’d agreed. You’d spent all of Sunday laboring over it, running and rerunning and rerunning it again, trying to come up with just the way to broach the subject.

“Tomorrow's Monday.” You’d said, rolling an errant pea absently with your fork through the mashed potato scum blanketing your plate. You tried not to look at him as you said it— swore to yourself beforehand that you wouldn’t look at him as you said it, but ultimately couldn’t help yourself from peeking up at him sitting across the table from beneath your lashes.

He was chewing and he chewed in silence for so long you had thought the whole idea was forfeit before you’d even had a chance to bring it up. But then he stopped, and swallowed, and smiled.

“Do you need lunch money?” You’re openly staring at him now, eyes sitting dead in your sockets and blank, mouth hung slightly open as your brain works to piece together the connection between what was supposed to be your brilliant, long-labored-over opener to his spontaneous, out of complete left field, inquisitive response.

“D-do I need—? No.” Your synapses finally fire and you smile back at him, genuine, relieved. “No, I got it.”

“Good” is his response. Like that’s just the end of it— so many questions remained. Like this was something previously discussed— it was not. Like this was the plan all along— since when? Like you hadn’t spent hours and hours silently agonizing over how to approach this very subject after Friday’s catastrophic turn of events.

Just like that then? He was going to cut you loose? You know you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth but fuck, this is nothing short of astonishing to you. You can almost hardly believe it. He’s letting you go back to work? With like… other people? Normal people? People who you could spill your heart and guts out to? You know it’s there somewhere, somewhere in there, buried in his sudden good grace is a catch. You don’t even know how to begin to hunt it out. Should you dare?

You decide not to risk it. You’ve spent the last three days in a strange sort of twilight zone. Somewhere between when you’d lain down to sleep and midnight on the previous Thursday evening you’d somehow stepped through a portal, betwixt one realm and the next, a thinny if you will, into a new world where you’d suddenly gained a husband, a lover, a whole and complete life partner with whom you now effortlessly share your life and every single waking— and un-waking for that matter, moment with in the most absurd, unrehearsed kind of domestic bliss.

And now… well now you intend to pop said bubble. He must know you mean to pop said bubble. There’s just no way he doesn’t know you’re going to try it again. You have to. You must. There is no other option, this is not a discussion. You need your life back. Yours. Not this strange alternate version you’ve woken up in.

You’ve had a long and honest talk with your inner self and what it’s all boiled down to is you need help. After some discussion it has come to your attention that you are in fact, a coward. You can not, of your own free will and for your own honest to goodness sake, call the police. You can’t do it. You’ve tried and picked up the phone and then you’ll chicken out or lose the words that you desperately need to say or Danny will call to you from the other room, or you’ll hear him coming down the hallway like he just knows what you’re already up to and you’ll panic and throw the phone down like it’s burned you.

You can’t do it anymore. You can’t. It’s going to take a second pair of hands. Ones not attached to your body. Erin or Marcy. You’ve already decided you won’t give them details. You can’t possibly be expected to air your dirty laundry to anyone you’ll have to show your face to on the day to day. You’ll simply tell them you need help and leave it at that. You will stress the point across very carefully that the police need to be involved. You will make it emphatically clear without giving them specifics. You will make it known that it is paramount that they simply listen, ask no questions and do as you’ve asked. They will get it. They will inherently understand. They must.

You will make no mention of Roseville’s Ghost. There is no need to stir people up into a frenzy. This will work. It is fool proof. It must be. Your weary brain doesn’t have the capacity to consider anything else.

“There are a few ground rules…” He adds, cutting your thoughts off like he already knows what you’re planning. You do your best to keep your expression neutral as you look up from your plate to meet his eyes again.

“Mmhmm..” You hum out, noncommittally.

“I will drive you to work tomorrow morning and I will pick you up from work tomorrow evening.” You nod, accepting those conditions while silently hoping that’s all. But of course it’s not.

“And, I don’t want you talking to Marcy or Erin or John.” You roll your eyes, you can’t help it.

“You can’t possibly expect me to— wait… John? You mean to tell me I can’t speak to my literal boss while I’m at work?” He nods, having expected pushback.

“He has a thing for you.” You sit across from him, lips parted as you process what he’s saying, before you dismiss the idea entirely with a shake of your head and a look of mild disgust.

“What? No. That’s ridiculous, Danny. My boss does not have a thing for me. No.” But he’s nodding his head and giving you that look like you’re a student having trouble working through a troublesome math problem that should have been easy to understand.

Your eyes meet his as he crosses his arms in front of him on the tabletop.

“He's the one that hired you, then he was also the one who got you that promotion only five months into working there and, he's the one who moved your cubicle to the one right across from his, even though it was already occupied by Charlene…” You had never thought about that one before. Was that why Charlene had always seemed so cold to you?

“And he’s the one who’s been stealing your hair ties from your desk drawer.” You recoil at that last one, eyes wide and head cocked to the side as he just casually drops that little nugget of information. How the fuck does he know all this?

“Don’t make me jealous, doll. I can get real paleolithic when I get jealous.” You skate right over that statement and counter it with a question.

“And how exactly do you expect me to do my job without speaking to my coworkers or my.. boss?” The last word comes out a half second late and wrapped in a thin veneer of repulsion as you spit it out. Danny’s smile widens and you’re unsure if it’s due to that fact or something else but if it is, he doesn’t mention it.

“I expect you to give your boss the note I’ve constructed from your general physician’s office that explains while you are free and clear to return to work, it is advised that you keep your personal space contact with others to a careful minimum and, I expect you to do any and all of the required communication between you and any of your coworkers using your work email system, which I will be monitoring throughout the day.” He says, matter-of-factly— almost as rehearsed, it seems, as your carefully constructed argument on returning to work was going to be before he’d surprised you with his easy acquiescence.

“Do you understand the rules of our agreement, sweetheart? Speak now or forever hold your peace.” You scowl at him, but there is really no way around this. You need this to happen. You have to get the ball rolling, and this is the initial push. Reticently, you nod.

“Good. Let’s get dressed. It just wouldn’t do to be late on your first day back at work, would it?”

It was a foggy Florida morning, dew shimmered on the sharp tipped grass, turning your lawn into an early morning jewel showcase set to rival anything Swarovski could hope to arrange.

All through the night it'd been raining cats and dogs, the perfect sleeping weather, but like it knew and bent to the will of the waking world, it'd stopped just after dawn and dropped a foggy veil over the sky to cover its unending onslaught of tears.

The sun tried its damndest to shine its brilliance through the misty cloud cover and somewhat managed, throwing tiny rainbows of light through the air in periodic kaleidoscope flashes that would have stolen your breath away on any other ordinary day. But today you didn’t have the luxury of wonder.

Danny was dressed in similar style to what he wore on his way out the door on Friday. Same scheme, different theme. Today’s was blue. A deep navy and a contrasting baby hue that crisscrossed over and under and back over each other again and again, complimented with watch and belt and shoe in a deep mahogany brown. Your nostrils flared as he passed by on your right to gain ground between you and the car so he could go ahead and pull open your door for you before you could do something as barbaric as having to complete the task yourself.

The smell of his cologne is something you were shamelessly becoming addicted to. It was different from the one he wore on your first encounter with him. That had been sharper, definitely cheaper but no less alluring. Whether by the endorphins from the electric experience itself or just actually formulated differently you were unsure but there was a primal note to it that made your blood surge. This that he wore to work was subtler, gentler on the nose but distinct. You found yourself almost huffing it as the two of you drove to work in simple silence.

The last thing you wanted to appear was nervous, didn’t want him to think anything was amiss so you leaned into the familiar scent of him and how it grounded you and tried pointedly not to think too much about that fact in and of itself. At least until the car came to a prolonged stop and the engine died down and then cut off completely and you opened your eyes upon the familiar sight of the entrance to your building's parking garage.

He had driven you to work today, but not in your car, no, he had driven you to work today in his. A random happenstance of good fortune you will smile back on in the future.

It was a plain, bland, silver Honda Accord. Practical, affordable, nondescript, see a hundred and one of them in an hour on any given day kind of vehicle and you assumed that was by design.

Taking his car also meant taking a quick walk to work, only through the parking garage entrance, past the little automated parking-pass kiosk and bumper arm and then a brisk seven hundred foot walk to the elevators located at the back of the parking deck. It wasn’t far. You could handle it.

You lifted your purse into your lap, stainless steel water bottle secured in one hand and reached for the door handle with the other only to feel Danny’s own warm, steady palm slip overtop of yours, purse straps still clutched tightly in your grip. It takes a second for you to calm your heart before you turn to look back at him only to find him already staring at you. You try to keep the venom from your voice as you ask him softly. “What?”

He smiles at you, that brilliant, radiant one that shows off his teeth and does things to you that you will not even speak aloud in the confines of your own thoughts.

“I just wanted to say I hope you have a good day. I’ll be around to pick you up around five after." You nod. It’s the smartest of your responses. Then you’re up and out of the car and he’s pulling away from the curb. Just like that. As you enter the parking deck your breathing picks up, your heart feels like it skips beats. You exhale shakily through your parted lips and curse at yourself softly beneath your breath. Get it together. But you can’t, you’re so nervous.

Your thoughts race a million miles a minute through your head, none of them discernible. The only constant is the plan. Get on the elevator. Push the button for your floor. Endure the elevator’s one minute and fifteen second ride. Get off the elevator. One left, one right, two cubicles down to Marcy’s workspace or another left and two more cubicles down to Erin’s, whichever was occupied and spill. And to hell with Danny's rules, he's not omnipotent, he can't possible know every single little thing that would happen while you're at work.

It’s only until you stop before the elevator, finger out and poised to call the car back down to the garage level that your face drops, steadfast determination drooping into dismay laced surprise as you only now realize where you are.

The southpaw entrance, not so lovingly named by you and your coworkers on account of the fact that it was beat to hell and back. The elevator shuddered as it took what felt like hours to reach down to the parking garage level— making it a suicide mission to even consider taking it up in the mornings, which would almost certainly cause you to be late. And none of the cameras in that quadrant of the garage even worked— making vacating the building through that exit upon leaving work for the evening a genuine health hazard, unless you just liked being robbed at knife point for fun.

Sure, complaints were made, a few police reports filed, there were even talks of a strike but it never amounted to much more than an overflowing stack of papers haphazardly collected in a heap on the back end of an empty desk in the HR department, their final destination.

For the building itself was owned by a prickish property investor out of Santa Monica who’d placed a bid on the building back when it was under construction on a whim as part of a rather whimsy-filled ‘business trip’ to Miami and who’d been rather perturbed six months later to find he’d won the auction and the building was now his.

A whiskey fueled impulse that was now his neglected, cross-country, problem child. A shoddily constructed, corner-cut, money pit that he couldn’t seem to get rid of by any means less than a shit ton of kerosene and one of his fancy cigar matches, but he knew he was being observed rather closely by a watchdog subsidiary specializing in fraud. So in turn, the building sat baking under the blazing heat of the Florida sun, decaying in a whole manner of fascinating new ways for those employed to the building to discover all on their own.

You cursed, and loudly at that, there would certainly be no one around to hear it. The other perfectly working elevator was on the complete other side of the parking garage. If you hustled, you could still catch up with Marcy, or maybe even Erin in time to clue them in on the real truth behind your absence.

You spun around and choked on a gasp, your feet shuffling backwards and away from the man whose strong, tall form cast a shadow long and wide enough to shade your whole body against the artificial fluorescent sun buzzing overhead, engulfing your whole body in its wake.

“Josh what— what the fuck are you doing here?” Your pulse quickened, beating triple time and at this rate you were unsure it could go any faster than this. The anxiety you’d felt pressing down on you all morning increased tenfold. You were beginning to sweat, even despite the morning’s misty chill. You backed up but the cold, unyielding doors of the elevator shaft sat unmoved at your back.

The cold steel of it against the hot backs of your calves makes your breath catch in your teeth and you hiss, genuinely hiss in a sharp inhale as your mind races to catch up with the situation you’re now knee deep in.

“Typical of you I guess. To look so fucking surprised to see me, like you’ve forgotten me already. Is that it then? Am I old news already, hmm?” And there’s inflection in there when he says it, like there’s a pun in there you should catch.

“Josh I— I don’t have time for.. for this.” And you just can’t bring yourself to pull away from the elevator doors, like they’re magnetic or covered in glue. Safety is just past the absolute raging lunatic that is your ex standing before you and about two hundred feet off to the left but you know you’ll never get that far, not if Josh has anything to do with it.

“That’s typical of you too. You never make time for anyone else either. It’s only you. You, you, you. Well and that new little boy toy of yours I guess.”

“Josh—“

“Shut the fuck up!” He shouts making you jump anew, and the harsh echoes of it bounce off the solid concrete walls caging you in and bounds off in all directions in muted imitations of itself; like birds of some lost tropical paradise who haven’t heard new speech in a long time and stole the phrase to parrot it back to themselves in long distorted mimic caws, each a little different and a little further from the truth than the last. When he speaks again it’s calmer, quieter without somehow losing any edge.

“Shut. The fuck. Up. I am soo.. so fucking sick and tired of you talking to me like that. Like… like I’m a fucking child or something. You used to never talk to me like that. Do you remember? Do you remember that? Or is your head stuffed so far up your own cunt you just fucking can’t.”

Your mind knows it’s beyond stupid, borderline asinine to lift your hands up before him in a placating gesture meant to try and calm him down as you call his name again, softer this time. Did he not just tell you to both a) stop talking to him like a child and b) to in fact, shut the fuck up? But you can’t help yourself, you do it anyway.

“Josh—“ And that's as far as you get. You didn’t think of anything else to say beyond his name because you weren’t even sure if he’d let you get that far, but he did. Despite his previous statement it seems he means to hear you out as he waits in growingly impatient silence for what else it is that you have to say to him. His defined brow ridge deepening in crease second by seeming second.

“You don’t work here anymore.” There it is ladies and gentlemen, the response of the century. A brain dead statement of the utterly most fucking obvious. But it’s all you can say. It’s the god honest truth. It’s also the absolute stupidest thing you could say to him currently, as his following response is quick to point out.

“Yeah. And whose fault is that?” Yours. The answer to his question is that it’s yours even though it’s not. He was the one who got caught snooping through your work laptop after hours, even after he was put on probation from his IT job for previously violating company privacy policies, violating your privacy by looking through your work emails, following your initial split. The blame lies with him, though you’re sure he doesn’t see it like that.

It seems the answer is rhetorical though as he continues on despite your lack of an answer.

“All you do is take and take and take. Do you ever stop to think of other people? Anyone at all besides yourself? Just fucking once.” Ohh yes, take and take and take but you got him this job, you got him the loan which got him the down payment on his car and you got him about 40 bucks give or take from your savings account every other month for the entire four months the two of you had been together because he ‘really, really needed it’. But you know you take, and take, and take besides all that giving. All that giving doesn’t count for jack shit.

But all of these facts fly by in your mind unheeded because right now the important thing is that Josh is between you and the working elevators, Josh is standing between you and your literal freedom and more than that Josh is getting closer.

He keeps going, rambling madness, halfcrazed statements and accusations that both blow you away and confuse you more and more with each one he spits out at you with a vehemence that is growing increasingly alarming.

“Don’t even try and lie to me this time. I’ve seen it all with my own eyes. You and him. You and that fucking little news boy. That sniveling, pathetic, simp piece of shit you replaced me with.” It vaguely registers he’s talking about Danny. What doesn’t register is how he could possibly know anything at all about you and Danny, besides the fact that he just dropped you off at work maybe, seeing as how you’ve been shut in with him this whole weekend in your home and there’s no way he could possibly have known that unless… well unless you had two stalkers but well, that’d just be absurd.

He keeps stepping closer and closer and then he’s in your face and his large paws are pressing in on either side of your shoulders and he’s encroaching further and further into your personal space and before you have a chance to say anything about that his right hand closes around your throat.

You think for just a moment that that’s all he’ll do but then he squeezes and your eyes widen in recognition. There’s a crazed look in his eyes, one you’ve never seen before and suddenly you don’t even quite recognize the man in front of you. He’s turned into a complete stranger, like one of those crazy picture books where you tilt the page and the image before you magically shifts into an entirely different image. You try to call out his name, get him to come back to himself but you cannot speak, cannot utter even a single syllable and he doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon.

Your field of vision narrows, your lungs feel as if they’re constricting in your chest. Your hands come up to curl around his, clawing at the flesh of his wrists to try and relieve some of the pressure he’s applying and that’s when he pulls you forward and slams you back against the elevator doors.

Your head hits the steel and it smarts but what really stings is the way your teeth come crashing down together from the force, catching your tongue between them and drawing fresh blood that you instantaneously feel begin to pool in the cavern of your mouth, filling the gaps like grout between the tiles of your teeth.

There are moments in our existence— intrinsic, defining moments, where the very fabric of our lives splits. Landmarks upon which we mark the otherwise flat and monotonous landscape of our collective time upon this earth and dividing them into two categories; before and after. 

One moment Josh stood before you, slowly draining the life from your body with nothing more than a good, firm grip and then the next; the after, when his neck took on a sudden, viscous twist and then you could actually see his honest to god spinal cord jutting out grotesquely from the column of his throat.

It pushed rebelliously against the prison of his skin, distended at an unholy angle as it tore free from the structure of his spine. In the next moments your air came back to you in one big whoosh and both you and Josh were falling; you to your knees, and he like an overstuffed potato sack tossed from a tree.

You screamed, or you thought you screamed, in your mind it was a scream. In reality it was more of a coughing fit and a series of choked guttural sobs. The ache of your knees, despite the force of your full weight falling down upon them after their collision course with the concrete, was nothing but dull background noise in comparison to the raw, constricted, throb of your throat that you could already feel beginning to puff up in patterns you didn’t even need a mirror to identify as the indentations where each of his individual fingers had gripped.

It was like he was still choking you, even as you could see him laid out and utterly and completely motionless on the floor before you; and even that took a backseat to the hot, stinging throb of your tongue which had now swelled to the point where you were unsure how your mouth was possibly still able to contain it.

But if you thought you were really feeling it, nothing held a candle to how ole Josh had it. There was a pool of blood beginning to puddle from the constant, slow trickle at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were blank and glassy and as docile as you’d ever seen them. If you had thought before that his neck was hard to look at, the fall had only magnified the effect. His spine pushed so hard against the cage of his neck that the skin had taken on an elastic quality that threatened to have you yarfing at the sight of it. He was dead. There was no beating around the bush. The elephant in the room was dead, and bloating, and already starting to attract flies.

You only finally notice the only other human being in the parking deck when he stoops down to your level, making you stiffen. It’s then that you register the deep, rich mahogany dress loafers that had been just in frame of your peripherie since the fall. The subtle but pleasant sting of cologne wafting up over the rich, coppery notes of blood just beginning to fill your nostrils.

You hiccup then, and a little blood spills from between your lips and down your chin as you try to speak. Just his name but you can’t even get that far and all you’re doing is staring. Staring at Josh through terror wide eyes. And then you try to say his name, like you’re Jesus Christ himself and all it would take is to speak his name aloud and he would rise and wake and walk the earth again, but you can’t even do that either. It’s only more hiccups and more blood trickling past your lips and down your face and that’s when Danny’s face finally floats into view and he’s talking.

He’s talking but you can’t understand what he’s saying, it’s just lost in the drone of this terrible ringing in your head that’s smothering everything else and then he’s pulling you up by your elbows and he’s handing you your purse, and when did you even drop that anyway? Sometime in the struggle it must’ve been. You look back down at Josh and he’s still just as dead as ever and you finally register this is the first time you’ve ever seen a dead person before. He’s dead. And the thought keeps bumping against the fore wall of your skull, like it's made of rubber, like you can’t absorb it into your brain, you just simply can’t compute it. There it is but you can’t comprehend it. He is dead.

“Doll.” The roar subsided and your eyes lift away from Josh, finally you look away from Josh and there’s Danny. Darkly patient Danny. And he’s smiling. Why is he smiling? How can he be smiling? Does he not see it? Oh god, it’s been approximately forty seconds and you’re already referring to Josh as an it. He’s not even a person to you anymore. What is wrong with you?

And you look back down at him then, to try and remember him as he was, back when things were still good and he’d bring you bagels from that coffee shop you loved but had moved locations all the way across town, back when he’d hang around in the office when you had to work late and there wasn’t a single soul left but the two of you leaving out of the building, how he’d walk you home sometimes before either of you had a car even though he lived in the opposite direction and you’d both hold hands, gently swinging in time with your gait as you both marveled over the beauty of the evening’s stars.

It didn’t last and it wasn’t great but it was yours. A shared thing. And while you wouldn’t say it was love to you well, maybe it was to him. It had been ten months since then without a word and you had thought he had at least moved on, but maybe he never did. Maybe he didn’t matter to you, but to him, maybe you were meant to have been Josh’s forever. 

You tried to remember him for what he was and not what he is now. Just a dead body bleeding out on a cold concrete floor. With no more life and no more breath and nobody to give a shit about him either. You try to reconcile the image of your ex with the man who confronted you today in an empty parking garage but you can’t, it just doesn’t connect. But Danny reached out then and slipped a hand beneath your chin to slide up and cradle your face, pulling Josh conveniently out of view. Out of the present and into the rearview.

“No, no. Don’t look at him. Look at me, doll. Can you do that for me? Look at me sweetheart.” And you do, it's suddenly like you’ve regressed to the age of five somehow and you feel so small and lost and there’s Danny and he’s looking at you and he’s smiling and it’s nice and he makes it seem like it’ll be ok, you can’t possibly understand how but Danny makes it seem like everything will be ok so you believe him, just for now you listen and believe him.

“Come on, babygirl. It’s time to go. Let’s go, yeah?”

The biggest step is around Josh. It takes Danny leading you away from the scene, his steady hands grasping your elbows as he pulls you gently away from the dead man slumped in the parking garage of your previously shared workplace. You want to look back at him but every time you try Danny is there, patiently capturing your attention again with a gentle squeeze to your elbows or the soft call of your name.

Cooing to you softly in reassuring tones as he leads you away from the scene of the crime, gently folding you into the back of the Honda before climbing in the driver's side seat. He calmly starts the car and drives away, if you were coherent you’d see the way his eyes shift off the road and into the rearview periodically, checking up on you.

The drive home is one you don’t remember. It’s like a portal had opened up between the parking garage at work that led directly to your driveway, and that’s really saying something because you loathe the drive each day to work, especially in the mornings when everyone is scrambling to get there. It’s as if the world itself has swallowed you whole. In fact, you really wish it had.

Then the next thing you know Danny is pulling you out of the car. One hand on the small of your back, the other holding one of your own as he leads you out of the car and back towards your door. At some point during the ride it had once again begun to rain.

You passed the soft blooms of the gardenias lining the walkway, their heads craned up to mark you, their large heads bobbing with the force of each drop of rain, making them resemble a crowd of rowdy cajolers, heckling a death row inmate as they pass from prison to prison bus. You can almost hear their cries of outrage in the driving rain, their petals studded with diamond dew drops like freshly shed tears on their brilliant white faces.

You tracked rainwater past the threshold and all through the entryway, in fading foot trails off the linoleum of the kitchen floor before they stopped abruptly as you crossed into the plush wildlands of your carpeted living room. Steering you by the shoulders, he took you into your bathroom and pulled your purse from your shoulder and after a moment's struggle, pulled the water bottle from your tightly clenched fist to set it down on the vanity before the mirror.

You heard the tap turn on, squeaky metal over squeaky metal and you waited for the harsh brightness of the fluorescents overhead to bathe you in their accusatory glare. You there! Murderer! Complicit! Harbinger! But it never came. He dutifully stripped you, never lingering too long in one spot or the other, simply laid you bare and then after placing one soft, warm hand on your shoulder and the other against the far shower wall, he guided you into the shower stall and under the hot stream, where your resolve crumbled beneath the cleansing tides and you started to sob into your hands, shoulders shaking with the might of your anguish.

You expected him to leave you then. Alone and sobbing in the dark but then the curtain pulled back once more and you felt his presence behind you before strong arms pulled you in.

If you’d had the mental capacity in that moment to wonder, you’d deduce he’d figured out that when you were feeling particularly stressed out or depressed you tended to shower with the lights off. You had always felt detached in the warm dark. Less a person, more like a shadow. And the things that happened in the shadow world bore little consequence in the land of the light. And so in that you turned to him and sobbed against his chest as he cradled you close in his arms and barely audible over the roar of the cleansing waters raining down he spoke to you in soft, cooing tones until it was all expelled and you went silent and placid in his arms.

After which he washed you thoroughly in soft passes and reverence. When he finally pulled you out of the shower and wrapped you in a fluffy towel you felt empty. No anxiety or panic or guilt. Just clean and hollow, an empty vessel waiting to be filled.

You didn’t even jump when the tap came on behind you, nor when your toothbrush clanked softly against the glass rim of the jar that held it as Danny plucked it from its place. The startlement came when the bright white strip of Colgate slid into your field of view, even in the dim, dank, atmosphere of your dark bathroom it seemed to glow effervescently, much too bright for your mood.

But the hand operating the brush was insistent and you hadn’t the gumption to fight anyway as he pushed it past your lips and stooped down, carefully, ever so carefully drawing it to and fro across your teeth, gentle as so not to hurt you. Fronts and backs and sides. Where he even came upon the opportunity to practice this delicate, finesse-required skill you had no idea but a silent part of you was grateful.

Danny had the foresight to brush the foam from your lips every so often with the index finger of the hand not operating the brush and run it under the tap, so that almost all the pink twinged foam was washed away before you had a chance to see it, not that you lifted your eyes to your reflection in the mirror as you rinsed anyway when he was finally finished.

Then you sat there, staring blankly into the center of his chest as he took a comb and meticulously styled your hair into something that vaguely resembled how you normally kept it. When he was done he left the room and for some reason that’s what made you come to a bit. Staring off after him at the cream colored walls where he'd last been as you heard him enter your bedroom before rummaging through your drawers for something new for you to wear.

After a moment, he returned and carefully helped you into some dry clothes before changing into some himself. It was as he dressed that you found the courage to take a peek at your reflection in the mirror. It was awful. The marks where Josh's fingers had been had discolored and marred your skin. You attempted to touch them and winced at even the light contact.

You reached out towards your makeup bag for concealer but stopped halfway and just stared at your reflection in the mirror. It felt too much like covering up a crime, not one committed against you but one you had committed.

Danny pulled you away from the mirror and into the kitchen where he promptly sat you down and set out some painkillers and poured you a glass of juice he insisted you had to drink, but only really got you to take sips from. Anything else just hurt too much.

You pulled out your phone from your purse to compulsively check the local news, convinced the incident would be strewn all over the headlines. It wasn't of course. But that didn't stop you from refreshing the page every fifteen seconds to check.

“Where’d you get your phone?”

“This one?” You ask, holding it out a little for emphasis. He nods in affirmation.

“My ex helped me pick it out, actually.”

“Oh really? Can I see it?”

You shrug. “Sure.” You hand it to him and the second your hand leaves the device he puts it between both his hands and cracks it clean in half, making you nearly jump up off the stool.

“Danny! What the fuck!! That’s my fucking phone.”

“No. That was your fucking tracking device. Did you ever stop to wonder how he knew exactly where to find you? Well that’s how." You stared down at the two cracked halves in awe and bafflement, swallowing hard and feeling the pain running up your larynx in waves as Danny shook his head and rubbed at his lips compulsively.

“I saw him and I knew, I just knew what was happening. And I couldn’t let that happen I mean just the history between you two and I knew he had no business being anywhere near your building after he was fired, it’s only been what, four months since that whole fiasco; I knew he was up to no good and I had to do something, I had to help you, I had to make sure nothing bad was going to happen and oh my god what is happening to me? You… you’re bad. You’re so good but ohhh you’re so, so very bad for me.” 

You focused in on the beginning of his spiel, not even willing to acknowledge the rabbit hole towards which that last part was clearly headed. “Wait, wait, wait… You’re telling me you knew of him like… like this whole time and- and somehow missed this?”

“Well you could say I’ve been a little distracted, sweetheart. One can only wonder why, hmm?” He asked in the most wooden voice with his eyebrows raised at you in emphasis before continuing.

“I mean, I’ve been aware of him almost right from the start. Sloppy, sloppy work that one did. Clearly you were his first. But no. No, I had no idea he was planning, well.. this.” Of all the things revealed to you in this little chit chat certainly none of them were ever going to make you feel better but that one, well… that one really, really didn’t. You let out an overdue exasperated exhale that did nothing to relieve even an iota of tension that was quickly building back up in your shoulders.

“I had planned to take care of him eventually, this just wasn’t quite the way I would have liked…” 

Your eyebrows pinch together and your face lifts to his in mild confusion. “What do you mean by ‘the way you would have liked’?

“Well all of this actually puts a damper on my plans. I was gonna capture him, bring him here, tie him up, and have you in front of him before executing him personally. It was a whole thing, trust me you would have loved it, doll.” You stand, staring at him, mouth agape but he continues on, unperturbed.

“Of course all of that is ruined now but.. that’s just how it goes I guess.” He finally, finally looks up and seems to register the shock all of this is to you, at least a little.

“I’m sure you had something in mind much more congenial, cause that’s worked out just great so far huh, doll?” You don’t even deem that question worthy of response and turn away from him, hands fisted at your temples to try to get the room to stop spinning for just one damn minute so you can get some kind of grip.

But for a man as observant and perceptive as he, he still has the gall to ask you. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

You can’t even stop yourself from whirling around on him, incredulous. “What’s wrong?! I think the better question would be what isn’t?! Jesus fucking Christ! Two stalkers?! You’re telling me I’ve been oblivious, seemingly ob-fucking-tuse to the fact that two different, completely unrelated men have been watching me in my own home for months?!”

The next words out of his mouth, somehow, despite all you’ve been through on this single, solitary day alone still manage to baffle you.

“You were always safe.” You can’t help yourself, you have to laugh, if you don’t laugh you’ll probably implode because he says it like he truly means it, like he didn’t tell you on that nightmare of an evening only roughly four days ago that he had originally been planning to kill you himself.

But you don’t even want to open that can of worms again, not now. So you just laugh and say “Oh yeah? Well it doesn’t fucking feel like it.”

You turn away from him then, just to breathe and try for the umpteenth time now to get a grip on the shit show that’s become your life. “Jesus Christ.” You mutter under your breath. He doesn’t push the issue, opting instead to change the subject.

“Grab your keys. We’re going out for a few hours.”

You whip back around at him for the sole purpose to glare. “Are you kidding me right now?” His only response is the shake of his head. “Yeah, well, I don’t fucking feel like it.”

“Sorry, doll. I have things to do and I can’t leave you alone so you’re tagging along for today. Non-negotiable I’m afraid.”

“You’re worried I’ll try and call the police.” No sugarcoating or subtlety left in you today, it seems.

“I’m worried about you. Period. Come on.” Textbook case of accusation deflection. Volley. Pivot. Spike. Game, set, match.

You really don’t have it in you to argue, so you snatch your keys off the kitchen table along with your purse and follow him out the door.

The freeway is deserted, probably due to the shitty weather; the rain which just this morning seemed to be letting up had graduated from a solid thunderstorm to full on a deluge.

"I don't know how you're driving in this. We should pull off somewhere." You say, sitting forward a little in the seat to try and get a look up at the sky through the windshield, but all you can see is gunmetal streaks of greyblasted sky between swipes of the windshield wipers doing their best to bat the water from the windshield at regular intervals.

"No, I've driven in a lot worse." He states, nonchalantly which does nothing to relax you.

“Here, put something on.” He said, taking a second to pull one hand off the wheel long enough to toss his phone into your lap. You immediately stiffen. There it sits staring up at you in all its infinite usefulness as you stare down at it with eyes wide and frozen like a seventeenth century puritan seeing the devil in the eyes of the family goat.

“You— you trust me with that?” He takes his eyes off the road for just a split second, just long enough to confirm it’s his phone he’s thrown into your lap and not his knife or something equally sinister with the way you’re reacting— an absolute statute abider when it comes to driving is Mr. Jed Olson.

Satisfied he hadn’t made some kind of egregious blunder he answers with a question of his own.

“What, with the phone itself, or the task of picking out some music?” Without waiting for you to choose, he answers both questions for you.

“I’ve perused through your catalogue of tunes. I know you’re more than capable of selecting something that won't make my ears bleed.” A smile threatens to touch the corners of your lips and you find yourself relaxing just a smidge at his words, enough to make you unstiffen in your seat and reach down to at least pick up his phone.

“And as for the main function of the phone itself, well… we both know what happens when you refuse to play by the rules, doll.” Statute driver or no, he looks over at you for emphasis as he says. “And I will not hesitate to pull this car over on the side of the road and show you and anyone else who happens to drive by for that matter just what happens when you do, even in the pouring rain.”

Without comment you look away from him and go to unlock his phone when you’re prematurely stopped short by a password prompt.

“Pin?” You ask him as your thumbs hover patiently over the keypad.

“0,3,6,5,5,0” He promptly answers as your thumbs move to input the numbers accordingly, silently relieved that it’s not something cringey as fuck like your date of birth or something. But your curiosity simply refuses to stop haranguing you.

“03, 65, 50? 36….55…? 3,655… 365, 5… what’s the significance there?” You see a smile tug at the corner of his lips as you navigate through his apps to find his music.

“3,6,5,5. The zeros are just placeholders. It’s mnemonic. I’m terrible with remembering passwords for menial things actually so.. it helps.”

You finally find the app you’re looking for and pull it up as you ask. “Ok, I'll bite. What about the numbers 3,6,5 and 5 is memorable to you?”

“It’s not the numbers themselves, it’s what they spell. 3,6,5,5. D,O,L,L.” Your fingers freeze and you look over towards him, but his eyes remain fixed to the road. You re-lock his phone, unable to help yourself and pay close attention as your thumbs glide over each digit. 

0,3,6,5,5,0. 0,D,O,L,L,0. 

And the phone unlocks, right back to his collection of music. That sits with you the rest of the trip, as steady and as constant as your seatbelt sat snuggly against your chest.

You don’t comment on it any further, and are in fact thrown completely off the topic as your eyes catch on the title of a readymade playlist, speaking it aloud as your eyes scan over the text for a second time.

“Songs to Bleed out to?” You read off, an inquisitive inflection twisting the words as they leave your lips.

“Contingencies, contingencies, babygirl. A plan for every possibility.” 

“Including destruction?” You ask as you stop scrolling through the list momentarily to look and see if he's serious.

“Especially destruction.” He smiles at you, the second time he’s taken his eyes off the road the entire time and it’s to smile at you and god help you, you smile back. 

And it’s strange to you how you find yourself smiling when only a few hours ago it seemed like you’d never smile again. Guilt suddenly locks your heart into a vice and squeezes, shame oozing from the cracks the action conceives. A man died today. A man died because of you. How dare you feel such a light hearted thing as joy? How dare you smile in the face of death. It should have been you. Should have been you. Should have been you. Should have been y—

“Hey.” You come to. The rain drives on, the road rolls on ahead in the windshield and out behind you in the rear view, the phone sits sound and indifferent in the palm of your left hand, your right hovering seemingly indecisively over the lit screen. Your surroundings and circumstances and turmoils sit stoic and unchanged, and you are left moored in the present right along with them just as the rest of us are, day in and day out.

“Where did you go?” You shake your head at him and pick a song at random and as the first notes come wisping out of the speakers you lock his phone to stop yourself from fidgeting with it and answer in a soft, neutral tone.

"Nowhere."

As the song progresses the depressive, guilty thoughts fade and for a little while at least, they stay away; although that could be attributed to the way you start to pay more attention as your surroundings begin to shift. Danny takes the next exit into the rougher, more industrialized section of town. When you realize it’s not just some kind of detour and find he’s only driving deeper and deeper into the heart of it, you can’t contain it in you anymore, you have to ask.

“Danny, where are we going?” His eyes never leave the road as he answers.

“My place.” The car is thrown into shadow as it passes beneath the overpass and then he turns into what seems to be a side alley that the car very nearly doesn’t fit down. In fact, you’re fairly certain you couldn’t throw open the car door and climb out even if your life depended on it, and it was starting to make you feel claustrophobic. You tell yourself it’s only to shake off the feeling as a shiver rips down your spine.

“Danny..”

“Just a little further, doll. Have some faith.” The car pulls into a strange kind of little alcove, the building above suddenly jutting out two floors up, leaving the car in the dank shadow of a squared off, brick overhang. It gives the surrounding area a strange cavernous-like sensation, protecting you from the driving rain but it still doesn’t manage to make you feel any safer.

He parks the car and climbs out and before he can get around your side to do it for you, you push open the car door and climb out yourself, your shoes sinking down into a half inch of water, wherever you were, somewhere they had a serious drainage problem.

Off to the far side of the overhang was a black car, pulled neatly into its space. It was another Honda you noted, a Honda Civic to be exact. Newer, sleeker, meaner in appearance.

"You have neighbors?" You ask him, trying to imagine the kind of person who would move in to a place like this even as you ask a man who has done exactly that.

"No, no. That's my second car." That gives you pause.

"Your second car?" Jesus fuck. You can hardly afford the one.

"Well, techincially speaking what we drove around in today was Jed's car. That baby right there is my car." He corrects as he tips you a wink. Ohhh you can only imagine all the things he's been up to in that one. You noted the trunk looked huge in comparison and the thought alone gave you a little chill. You clear your throat and end the conversation there as he leads you past a door, up a singular flight of stairs and into his apartment.

It’s actually kind of cool, despite everything. It’s something that fifteen year old you would have loved and sworn to live in when you grew up. Well… almost. The apartment was large and spacious, or at least it would have been if it were clean. The walls were the same brick as they’d been on the outside and as such gave the room no insulation of any kind, making it surely colder than fuck in the winter and hotter than hell in the summer, but since it was a rainy spring midafternoon in central Florida the room was a balmy, even seventy degrees.

Saying the space was cluttered was a bit of an understatement. There was some trash strewn about. Candy wrappers and take out and pizza boxes, along with an assortment of empty energy drink and soda cans spilling out from the trashbin at the foot end of one of the kitchen counters. But that’s usually typical of any single man’s living space around Danny’s age.

There were also papers quite literally everywhere. Magazines, article clippings, newspapers and photos, god the photos must’ve outnumbered all the rest three to one. Hung up on the walls and spilled out over any and all of the flat surfaces occupying the room.

The desk in the far corner, both the coffee and bedside tables, the small round kitchenette in the other far corner, even the bed had its own slew, despite being the least cluttered of the bunch and still unmade at that, the duvet and sheets clumped together in a heap at the foot of its king-sized, simple, metal frame.

“It certainly isn’t much, that even I know, but it’s home.” He drops the keys down on the catchall table by the door. And though the thought did cross your mind to snatch them up to try and make a sort of hasty getaway, your mind wandered back to the alleyway he’d entered through and you'd wager that your odds of successfully circumventing it were exactly slim to none.

So instead you followed him further into the room and waited patiently as he cleared off a space on the couch for you to sit and then sat back as comfortably as you could manage while he flitted about the room, gathering this page or that into a collective pile, seemingly destined for a manila folder he’d set out beforehand.

It wasn’t quite like you to take up the role as conversation starter in any social setting, never mind one as obscure as this but with the oppressive silence and the driving rain against the brick outside as your only alternatives, you found yourself priming up to speak.

“How long have you lived here, then?” Stupid, meaningless question. What difference did it make and why would he tell you anything about himself anyway? He’s a serial killer living a double life for fucks sake, odds are he’s not going to be much of the sharing type.

“Roughly three years, it’s not my first place and it certainly isn't where I plan to settle.” Wow, he’s actually answered you, and even elaborated a little further still.

“It’s not?” He smiles, brief but bright.

“Shit no. I’ve always liked the idea of an honest to goodness brick and mortar house. Maybe some land. I like to sprawl and I don’t really care for neighbors.”

Well at least that figures. But if you’d thought the conversation was getting along pleasantly enough, the next question that floats off your lips stupidly but nevertheless easily enough stops it in its well meaning tracks.

“So.. is the whole Jed deal like a split personality thing orrr..” He stops mid stride to look at you, probably the only time you’ve ever managed to catch him by surprise with something and it’s clear.

“Wh-ugh! Doll. Are you telling me you believe the guy that slips into the Mickey Mouse costume everyday at Disney World goes home after a long grueling day at work to his anthropomorphic mouse wife and goes ‘Ho Ho! Minnie, what’s for supper, dear?’” You just stare at him after that for a moment because while it wasn’t what you’d call a perfect metaphor, you couldn’t for the life of you in that moment construct an argument against it. He didn’t give you time to either way.

“No, of course you don’t. It’s a costume. A carefully constructed facade. A necessity that facilitates us to be able to live our preferred lifestyles. It keeps those with delicate sensibilities at ease and happy as we walk amongst them.” 

You are left speechless as your brain struggles to follow him over this bizarre mental bridge he had so readily painted for you. Did he really just compare himself, a seasoned, murder-hungry, sociopath, to an iconically beloved children’s mascot?

But apparently even that wasn’t enough of an offense to him because as soon as those words leave his lips he leans over the back of the couch and kisses the top of your head, like a parent often will after imparting one of life’s great many seldom spoken secrets upon a young mind, and it leaves you unsure which out of the two of you leans more to the left side of sane. He pauses briefly and then continues.

“To answer your previous question, no. I may be a little crazy but I know I am not that particular flavor of it.”

With everything seemingly in order, he slips the Manila folder into his messenger bag and breathes out a sigh he’d had pent up in his lungs. After a moment's consideration he settles down in the arm chair across from the couch you’re on and takes a good, long, examining sweep over you. His eyes raked down your face, over your tensed shoulders and onto your hands, tightly clasped and settled stiffly into the seat of your lap.

“How are you holding up?” He asks. He keeps his voice steady and casual but you can hear an undernote of concern there. You tell him you’re fine. Because you are. Absolutely fine that is. And it occurs to you to ask yourself of what concern is it to him anyway? So you tell him again, firmer this time; and he gets this funny look on his face, his brows scrunch in and his lips draw in between his teeth in a thin line. He’s looking at you like you’re a problem that needs solving and you’ve seen how he solves problems so you smile at him for good measure but your smile is hard and feels skewed on your face and you know if it feels skewed to you it must look utterly insane to him.

He sighs and stands up and your heart leaps in your chest and your hands clench down tighter over themselves in your lap but you stay still, stark still like a deer in the headlights because if you flinch now it will show weakness and predators feed on weakness and if there’s one thing you know him to be it’s predatory. You’ve seen the evidence, now with your very own eyes.

Eyes. Josh’s eyes, first angry and crazed, then stagnant and forever moored in their sockets. They’ll never light up with laughter or darken with lust or even fill with tears ever again. A hand is suddenly on your shoulder and you half expect it to be Josh, his last effort to cling to life. To cheat death you must take his place, the reaper needs his pound of flesh and it should have been you. Should have been you. Should have been you.

“Come here.” And it’s not Josh, of course it isn’t. Josh is dead. Danny killed him and Danny is here, here to comfort you and bring you in. He pulls you up off the couch and into a hug and his arms wrap around you so perfectly that you forget all about the fear of him you’d been all but shaking with just a moment before. Yes, he had killed Josh, but Josh had been hurting you. More than that to call a spade a spade. He had been trying to kill you and Danny had killed him. Danny had saved you. These arms, these same arms that had shown such violence now offer you solace, tenderness. So you melt into them.

And so what if you allowed yourself to lean on him? Just for this moment, just this once? Was it really so bad to need a moment's reprieve? To not have to carry it around all by yourself all the time? Was there not more strength in admitting when you needed support? To yield to the caution signs before you crashed and burned. To not let yourself be crushed and broken by things you know will crush and break you. Does it really matter that he's a sociopathic murderer? Well… the jury is still out on that one. And it seems it’ll stay that way as he leans down and captures your lips with his and then the two of you are stumbling back towards his bed.

Killer or savior? Or is it less black and white than that? More like a mottled grey. Such as life. Your back makes contact with the bed and the springs in the box frame beneath bounce and reverb with your weight. You breathe out all in a huff as it so very gently steals the air from your lungs and it comes out in a startled giggle you hadn’t meant to make.

He climbs over top of you then and your hands come up to push against his chest instinctively. You go to push him off of you but then he starts kissing softly above your collarbone, right around your neckline and your stomach does a little flip in your abdomen; sending waves of sensation down your body and a rush of blood to your head.

That head high sets your nerves alight in a way that has you drawing in air sharply and everything around you suddenly feels vibrant and full of color. His dark maroon bedding is redder, the sky outside that you can see peaking through the slats in the blinds from your upside down perspective has stopped spitting rain and is brighter, the top of his head, trailing kisses as he moves lower is browner. You bet if you were to run your fingers through those disheveled locks they'd be softer.

"This is all my fault." He whispers against your skin as your brows furrow in misunderstanding. Reading the tension in your body he clarifies.

"These." He says, kissing softly at your neck, a frown pulling at his lips as you flinch and cringe away as they brush over the bruises . "These are all my fault."

"It may as well have been my own hands around your neck. I was distracted and it made me careless, I assumed he was harmless." He pulls back from your neck to meet your eyes. "I was wrong." You stare up at him from below, speechless. This was a side of Danny you have yet to see. Those brown eyes of his bore down on you from above, fiercely intense as he continues.

"All of this is very new to me still, I'm still learning what is and is not appropriate." His eyes search your face before he leans down to kiss you softly. "What is and is not acceptable." He adds before leaning down to kiss you again, lingering a second longer this time. "I will never let someone get that close to you again." His arms slip down your sides on either side, following the course of your dips and curves.

“Wait. Wait, wait. What are you doing?”

“Distracting you.” He says between kisses planted between each and every one of your ribs as he passes them on his descent.

“Come on, Danny. No. This is.. it's not a good time.” Of all the valid excuses you could have made this is quite possibly the lamest.

“I'm so damn sorry, doll. Let me make it up to you." He murmurs against the flesh of your tummy, hands planted now on either side of your hips as he pushes the fabric of your top up and away to press hot, relishing, open-mouthed kisses to the soft, succulent skin of your navel. It was very obvious where this was quickly leading.

“No, really. You don’t have to.” He chuckles against you, the tip of his nose dipping down to graze your bellybutton as he laughs at some joke you aren’t yet privy to. "So naive." He adds, tsking softly against you and smiling at the shiver the action produces.

“As much as I love the idea of being this chivalrous knight in that pretty little head of yours. This is really only half as much for you as it is for me. Now be a good girl and lie there and let me eat.” He says as he tugs at the waistband of your jeans, already having undone the button and zipper during your protests.

“Or don’t, I’ve always got a knife somewhere within easy reach.” Your eyes flare with a mix of emotions, half of which you refuse to acknowledge and you draw in a sharp inhale at the threat, your eyes now sweeping to and fro to try and spot a knife handle or the edge of a sheath poking out from every nook and cranny. 

“And besides I’m really starting to think that that particular threat is not as effective a deterrent on you as you’d have me believe.” He adds, and the eerie way he seems to just be able to put words to your innermost thoughts continues to unnerve you but he seems not to notice as he finally shucks you of your jeans. He slides his palms up your calves, into the crooks of your knees and up the inside of your thighs, spreading them.

“Danny—“

“That’s it, babygirl. That’s the only thing for the next half hour or so I want to hear you say.” And with that he dives in, licking a bold stripe up the length of your slit without ceremony, making your thighs jump as you attempt to tense them around his head. One hand instinctively slides down to find purchase in the soft, swept back locks at the top of his head and he hums approvingly into the space between your thighs, making you shiver anew. You were right, his hair is soft and still slightly damp from your shared shower, something you hadn't expected.

Then he really starts in, his tongue swirls over your clit in light, consistent circles and your head falls back against the pillow, surrounding you in his scent. It smells like the cologne he was wearing the first night he came to you; that sharp, cheap, aftershave-like heady smell that’s got you breathing in deep and moaning low in the back of your throat. 

Danny pries your thighs further apart, hands stationed at the insides of your knees so he can gather the most leverage to hold you open with.

He dips lower, the tip of his tongue running down your slit until it dips into your entrance, just a tease, making him chuckle against you at the way it makes your thighs jump, pulling a genuine whimper from you.

You tug at his hair, trying to move him just where you want him and, seemingly content with your level of neediness he dives in, lapping and sucking up every drop of sweetness he's gleaned from you thus far.

You're a constant flow of gasps and moans now, hips never still as your hands shift between gripping the top of his head and fisting the sheets.

It feels as though you're in constant motion but you also feel the bed shifting in ways that don’t sync up with your squirming and it's then that you realize he’s grinding down against the bedding as he eats you out like a man starved.

You grind up into his face and that only makes him redouble his efforts, full on thrusting against the bed as he takes you apart lick by lick.

His blunt nails drag down the insides of your thighs, pulling a high pitched whine from you at the mix of sensations and you can tell he’s enjoying this just as much as you are.

One hand slips back up to hold you still and open for him but the other draws lower down your body and then you feel just the tip of one finger notched at your entrance, not quite pushing in but slowly circling it. Teasing you as he licks and sucks at your clit like it’ll fly away if he doesn’t keep it between his teeth.

You’re bucking up in Danny’s hold but he’s got you held fast, even with just the one arm you’re not going anywhere as he relentlessly drives you towards your release, groaning and growling into your pussy as he does.

You feel his finger finally breach you and then your back is arching up off the bed as far as his arm will allow as you dive head first into your orgasm, body quaking in his hold as you come hard around just the tip of his first finger. You can hardly believe it, you've never been able to come that fast, not even on your own.

But as he drives you through it you feel his finger push deeper before pulling out and when he pushes in again he adds another and then one more, making your eyes spring open and your head lift up off the pillow to look down at him, his head still thoroughly planted betwixt your thighs as he refuses to slow down or give you reprieve. You call out to him but it’s like he can’t hear you— like your thighs have created a vacuum around his ears, letting nothing in. 

And then you’re coming again, it’s hard and fast and overwhelming coming right off the back of your first and your legs shake so hard against him it scares you a little. You scream his name caught in the throes of it and you feel him— just as ardently as you can hear him, actually growl into the space between your thighs, right up against your clit and your head drops back onto his pillow again, and you come down off of your second orgasm breathing in heady puffs of his cologne, branding your pleasure with the scent of him even as he still licks and sucks and nibbles at the heart of you.

You whine and writhe in his grip.

"Danny please." And then you see him shudder, a full body convulsion as he groans out in answer to your plea. Finally, he stops and you can breathe and you can't help but notice that you're both breathing hard, panting together like you'd had a bout of particularly vigorous sex, which make sense for you but…

"Danny… did you just?" And he looks up at you from between your spread thighs with just the most fucked out eyes, his face glistening slightly in the midafternoon gloom filtering in through the blinds, hair mussed and out of sorts from all the ways your fingers have run through and held it in a death grip.

But as disheveled and absolutely wrecked as he looks, he's smiling. Just as wide and toothy as ever he's grinning up at you from between your spread thighs and it sends shivers through you that you have to shudder to repress and hope to god he reads as aftershocks from all the times you've came.

You're unsure if you should be thanking him of its he who should be thanking you. And then he quips in defense to your previous question.

“It’s only premature ejaculation if it was unintentional and doll I can tell you right now everything that just happened, happened exactly as I meant it to.” Well you suppose you can't argue with that one.

And they say chivalry is dead.

“Fuck me, doll. You taste so good I am seriously considering tying you down to this bed and never letting you up again.”

“That’s not funny, Danny.”

“It wasn’t a joke, sweetheart.” Not willing to trust in his control over his compulsions, you pushed up from the bed and slipped out of his grasp, standing up from the bed to pull your panties and jeans up before your eyes took interest in a particular dark offshoot off from the bathroom hallway.

“What’s down there?” You ask, gesturing with a tilt of your head in its direction as you look back at him over your shoulder.

He smiles up at you from his place, still propped up on his elbows on the bed. “Why don’t you go down there and see?” He asks and then he's up off the bed too, deftly changing clothes and cleaning himself up as you peer curiously into the darkened hall.

Ahh, l'appel du vide. What is it about the dark that draws us in? Be wary, so wary, sweet yellow canary there are beasts and devils in those yonder woods.

To satisfy your curiosity or leave things well enough alone? You take your eyes off of him and move towards the dark passageway. Fifteen paces and you’re there, right at the bathroom door before the space takes a sharp turn and drops off into a darkened stairwell. You stop in place and turn to look back at him now changed and fresh, one hand resting on a cool, metal post of the frame.

“You got a flashlight or something?”

“The switch is to your left.” And so it was, you gave it a flick and a bank of lights buzzed into life somewhere below, throwing the darkness into a deep, red haze.

“Ohh no, no way.” You started to turn away from the top riser to retreat only to run right into Danny who was suddenly there, blocking your exit.

“Can’t live in fear all your life, doll.”

You give a little laugh, void of humor and shake your head at him. “No, I’ve seen things like this before on the internet. I know what the dark web is, ok? I’ll pass on the red room shit.”

“I hate to spoil all the fun, but red rooms aren’t real, sweetheart.” You scoff at him.

“Trust me for once.”

Trust him? Right, right. Cause that’s worked out so well. But you look back over your shoulder and that same curious feeling comes back in a soft wave. After all you’d seen today, after how hard it had fucked you up, did you really believe he’d subject you to that shit again just for funsies? You look back at him one more time and his hand gestures to the stairs below, inviting you to proceed.

You give him one last exasperated huff and glare at him with eyes that tell him exactly what you’ll do if he’s lying to you. Not that there would be much you could do in all actuality.

You begin your descent and it’s only after you’ve made it halfway down that the view opens up on something you immediately recognize, even if you’d never physically been in one before. Not a red room— but a dark room. 

Once dismounted from the stairs, the room was mostly bare until you’d reached the far wall, where the room essentially split into two halves. On one side, a series of bins set up in an orderly, sequential line, evenly spaced across the worktop. Interspaced between these a series of breakers and bottles and tongs. The air had the sharp tinge of vinegar burning at the hair of your nostrils.

The opposite side, dry and lined with a few machines, rolls upon rolls of film reel, an easel, and a cute little yellow, plastic egg timer, complete with an adorable, painted-on, chibi egg face— wide toothy grin, rosy red cheeks and all. At the end of the line, a stack that seemed a mile high of some sort of high quality paper, and one of those industrial paper cutters with mounted pull down blade for precision cutting.

Strung between these two seemingly opposing work stations was what looked like a clothesline, but instead of shirts and panties and sheets, these held up row after row after row of photos. Captured, developed and dried.

“Oh wow.” It surely wasn’t what you were expecting, and your apprehension was immediately replaced by wonder. You simply couldn’t possibly have imagined this of all things to be what was lurking in his basement. It made sense all things considered.

He strode past you as you inched further into the space, slowed by wonder as you drank it all in with your eyes.

“It’s amateur, but it serves me.” He replied casually as he reached up and began to unclip the pages one by one. Glancing at them briefly as he collected them from the line. You toured past the first station, careful to keep your hands to yourself as you surveyed the bins and bottles in closer inspection, each carefully labeled. The labels read off like a pop quiz with no questions, only multiple choices. A) Dev B) Stop C) Fix. And you hadn’t even studied. Damn.

The second station seemed easier to understand, with the exception of the machines you made sure not to touch either. They looked sorta like microscopes but different. Maybe like a microscope and one of those old overhead projectors your teachers used to use in school had a baby, and somehow one of those antique accordion-style cameras was involved, or watched, or filmed the whole thing. It was foreign to you, to say the least.

You quickly skirt past them and onto the more familiar end of the line, the end with the paper cutter you could immediately understand the purpose and function of as well as the stack of paper that turned out to be thicker and glossier than you had at first imagined.

Next to these was a wire rack, it coiled around in a kind of square spiral around and around and around, making even, narrowly spaced slots that extended almost to the edge of the table. Each of these held a singular photo and unable to help yourself, but still looking back to Danny for permission first, you grabbed one at random with his nod of ascent carefully by the corner and pulled it up a little from out of the top of the rack to see it.

You recognized the scenery immediately, it’s the town fair. Specifically Saturday night of the town fair as you can see the banner for Forest’s End, the band they’d hired to play as the main attraction for the evening, strung across the poles over the main gate of the grounds. You could spy the ferris wheel in the background with its many multicolored bulbs, the bright lights of the band stand just before it and the rows and rows of fair caravans bunted up to each side of it. Ring Toss Boss and Water Gun Warrior: Alien Invasion and Muscle Mallet Might. Same games, new names.

This year city council decided to give all the games defining names to try and attract more kids, it was only in the recent few years the annual town fair became less craft based and more of a traditionally  hypercommercialized county fair type deal. You supposed it had to do with the recent uptick in Ghostface activity that had discouraged most from going out past dark that had the city desperate to recuperate some of that lost revenue. Leave it to local politicians to look out more for their wallets than the ideal safety of their citizens. But at least they had beefed up security around the grounds as well.

And they were quick to toot their own horns on the subject, eager to point out how this along with the commission of the brand new signs for each booth were generating job opportunities specifically for the community. A way to give back they’d dubbed it, like it wasn’t a one time gig for the sign makers and a three week paycheck for the security guys they’d managed to sign on.

But even so the masses jumped on the bandwagon and the fair had been a huge hit. You’d even been dragged along by Erin and Marcy as it was. And proof in pudding as they say there it was, or there you were more specifically. Just past the gates you caught sight of Erin’s bold blonde to red ombré locks and you there beside her, a bit obscured, and certainly not the focus of the shot but still in frame nonetheless.

As you worked your way through the shots you found more and more of yourself. It was widely interspersed at first, then grew more and more in frequency. Here was you at the Dunk the Duck tank. Then a few scattered wide view shots, then one of you on the Ferris wheel with Marcy, you’d been the unlucky cart to get stuck at the bottom when the ride stopped for a few minutes to give the riders what was supposed to be an advantageous view of the whole fair. Stuck at the bottom you and Marcy had nothing to see except the same crowds of people you’d been used to seeing the whole time but that didn’t matter to you, no matter where you were or what you’re doing, as long as you’re with Marcy, it was always a riot.

And here was the proof, you and Marcy pictured mid crack up, both of you with your eyes closed, bent over the bar holding you in place for the ride, the many hued bulbs casting contrasting glows against your skin, an eternal laughing fit caught in time. Wide lens shots of the band that’d played that night in the middle of their set, then you again at the lemonade stand, a huge 64oz cup full of goodness in hand; and an embarrassingly wide smile on your face to boot. You remembered turning to Marcy right after that and exclaiming over how big the drink was. You wonder if he’d caught that too.

The hesitant smile on your face widens with anticipation as you thumb back another page to see if he had, but when you pull the shot out into view it fades, it drops so fast from your face it’s as if it had walked sheer off a cliff. The dark, warm atmosphere of the basement fell numb against the wicked, spine stiffening chill that raced all the way up from your tailbone to your brain stem.

Danny, who had not been paying much attention before to the shots you’d been perusing and had opted instead to observe the fascinating sight of awe and reverence alight on your face at the sight of his work, felt a similar kind of horror as he watched the sudden shift in your demeanor drain away all the beautiful wonder from your face in an instant. He couldn’t have begun to imagine what would make your face fall in such an abrupt way. The real nightmare fuel was all locked up, or at least, so he had thought. 

James Marsh had died in the early morning hours of May 8th. He’d been working on his ‘65 Ford F100 when Danny had crept into his garage with his camera, his knife and his ill intentions. Danny had watched him for a month before he’d decided it was time to make his design reality. It normally took longer than that for him to narrow down the nuances and expectancies of a person's routine but Mr. Marsh proved to be a pretty straight shooter in every sense of the phrase.

It was easy. He was on his back on his mechanics creeper. An old blues station was on playing on a shitty AM/FM radio, helping to mask Danny’s entrance and old James was none the wiser, singing along as he drained dirty, dark motor oil into a shallow pan. Out of all his victims, James got it the quietest, no matter what the papers said. And Danny should know, he’d both committed the crimes and written the papers that reported on them.

Danny had rolled the creeper back with one foot and James had barely gotten an idea of which way was up again when Danny had dragged the edge of his buck across from ear to ear. James had bled out less than a minute later, but before he had done so, he’d struggled a bit, resulting in that shallow pan of oil to upturn its contents onto the concrete below, seeping out slowly from beneath the fender of the F100.

Then something sort of fascinating had occurred. James’ pooling blood met and began to intermingle with the pool of oil in a captivating display of miscibility. James lie still on the concrete, his soul already gone to the great beyond, but behind him— and mostly to his right, was a pool of blood and oil edging up to and spilling into one another in a brilliant display. Blood and oil. Ichor and Ochre. Like crimson marble. And Danny couldn’t resist. Fearing he’d never have an opportunity like this again, he started taking snapshots by the hundreds.

After five days the photos were developed and after two days more he’d picked out what he’d considered the perfect two. After a long period of debate he’d slipped the one he considered just slightly superior— due mostly to the slight difference in positioning of the early morning sun reflected in the mesmerizing pools, into his portfolio and then promptly forgot about the runner up, which was now held stiffly by the barest of corners, like one might hold the handles of a particularly nasty trash bag, between your index and thumb.

How had this happened? Everything was going so well. And now…

“Doll.. I can explain.” He started, but it was too late.

“Take me home.” You released the photo from your grip and the glossy print slid back into its slot near the back of the rack with a perfunct THWACK.

The ride home was pregnant with the queasy silence between you.

I have made a terrible mistake. A horribly, grotesque, terminal mistake.

It was beginning to get dark and the sun, setting in the west, was an ugly, deep ball of orange hate radiating from a frozen uncaring space millions of miles away. You wanted to stare into it. Wanted to be struck blind by it. The image of James Marsh lying lifeless in a pool of blood and oil was ingrained into your mind's eye and not even the stinking power of the setting sun would burn it away.

Who am I and what have I done?

You didn’t know anymore. You thought you had things under control. You had a life and a job and a family. You had friends and hobbies and even the occasional boyfriend. But that all felt so distant now.

How have I become this? This.. mystery woman whom I don’t know?

You didn’t know that either. But you knew one thing. You were going to get it all back. One way or another you were going to get it all back.

Danny tried to fill the silence but you just wouldn’t respond to him. He tried pleasant small talk. He tried to sweep the incident under the rug. He even tried to broach the subject head on. But you gave him nothing, nothing to work with, nothing to build upon. Before this he’d seen a glimmer of it, a glimmer of acceptance in your eyes, even if you couldn’t see it, even if you didn’t know it was there he did. You were warming up to him. You were beginning to soften and then… well.. then this. Of all the planning he’d done to sway you, of all the countless hours he’d spent going over every last minute detail of how things could pan out he hadn’t accounted for this, and really he had no one to blame but him. 

The car pulled up in front of your house and you were up and out of the passenger seat before Danny could even put it in park. He raced out after you, worried you were going to do something drastic but you’d only pushed your way inside the house and then left the door standing open to let the bugs fly in as you stormed inside and ran to the sink. A retching sound echoed off their stainless steel walls as you emptied the contents of your stomach into the garbage disposal and then hit the switch.

He came in the door as you flipped the tap on, running cool water over the nasty sludge as it circled the drain. You braced yourself with your arms on either side of the sink, gripping it for dear life as he shut and locked the door behind you.

He could understand some initial shock perhaps, but this was taking things a bit far in his opinion, after all it was only a little blood. And that’s when his frustration shined through, just a little.

“I will not hide what I do from you.” Did he detect a reaction just then? Just the slightest stiffening of your posture in your stance over the sink? It encouraged him and he pressed on.

“If this…” He began and then faltered, staring down at the travel-worn linoleum beneath your feet. And then after a pause he began again.

“If this is going to work… then there’s some things about me that you just need to accept.” Ohhh did you have some things to say about that. You spun on him to begin in earnest when the doorbell rang. You and Danny looked at one another from across the length of the kitchen in a shocked stalemate, both of you scarcely breathing when you jolted out of your shocked daze and bolted towards the door.

He was in the way but regardless you made a scramble for it, a mad dash as it was. It was compulsive, instinctive, reactionary; only to have Danny in two quick movements, pull his knife from the back of his messenger bag and then pull the knife free of its well worn sheath just as you were preparing to slip past between him and the bar counter.

“Don’t.” It’s his only warning and it makes you still, even as you’re mid stride. His eyes lock to yours, commanding obedience.

“Bedroom. Now.”  He whispers the words. And it’s then you know he has to be as frightened as you are in this moment. It’s been the only one since you’ve met that hasn’t been entirely in his control. You consider screaming.

“It’s been a very taxing day for you, and I can understand that. A lot has happened. But nothing that we can not work through. Do you understand me?” Your eyes had trailed to his blade, gleaming and deadly, but now they trained back on his. Those deep brown eyes. Held within them was utter and unwavering belief in those words as he spoke them.

That’s what settled it for you. He was so delusional he really and truly believed that you two were in a committed, unfettered relationship. And if he was so delusional as to truly believe that then he was lost beyond saving and there was no telling what lengths he may go to to make that delusion a reality. You had indirectly killled a man today, you weren't about to make any more potential casualties a reality in your name.

You walked past him and into the back hall and you could feel him following you with his eyes until you were cemented into the room by the shutting of your bedroom door. Then and only then did you hear him move through the house. Shoed feet moving from linoleum to carpet back to linoleum again as he stood in the entryway and opened the door. Voices. Two, possibly three sets of male that much you were certain of.

You didn’t have a view of the front door from your bedroom but you could look out front, and from your vantage point you could see, plain as day, an honest to goodness police cruiser pulled up front and center in the entry to your driveway.

***

He’s been relatively nice to you, in the short time you’ve known him. Working alongside the purple-haired hero has been pleasant, you’d even go so far to say it’s been fun. Little jokes shared here and there, random short games like tag in the middle of a slow midnight patrol.

But there’s always going to be sides of people you don’t know about, and it’s really only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose. It starts with a bad bad day.

You’ve both been hunting down a lead for a special case you’ve been assigned for the past week. Today you got so so close. It leads to a dead end. After that, it only gets worse. Dead ends, one after the other, as you try to backtrack your way through where you could have gone wrong. Nothing. And Shinsou is getting more frustrated by the hour as you both hunch over his desk, scouring the case file for anything that could help. At some point, you give up. Decide it’s better to let it go and pick it up another time with fresh eyes and rested brains. You try to be encouraging when you ask him to do the same and join you on the couch.

“C’mon, Shinsou. Relax just for a minute, at least. We’ll look at it again in a few, but you gotta give your brain a break.” He huffs, glares at you for even thinking to suggest that.

“I refuse to sit on my ass like you. I’ve got shit to do.” Now that makes you freeze. He’s never…accused you? Like that?

“Wait- what is that supposed to mean? I’m trying to keep my head on straight instead of stressing and possibly missing something. What do you want me to do?” He slams his fist on the desk, only managing to get a small jump out of you.

“I want you to do your fucking job.” What the fuck? You’re on your feet, slowly stepping toward him. It’s a challenge, really, for him to do or say anything like that again.

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” He straightens and steps around the desk toward you, meeting you in the middle of the room. Both your eyes burn into each other, anger heating the entire room and painting it deep red.

“You heard me the first time.” You huff out through your nose, right in his face, before swiftly turning to make your way toward the door.

“Fuck you, Shinsou. If I knew my ‘partner’ was such an asshole I’d have never agreed to this bullshit.” Yeah, you’ve been fine with him. But you have zero tolerance for bullshit.

And then, in some doomed stroke of luck, you’re pinned to the wall before you can even react. Your vision blurs as you’re spun, the wind is knocked from your chest as your back hits the wall and your entire body is pinned by his own. Both your wrists are swiftly gathered in one of his large fists above your head, and his other hand wraps delicately around your throat, deft fingers squeezing ever so gently.

“You’re being such a damn bitch. Don’t you know this is important shit we’re working on?” 

“What the fuck? You lash out at me and I’M the bitch?! Fuck o–” You’re cut off when his fingers squeeze hard, the rest of the word coming out garbled.

“Fuck, do you ever shut up? So vulgar, too.” You almost manage an eye roll, between trying to breathe and wriggling in his grasp in an attempt to escape. He’s playing with your breathing, squeezing in pulses and never letting up for too long. It’s making you dizzy, your chest heaving with every breath he so graciously granted you.

You hate to think it’s turning you on.

“I should gag you and string you up in the closet with my binding cloth. Maybe then I’ll be able to get something done for once.” He can feel your pulse quicken, see your pupils dilate just the tiniest bit and your thighs squeeze together ever so slightly. He’s got you right where he wants you.

“Oh? Little brat likes that idea? Well too fuckin’ bad, you don’t get what you like, or what you want.” He quickly spins you around and brings your hands down behind your back, securing them with that damned cloth of his, before slinking a hand around your throat again and pinning you to his front. 

“Now here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna apologize for interrupting me, for slacking, and for being a brat. And you’re gonna convince me you’re sorry, or else you don’t get to cum. Understand?” Who knew he could be so damn sadistic? And so fucking self-centered. What a piece of work. And you make it known how you feel.

“As if I’d apologize to the likes of you. Jackass.” He only chuckles before wrapping an arm around your waist, slipping his hand down the front of your sweats and snapping the band of your panties against your skin. Fuck. Why can you feel yourself getting wet?

“Now, what do you think I’m gonna find down here, huh? Cause I can tell you’re already hot and bothered, all for me.” You squirm harder, wiggling around to get him off you. But were you really trying? You’re a pro hero for god’s sake, surely you could get yourself out of this even with your hands bound. But why would you want to, when you already feel this good?

He’s walking backward, dragging you along with him until he reaches the couch, plopping down and leaning against the arm, sprawling his legs along the cushions with yours over top of them. With your arms bound it’s easy for him to release your throat in favor of tugging down both your sweatpants and panties, chuckling at the dark patch right in the crotch of your underwear. He doesn’t say anything about it. You both know he was right earlier, you both know your burning embarrassment.

He drops both items to the floor before gripping both your thighs and prying them open, despite your nowhere-near-best efforts to keep them wedged shut. Your knees are either side of his and his ankles hook over top of your own to keep you spread for him. Exposed for him.

“Let’s try this again, pretty girl.” It’s sickly sweet, the way he says it. Mocking and praising at the same time. A hand is at your throat again while the other reaches down to glide his fingers between your folds. You’re wet. Really, really wet. You can hear the squelch as he gathers your juices on his fingers and spreads it over your clit, rubbing slow firm circles over the already swollen nub. You jolt, and he chuckles. Fuck this is humiliating. And so hot.

“Apologize, and I’ll let you cum. You’ve got all the time in the world. As long as you do it before you cum I’ll work you through it, I promise.” You don’t want to. Apologizing is just admitting defeat. He can’t play this game forever, you can hold out, you’re sure of it.

Except his fingers are moving faster over your clit, rubbing harder and working you closer to that edge. And fuck, if it doesn’t feel so good the be so close to cumming. Your legs are starting to tremble, thighs trying to close around his hand and your breathing is getting heavier. You’re so close. Just a little more.

And then he stops.

Your entire body jolts with the lost orgasm, and you bite your lip to keep from making any noise. You can’t let him know he’s getting to you. 

“Aw, did that not feel good baby? I’m sure you didn’t like me ripping that away from you. But it’s okay, you’ve got another chance to make it up to me.” And that isn’t a lie. You do get another chance. One you don’t take. He builds you up with just his fingers on your clit, dragging them away before you can fall over that blissful peak. It’s so frustrating, being so close and yet still so fucking far.

After the fourth or fifth time, there are tears in your eyes begging to fall, clumping your lashes together. Your thighs and abdomen burn from the constant tensing. And Hitoshi is getting annoyed.

So he starts again, running tight circles over your raw clit with those deadly fingers of his. But this time he dips two down into your pussy and curls them hard, slamming that spongy spot inside you. It’s so unexpected, so sudden you let out a loud, wanton moan as you arch off of him and buck your hips into his hand.

“There we go, baby girl. That’s it. Make some noise for me.” He doesn’t stop when your moans turn to whimpers and your whole body begins to shake with the intensity of your oncoming orgasm. You can feel that tight knot in your belly start to fray, pulling so tight it’ll snap any moment now, and the instant you start to cum he rips his fingers away from you. The tears you’d willed not to fall begin to stream down your cheeks, you’re too far gone to care that your sniffles and cries sound so pathetic. And you begin to grovel. Just like he wanted you to.

“Please -hic- please ‘Toshi, I wanna cum. Please let me cum it hurts.” He coos down at you, nuzzling his cheek against your own and you nuzzle right back, wrapped right around his sticky finger.

“Awe, poor baby. It hurts?” you nod, “Well, then you know what you have to do right? All you gotta do is apologize, and you can cum as many times as you want baby. Yeah? Doesn’t that sound good?” You nod again, whimpering into his mouth when he turns and ghosts his lips against yours.

“Go on then, sweetheart.” You shudder and hiccup some more, before finally giving in.

“I’m s-sorry, Shinsou. ‘M so sorry, I didn't mean to be a brat. I’m sorry for making you mad! I promise it won’t -hic-  happen again, please I’m so sorry.” He’s glowing from it, from how pathetic you sound, how helpless and blissed out you are. Limp against his frame after being edged so much. So beautiful. And all his, he decides.

“Such a good girl for me. You can cum now, baby. Cum for me.” His fingers return to your sopping pussy, immediately battering your g-spot while his thumb rubs at your clit. You’ve never cum so fast or so hard in your life. Your eyes roll to the back of your head and you see white, ears ringing as your whole body tenses and shakes, bowing off him as you nearly shout a broken moan. He helps you ride it out, continues stroking at your walls and clit until your body falls back down and shakes from overstimulation. Only then does he stop, wiping his cum soaked fingers across your thigh before tilting your head to lock his lips with your own. Though, you’re a little too out of it to reciprocate the sloppy makeout.

“C’mon baby, come back to me.” He’s tapping your cheek lightly, releasing the cloth around your wrists and massaging the tender skin. It takes a few minutes for your eyes to refocus, your breathing to stop stuttering and your limbs to stop trembling. When you do come back to reality, you cling to Hitoshi like a magnet.

“There you are. Shh, you’re alright baby.” You cry into his chest, almost wailing after the sudden release of endorphins. You’ve never felt so low, especially after such a heavenly high. He holds you, rubs your back and pets your hair, presses little kisses everywhere he can reach until you’ve fallen asleep from exhaustion. 

A week had passed by since the hearing, and it went rather smoothly. His lawyer, Jimin, easily got him into the facility after winning his case, and Taehyung was content with the fact that he’d get to see his daffodil more frequently.

Two more days passed after he arrived, and he was eager to finally see her again. But when he was greeted with a different face his heart had dropped to his gut.

The Chief Doctor, Kim Namjoon, had taken him in for the past week, and slowly, Taehyung had gone backwards into the silent, isolated man he once was.

He refused to communicate with Namjoon, only making the process more difficult. It even took a good five days before they had to force him to take the first dose of his prescribed medications.

Another week passed by, and Taehyung was feeling betrayed by her. His heart was torn into pieces, and his eyes were lifeless. At this point, he wasn’t sure if it was because of the drugs, or because of her. Maybe both.

His usual routine of therapy was coming around, and he was guided into the now familiar room in the facility. He hated it, being reminded every single day that she wasn't going to be there, and instead expecting Namjoon to walk in through the door any second. 

While seated on the couch, hands clasped together and eyes dead staring into his lap, he didn’t even bother to lift his gaze when the door opened, not noticing that this time, it wasn’t Namjoon who stepped inside…

After her last visit to Taehyung, she spent the rest of the days anticipating the outcome of his hearing. Jimin had called her first, proud about how he had yet another successful case on his list. She'd heard nothing beyond how Taehyung would soon be moved to their facility to get his treatment for the next two years according to his verdict. She was quick to share the news with Namjoon who merely nodded thoughtfully as he perused the copy of Taehyung's report and then at her, with an unreadable look on his face. 

The next day, she had been informed Taehyung was transferred to Namjoon's care. And as much as she had wanted to confront him about making that decision without her input, she'd let it pass knowing very well how difficult Taehyung would be to Namjoon. And as expected, she was soon summoned by their Chief to retake the case on strict orders that she wouldn't personally get involved.

Namjoon had this knowing look in his eyes when he warned her and she begrudgingly agreed knowing what it meant. He'd supervise some of her sessions with Taehyung to make sure she followed the rules. Maybe that's exactly what she needed to know her place as his doctor and nothing more.

Stepping into the bright therapy room that was so different from where she'd met him, her eyes curiously rove over his slouched form against the couch. The carpet muffles the click of her heels as she makes her way towards him with a tentative grin.

"Heard you were giving Namjoon a hard time..." She pipes up, trying to keep the joy she felt at seeing him again out of her voice. "He's a lot better at this than me, you know, Taehyung?"

Taehyung looked up in her direction, eyes widening for a second before they squinted at her, as if he’s not quite sure whether she was actually there, or if it was just a figment of his imagination.

“You..?” The first words to ever leave his lips since he came to the facility, Namjoon's eyebrows raising as he’s been struggling the entire week to even get a nod or a crooked eyebrow from the man.

Her eyes are quick to note Namjoon's expression before she focuses her attention back on Taehyung, giving him an encouraging nod. "Yeah... It's me! It's really me." She says twice, her fingers curling around the notebook she holds to prevent herself from reaching out to him in reassurance. And she hopes Taehyung doesn't do anything that might further Namjoon's suspicion.

Taehyung seemed to finally be aware of his surroundings, seeing Namjoon's stature in his peripheral vision as he kept his eyes fixed on her. His gaze softened, but there was a stern expression on his face, lips pressed together in a tight line. He crossed his arms over his chest, the familiar action of his when he felt uncomfortable, thus less willing to communicate.

The flash of recognition is all she gets before Taehyung closes off again, making her seethe in silence at Namjoon's callousness. All the progress she made with him over their sessions at the prison, he'd managed to crumble it in one go and was expecting her to begin from scratch again.

She doesn't hide her annoyance when she throws a look at Namjoon over her shoulder as she moves to take the chair next to Taehyung, leaving the Chief doctor standing awkwardly by the door. She'd go about this the most general way until Namjoon left himself.

"Hey... how are you finding yourself at the facility? Do you like it so far?"

Taehyung's eyes avoided hers, however, they followed her feet until she was seated next to him. Feeling her closer, his tension seemed to fade, but only barely. His gaze returned to his own lap, arms still tightly holding himself before giving a subtle shrug, only noticeable if to eyes that were sharp enough to pay attention. And he knew she’d be the one to notice it.

She was so attuned to every single flicker of emotion in him by now, be it in his face or body, she's quick to catch the insignificant shrug of his shoulders which makes her sigh. So he'd decided to be a lot more stubborn than usual and she can't help but feel it was partly her fault even if it was mostly due to Namjoon's presence. She had abandoned him to someone else's care after all without even a fight, when she'd promised to care for him herself.

"Taehyung, if we are to work on your therapy, I'm going to need more than just a shrug." She tells him pointedly, her eyes glancing at Namjoon once. "Is there anything that's making you uncomfortable here?"

Taehyung breathes out a sigh through his nose, lifting his gaze to look at Namjoon's feet. He pressed his lips together tighter, a small nod serving as his next reply.

He really didn’t like Namjoon. The man was intelligent, calm and probably a great doctor. But he wasn’t her. And he didn’t make him feel like a person, merely a patient that he had no contact with. Just another name on his list of people throughout his day. 

But as previously mentioned, he still wasn’t her.

Languidly, she inclines her head towards Namjoon, her eyes urging him to get lost before his presence irked her patient any more. Namjoon merely gives her a blank look in return, jerking his head towards the door and letting her know he wanted to have a word before he left.

"I'll be back in a moment, Taehyung." She excuses herself, standing up to follow Namjoon out the door without another word. As soon as the door closes, Namjoon steps into her space with a concerned look in his eyes.

"Do you really think he'd open up more without me around?" There was a sense of apprehension in his tone, making her exhale loudly.

"I know he will. He's a lot more chatty when I ask the right questions. You don't have to worry!" Her words come out clipped, still feeling miffed from when he took Taehyung away.

"It's not him I'm worried about..." A hand comes to rest on her cheek making her look up, her eyes finally softening at his obvious concern. She was aware of the fact that he took over Taehyung's case only to show her he cared, in his own way.

"We've been over this already, Joon. Some of my patients need that extra care even if you don't approve of my methods. I promise I'm not getting emotionally involved or anything." She lies through her teeth, her gaze fixed upon his.

With a soft trace of his thumb across her cheek, Namjoon drops his hand.

"Fine! I won't question you again as long as you keep your promise." He relents with a pout. "Do you maybe want to meet up over dinner?" He asks after, his voice suddenly unsure, making her want to coo at his sudden bout of shyness. 

"Of course!" She replies with a smile, not having the heart to turn him down again. Once he leaves, she steps back inside the room, a lot more relaxed this time as she approaches Taehyung.

"So, where were we?" She doesn't hide the happiness this time around from her voice as she takes the chair next to him.

Taehyung's head jerks up to look at her again, this time slightly more comfortable without the other male observing them. His eyes were however laced with something darker, raking her up and down before pursing his lips, “What are you happy about?” 

How could she be smiling? She left him. Betrayed him. And now she came back as if everything was just—-fine?

She is so pleased at having his eyes upon hers again without his earlier sense of detachment, that she fails to see the anger lurking in its depth. She almost voices out how she was happy about going for dinner with Namjoon until she realizes she was in front of Taehyung.

Clearing her throat, she words her reply carefully.

"I'm glad that the Chief let me be your personal therapist again. Aren't you happy to see me, Tae?"

“You abandoned me.” Taehyung stared her down, no sign of anything but darkness in his eyes. He leaned back into his seat, his arms hugging himself tighter, as if to keep himself in control. Grounded. “You said two days.”

He didn’t even care if it wasn’t her fault. She promised, and he trusted her. 

Did Namjoon keep her from him? Was he the problem?

Her smile drops instantly from her lips as she watches him dissociate himself furthermore, making her grapple for a plausible explanation to appease him. And that's when she makes her first mistake.

"Taehyung, I didn't mean to make you feel abandoned. I swear..." She moves closer, placing her hand near him as she tries to look past the darkness hiding the real emotions in his eyes.

"It was a decision made by the higher ups. I couldn't exactly say no to the Chief without losing my job. Not when I know he's better than me. We only want you to have the best here. Even Joon... I'm so sorry!"

His arms were trembling as he was struggling to keep himself from her, internally wishing she’d move away before he gave in to his desire to touch her. He breathed heavily through his nose once more, eyes trained on her face to try to dissect her expression, even if his own was the one blank.

"They... took you from me. And put me with a male doctor that just wants me to be heavily med-..medicated.. " he slurred his last word, proving his point exactly. Even if the first few weeks were a very low dosage compared to what the full one by next month would be, it did affect him a little. He had less anxiety, less energy-- but his desires for her were not as affected.

Without a second thought, she moves next to him on the couch taking his shivering hands in hers, thinking it was due to the drugs and looks past his choice of words of how he thought they took her from him. That was her second mistake.

"Taehyung, no..." Her voice is soft, gently coaxing him to give her any reaction other than careful blankness. "They thought Namjoon would be able to help you better than me. He is my senior for a reason." She squeezes his hands as if trying to get her point across. "I'm really sorry if you felt betrayed, but from now on I'll be your only attending therapist. I promise..."

By now, comforting Taehyung had become an innate need within her that she no longer cared about what way he perceived it as long as he didn't reject her help.

Taehyung lifted his eyes to meet hers, his hands trembling in her grasp. When he felt her reassuring squeeze, the voice in his head started to whisper things, the earnestness in her eyes drawing him in. And as if she was his source of gravity, he didn't hesitate to pull her in by her hands, his lips crashing against hers in a kiss. He needed to feel her again, he's missed it, craved it for the entire time spent apart. He was mad, furious that he didn't get to see her for too long.

The barely there flash of emotion in Taehyung's eyes is her only warning before she goes crashing into his chest and his lips capture hers in a punishing kiss. Wasn't he supposed to be weakened by medication? She pushes against him and even twists her body trying to wrench herself free knowing the unrepressed anger she felt through his kiss won't bode well for her. But his hold on her is too strong to fight off and after a moment of struggle, she stops, hoping her passiveness was enough to make him let her go and remains unresponsive to his kiss.

Taehyung indulges in her lips, humming in content as he keeps her tightly in place against his body. The warmth he's missed for what felt like an eternity was satisfying, yet riling his darker side up. Her unresponsiveness didn't matter, he was simply happy to taste her once more, feeding into the addiction that is her. But eventually, he withdrew, his hold on her hands still intact, gaze intense as he looks at her, ''I missed you.''

She breathes in relief when he eventually backs off, trying one last time to pull her hands free unsuccessfully. Letting her eyes slowly trail up from their hands, to his chest, before coming to rest on his face, she resists a shudder at his burning stare. The darkness in them has returned, not yet shrouding his gaze entirely, but nearly there. Shaking her head, she turns away to look anywhere but directly at him.

"Taehyung... You— we can't do this. Not anymore! I told you the last two times were a mistake. You need to stop! This is going to be a problem if Namjoon or anyone finds out."

Taehyung sighs, leaning in closer, breath fanning the skin on her cheek as she looks away, ''You want me to stop?..''

A hint of mischief sparked in his eyes. Fine, if that's what she wanted, maybe he'd simply comply. Because that would be the least probable thing she'd expect of him. Merely, a trick of the mind, testing his therapist-- being on the receiving end of the nonchalance regarding their.. complicated relationship.

Taehyung loosened his grip until her hands were free, leaning back into his own seat, crossing one leg over the other as he lets his hands settle on his thighs, ''Then, let's begin the session, daffodil.''

She jerks back from him in surprise when he gives in to her rather easily. At the very least, she expected him to make a fuss about it. But this— the glint in his eyes is new, making her wonder what she missed out on over the course of time he was under Namjoon's care. Time to find out...

She moves into her chair, a lot more comfortable than the ones at the prison, and leans back keeping steady eyes on him. Choosing to ignore the new nickname he had for her, she clears her throat as she picks up her discarded notebook.

"So, Taehyung..." Her gaze flickers over his relaxed form warily. "How has your stay been here so far?"

Taehyung tilts his head forward, his overgrown fringe dangling over his tired eyes. A soft hum vibrated in his throat, shoulders shrugging vaguely at the question. It was rather dumb, she must know it was absolute hell for him without her.

“So and so.” He says quietly.

Resisting the urge to click her tongue at the return of his vagueness, she moves a little forward in her seat, trying to keep her frustrations in check. 

"I need precise answers, Tae. It was different back at the prison, I merely had to diagnose your condition for the case. If you want to be cured and leave the facility, you need to be much clearer than that." Her tone comes out clipped at his dispassionate response, something in her goading her on to provoke the fire back in the deep embers of his eyes cause he no longer resembles either of the versions she knew.

Mentally shaking herself away from that thought, "Let's try this again... How do you feel about your verdict? Do you think it's reasonable enough?"

Taehyung rolled his tongue on the inside of his cheek, prodding the flesh as he's thinking over his answer, ''My verdict.... Could you remind me?''

A smug grin pulls on his lips, playing this little game of his reminded him of how fun it was to frustrate her, the struggle he puts her through is a part of the reason he likes her. She's feisty if provoked, and.. Just hearing her voice was already making him feel better.

She begins tapping the end of her pen against the notebook as she regards him and his arrogance with a frosty glare.

"You want a reminder of how they pronounced you not guilty despite the extent of your crimes, all because they believed you were capable of improving with the right treatment? Do you think this is all a joke, Taehyung?" She sits up straight, snapping her notebook shut as she's reminded of Namjoon's concern earlier when he came to her about how Taehyung wasn't responding well like expected to the treatment. 

"If you keep up with this attitude, I won't feel guilty about leaving you back under Namjoon's or someone else's care." Her patience can only run so far, especially when he was purposefully being a prick about it.

Taehyung nods with a hum, yet his mischievous expression remains. He enjoyed the emotions he seemed to be able to pull out of her, whether they were positive or negative.

''I just wanted to hear it from you. I'm sorry.'' And there it was, the low, soft voice he knew she couldn't be mad at, manipulating her emotions little by little. ''They said some of my medication will take months before it does anything, but some I can already tell are taking effect.''

He was aware that she probably already knew, but it was at least something he could talk about. 

He's given testosterone suppressants to reduce the intensity and frequency of his sexual desires. However, it would take months before it would actually make a real difference. 

Another medication that would take its effect quicker within a few weeks, was the antipsychotics. Supposedly, they'd help calm his.. delusions.

He really didn't like the feeling. Almost numbing, so he naturally fought it. He just wanted to be himself, not who he’d become when he’s fed with drugs. The voice in his head became sleepier, but it wasn't gone.

So, frustrating his therapist kept that part of him alive, he wanted her to keep him alive.

''My verdict... I find it reasonable. But... I feel.. Uncomfortable?'' He pursed his lips in thought, his eyes squinted as he focused his gaze on the table, ''Like the medications create a layer around my feelings, numbing them.''

Her heart thaws mildly at the sound of his apology but refuses to show it on her face, knowing by now how he chose to play her weakness for him against herself. Closing her eyes firmly, she wills her annoyance away before facing him again with a clearer head.

"Considering your situation," she begins in a much calmer voice, "—and the reason why you were brought in, I'd say your verdict was pretty... lenient. It's more than just reasonable!" She points out, for the first time giving her own opinion on where he was involved. "But it's welcome nonetheless, for it could've been worse. We all only want you to get better, I guess..." 

Clicking her pen open, she starts scribbling down her notes, taking her eyes away from him for a brief moment. As much as she didn't want to assume he was telling her about the drugs to make her feel sorry and do something regarding it, she wouldn't put it past Taehyung.

"As for the medication, you're required to take them in specified doses to help you, Tae. Your feelings aren't your own right now. They're a conflict between yours and this... other side that forces you to do things against your will." She gestures around with her hands, trying to explain how the medications were actually a good thing for him. "The drugs aid in suppressing those abnormal instincts. This haze you feel is only a temporary consequence. Once you learn how to overcome those urges, we can always reduce the dosage and slowly take you off the medication completely." She flashes him a smile as if in reassurance, completely slipping back into her therapist mode.

"Other than that, how has your move here been so far? Namjoon was pretty upset about how you wouldn't let him treat you, you know?" She softly laughs at that, fondly remembering Joon's pouty face from that morning when he accepted defeat and approached her about Taehyung.

Taehyung hums as he nods, letting her know that he's listening to her every word.

"It is much more comfortable than prison," a soft sigh rolled off his lips, a content smile at the thought of how he gave Namjoon a hard time, "I don't trust him."

He only trusted her. His therapist. His.

Namjoon was indeed a great doctor, but Taehyung easily shut down. And so far, he's learned that the only person he wanted to ‘treat’ him-- was her. Well, he didn't really want to be treated.... he just wanted her. That's all it came down to.

Her eyes darted back to him at the obvious dislike in his tone, her smile slowly slipping off her lips. There was also this faint presence of smugness in the way he smirked, as if he was pleased with his actions that gave her a pause to reconsider her next track of questions.

"Namjoon is..." She begins haltingly, knowing she can't say something that'd likely set him off with her little crush on the said Chief doctor. "—he is one of the best doctors we have at the facility. And a lot more qualified than me to treat you, if I'm being honest. Is there a particular reason why you don't trust him?" She draws one of her legs over the other, crossing them at her thighs to lean back comfortably into the quilted chair.

Taehyung's lips formed into a small pout at the way she praised Namjoon, but didn't put a lot of weight on the thought. However, the question did give him something to think about for a moment, his eyes unable to focus on one spot as they flickered around the room.

''He is indeed a good doctor... But he's incredibly boring.'' His eyes finally found hers, a crooked eyebrow showing his vague attitude, ''You're much more fun.''

She patiently looks on, noting how his eyes flit around trying to find the answer to her question and finally finds her own as if she were his polestar, making her breath hitch slightly, and not in a good way. Especially when it came along with that comment from him.

"Fun?" She raises a single brow up at that, leaning on the armrest of her chair. "So you made his life difficult, just because you think I'm much more fun?"

Successfully resisting the scoff she was about to utter at the ridiculousness of that statement, she stands up from the chair.

"Taehyung, I feel like you and I have very different ideas about why you're here in the facility. We're here to treat you and not for your entertainment." Leaving her notebook on the desk, she steps closer to him pulling the sleeves of her stark white scrub up.

"Let's try this again..." She moves the table with a few instruments closer to him. "I'm going to take your vitals. But before, did you take your post-breakfast medication today?" She asks him with a skeptical look.

''I did,'' Taehyung nods, his gaze observing the tools laying on the small table. His least favourite part of being here is the medical stuff. From swallowing pills, to having his body checked. Call him childish, but it is just the way he's wired. It's like the dentist, he despises it just as much.

But, since it was her, his own doctor doing it, he felt more at ease, not putting any resistance in his behavior. The sooner it's over, the sooner they can get back to doing what he enjoys most; having a conversation with his therapist.

Well, there were other things he much preferred doing with her, but one can't have it all at once, can they? It's been too long, though..

She finds it hard to trust his words now, the puzzle pieces to his case coming together a little more clearly than before. Taking his temperature first, she hesitates a brief second before she takes his right hand in hers and pushes the sleeves up.

"I just need to get your blood pressure," she tells him in a dull tone, her eyes straying everywhere but his gaze as she methodically looks for his pulse with her fingers tracing over his warm skin. Once she finds it, she pumps the air quickly into the cuff and presses her stethoscope to his pulse to get his heart rate as the air slowly deflates. But the pointer in the dial gives her a pause when it displays a higher rate than normal, making her wrench the steth out of her ears and seek his pulse again on his wrist this time.

"Are you sure you took your medicines?" She asks again, her voice sounding more concerned now. The drugs should've technically induced drowsiness in him, slowing down his heart rate. "Your heart rate is nowhere near normal, Tae... have you been sleeping properly?"

Was he skipping his meds? Was he having adverse reactions to them instead? A million thoughts flash through her mind and she fails to see his reaction throughout it all.

Taehyung had been indulged in the feeling of her fingers tracing his skin that he barely heard her questions, his eyes snapping in her direction, widening at her disbelief in him.

''I swear I took them.'' He did, he wasn't lying... But it didn't stop the fact that her touch affected him so easily, the blood flow in his body was rushing with the way his heart started to race. He took a slow, deep breath to calm himself down, squeezing his nose bridge in frustration at the small voice still wanting to have its say, whether it was slightly numb or not. As his chest pounded heavier, the voice grew louder.

 She lets out a low frustrated groan under her breath. It just wasn't her day. The entire week, actually. Not ever since Namjoon tossed her schedule and plans out of the window in a need to prove himself. The fondness she'd been feeling earlier dissipated in a mere second and snapped her focus back on Taehyung, noting his tense muscles and closed eyes.

Not that she trusted him completely when he said he took his meds, but his voice sounded sincere. And from experience, she knew she was the last person Taehyung would lie to. A quick tap at her tab lets her pull up his records from that morning and she sees he was indeed given the required doses of his prescribed drugs. 

Dropping it back on the table, she sits down next to him seeing how her own agitation was causing him distress.

"Taehyung... look at me, I'm sorry!" She calms her voice down to a soft murmur, taking his wrist between hers once again. "Just keep your eyes on me okay? And follow my breathing pattern. In—" she inhales deeply, holding it in for a few seconds and then very slowly breathes it out. "Out!" Her fingers go from checking his pulse to gently stroking her thumb along it in a soothing motion, hoping whatever it was that's troubling him would pass on.

He follows her instructions, taking a deep breath. In--- Fuck, her scent is lovely--- and out, he slowly exhales with her, eyes fixated on her delicate fingers around his wrist. It was kind of working, he calmed down. The voice retreated, but he felt it lingering, as if it was waiting to surprise... even him.

When she feels his pulse beat back down slowly to a regular rhythm, she sags a bit against the reclined couch he was sitting upon in relief. She might have to look into his medications again with Namjoon and see if they can switch anything around to not have this happen again.

''Doctor,'' His voice was low, concentrated on her hand. He didn't want her to stop, so without thinking, he slowly lets his fingers intertwine with hers, ''Let me hold your hand.''

Taehyung couldn't resist.

She hums when he calls out for her, one hand still staying to stroke his wrist while she picks up the discarded tab to record his blood pressure and pulse rate, albeit she almost drops the tab again at his question and the way his fingers snake in between hers.

Her gaze flickers down to their hands, not immediately rejecting his advances even if she knew she should. "Tae," She begins a softly placating voice, "I don't think it's a good idea. What if Joon... or someone comes in? They might get the wrong idea."

Taehyung pursed his lips at her words, but he didn't withdraw his hold around her hand.

''What idea? We're not doing anything bad...'' It was purely innocent, right? He was just holding her hand... He's done it before.

Well, last time might've ended up differently-- but he's good now. He's medicated. He's fine.

He lifted his gaze to find hers, a smile adorning his lips followed with the small spark of mischief swirling in his eyes, ''We're just holding hands.''

"A doctor doesn't just hold a patient's hand randomly for the entire session..." She sighs, knowing it would only prove to be useless to argue against his words. At the little flash of mischief glinting in the corner of his eyes, she was a goner even before she could acknowledge how very much he looked like a curious child right then.

"Fine! But just hand holding and nothing more, okay?" She says to make sure he doesn't get any other idea into his head just because she gave in to him one more time.

Letting him keep a hold on her hand firmly, she reaches over with some difficulty to grab her note off her chair and pulls it to her lap just when her tab buzzes with a message from a colleague, which she ignores in her efforts to do everything single handedly.

"Alright, apart from boring sessions with Namjoon and draining medication, did you find any other change in yourself?"

She’s not just a doctor, he mused. And surely, they've done much worse.

''Look at it as a way to calm me down..'' He smirks subtly, but his lips fall back into a neutral state at her following questions. Any other changes? Not really... But also, yes.

Taehyung raises his eyebrows, gaze falling back to roaming the room as he's considering his next words, ''Nightmares.'' The way he says it was more like a sigh, eyes once again flickering between objects in the room as his mind seems to scatter, ''I sleep more, but I have nightmares.''

Feeling his focus slip away once again, she promptly squeezes his hand to bring him back to her at the mention of his nightmares. A frown curls around her lips, gaze tracing over his features in obvious concern that may or may not go beyond that of just a therapist.

"What kind of nightmares? Do you remember them when you wake up or is it just an intuition?"

Taehyung slouches down in his seat, trying to feel the material pressing against his back as an addition to the pressure she provided on his hand to keep him grounded. His gaze quivers as it finds his doctor once more, ''Both? Most of is just... words.''

Words, as in, the voice. As the medication had toned down the monster within his awoken state, it had gotten incredibly loud during sleep. And it was scary, because he looked just like Taehyung himself. It is a part of Taehyung. Or is it Taehyung? He started having trouble separating the two.

''I don't like it, I think it's the meds. I never had nightmares before, doctor.''

 "Words?" Her brows furrowed together in mild confusion when he mentions it. "Do you mean you hear them?" Her free hand flies down to write it all down while her brain tries to think of a way to help him through what she definitely deemed as progress unlike what he thought. 

"Taehyung, I want you to carefully think about these dreams and tell me why they make you feel this way." Feeling his hand tremble slightly in her hold, she moves closer, shushing him like she would a spooked child, almost letting him lean into her side for comfort. 

"I know it might seem scary..." Her voice turns into that of gentle coaxing. "And I know you blame the meds for it. But I think your alter ego is trying to threaten your subconscious cause it can no longer control your conscious thoughts. I cannot be sure until I know what you hear and see in your dreams, though."

''I don't remember everything, doctor..'' Taehyung furrows his eyebrows in thought, squeezing his eyes shut to try to recall his dreams, ''It's really blurry.. But..'', He pauses to look at her, ''This voice, it's... just my own-- but it doesn't feel like my own.. it tells me to ..stop?'' He nods, confirming his own words, ''I need to stop taking the meds. We-...I don't like them.''

Her spine straightens up alertly as she catches him uttering 'we' before he corrects himself, almost proving her perception right. As much as she wanted to counter his thoughts and explain what he's feeling was actually good, she purses her lips instead to keep their sessions as professional as possible.

"We can work on substituting or reducing your dosage, but I can't take you off medications unless I'm actively going against your court order. But you have to understand this voice is only trying to stop you from taking them because it feels threatened..." Exhaling a long drawn out breath, her shoulders slouch as she bends her head to look him in the eye properly. He looked tired but a lot healthier than he was in the prison. His warm brown eyes looked lighter despite the lifelessness about them, with no sign of the darkness consuming his thoughts anymore.

"Do you not see it for yourself, Tae? You're sleeping better than before. There has been no sign of the other side when you're awake. The drugs are helping you keep it under control." She bites her lip in thought before asking the next question, her tone almost hesitant. "Tell me, have you had those... urges recently?" It was a dangerous thing to ask, but she wanted to prove it to him that she was right.

Taehyung's eyes refuse to meet hers at the question, dipping his head lower to let his gaze stay fixed on his lap. He did feel something when his therapist touched his skin. He did feel the monster inside of him react, the urge for it to take over was there. It wasn’t as strong as before.

''I don't know. I don't think so..?''

He was lying without knowing. If the voice inside of him had a face, a wolfish sneer would adorn its lips.

Her entire posture instantly relaxes as a smile breaks out on her lips at his reply. His tone sounded sincere enough, albeit a little lost, for her to suspect anything.

"See, that's it! You are capable of resisting those temptations. This is good progress when we haven't even started your behavioural therapy yet." Her fingers quickly jot down every detail of their conversation so far, the smile never leaving her lips. Other than the kiss he forced upon her from misguided feelings, she believes he didn't feel anything even remotely sexual towards her.

"Despite me holding your hand right now, you're sure you don't feel it anymore do you?" She asks him again carefully, knowing it can't go down in the records, but she needed to make sure.

Taehyung looks down at their joined hands, giving it a small squeeze to check for himself.

Huh.

''I guess not.'' He loosens his grip, letting his fingers smooth against hers before pulling away, something he knows he wouldn't normally want to do.

Huh.

That was almost too easy. Something about that makes him feel... weird. He missed the way his body would feel electrified by her touch.

"Excellent!" She mumbles watching his hands slide out of her grip and away, the entire motion leaving her feeling something akin to bereft, as if he didn't need her anymore. But she chooses not to indulge in her emotions, shifting her focus upon him once more.

"In my opinion, we should continue with your medication as it is now. Maybe reduce it once your nightmares decrease..." She picks up her tab, not moving away from despite not being held back anymore. "I'll have to talk to Namjoon about it, but—" 

She misses her track of words when her eyes find Namjoon's message, politely asking to meet her for lunch instead of dinner because he couldn't wait. Snorting softly, she looks at the time. It was almost lunch hour. Maybe she should just show up and surprise him in his office instead of replying to his message. She puts the tab away with a smile, tilting her head to face Taehyung again.

"It's time for your lunch and medication again, Tae. Is there anything else you want to discuss before tomorrow's session?"

Taehyung glances at the tab as he notices how she smiles at it, it couldn't possibly be because of something she wrote down. He didn't like it, because he wasn't able to find out what it was for. 

At her question, he straightens his posture a bit, shaking his head, ''No.... Nothing.''

Easing off the couch with a few pats on his knee, she stands up to move the table away and sets everything back to normal on the desk. Facing away from him, she pulls off her scrubs and fluffs her hair a bit to make herself presentable.

"Come on, then! I'll bring you back to your room before I go for my lunch..." She tells him, glancing over her shoulder. It was unusual for doctors themselves to lead their patient back to their rooms, but she found herself not caring given her good mood. Moving towards the door, she almost forgets her tab laying beside Taehyung. "Oh! Can you bring that along as well, Tae? I need to discuss your medication with Namjoon while we're at it."

Taehyung's attention turns towards the tablet on the table as he stands up, bending over to take it into his hands. He was a bit surprised that she offered to walk him to his room, but he really had no reason or will to protest. He enjoyed all the time he'd get with her.

Call him curious, but as he picks the tablet up, he inspects it, as if he's never seen such a device before. Of course he had, but he wasn't entirely familiar with tech devices these days. He keeps it in his hand as he catches up with his doctor, a small smile on his face. This was the first time they'd be walking anywhere together, or be anywhere but in a therapy room for that matter.

She watches on as he seems to look over her tab interestedly, making her smile at the way his innocence shines through in such small gestures. If only everyone can see what she saw in him, they wouldn't take him for the monster he definitely wasn't. Sighing deeply, she opens the door and waits for him, signaling to the nurses in waiting that she got this and sends them away. When he finally joins her, she takes her tab from him and stacks it on top of the files and notebook in her hand with a grateful smile. Letting the door close behind them, she begins leading him towards his room a couple of floors above.

"I saw you looking at the tab strangely. Have you never used one before?" That brings another thought to her mind, and she turns to face him as they wait for the elevator. "What do you do in your free time here, Taehyung?"

Taehyung shakes his head, ''No, I am not really much of a tech guy.'' He chuckles lightly at the fact, feeling like he's probably the only one his age who doesn't own a smartdevice of his own.

As they're slowly walking together, Taehyung thinks for a moment about the next question, his eyes continuously peering over at her. The way her hair delicately flows from the momentum, the way her hips had a subtle sway to them... If he could fall in love-- or what he thought was love, all over again with his therapist, he definitely did in this moment.

''Remember our first session?'' He runs his fingers through his hair, his boxy smile prominent, ''Most of the time I like to paint.''

She perks a delicate brow at that. Almost all the men his age proved to be avid techies, a couple of them even going as far as trying to correct her usage of the said devices as if she failed to understand.

"Hm, if you ever want one of these to just browse through and learn new things, just let me know. It can be arranged." She tells him with a smile, just as the elevator arrived. 

Stepping in, she looks mildly surprised when he admits to painting. She might have mentioned it to Namjoon in passing and now, she was glad that she did.

"That's great! I was considering it as part of your therapy. It's good that you're already painting." Pressing the number to his floor, she turns to peer up at him and actually noting how taller he was than her, even with her heels on. "I'm just curious. What subjects do you usually paint?"

Taehyung steps in with her, keeping a small space between them as he keeps his arms crossed over his chest, head tilted to gaze down at her. She was quite cute like this, even cuter when he took notice of how small she was next to him. Well, a piece of him thought it was purely cute, another... saw it as a physical advantage. He shook the thought off in the form of another shrug, focusing on the question at hand once more.

''Flowers,'' he grimaced as if it wasn't already obvious, ''And sometimes I paint what I remember from my dreams... And, uh... people I've met in here.''

He said the latter in a lower voice, not sure if he should've included that part. He had a lot of free time to spend here, and painting surely was something he enjoyed. Everything from his flowers, to the way he interprets the darkness from his nightmares, and lastly-- the people he's met. He recalls he painted his doctor, and he knows for a fact that it's his favourite painting. He could look at it all day, his own version of a photograph since he didn't own any. He remembers painting it the first night he came here.

Her form subtly tenses when he mentions flowers, having heard him call her his favourite flower before. But considering how things were progressing, she decided to push it to the back of her head. It shouldn't matter, not when he clearly didn't feel the same pull he had towards her before.

Clearing her throat slightly, "Let me guess— irises? Or daffodils?" She asks with a light-hearted smile just when the elevator stops, prompting them to step out of it and continue on their way. 

"You paint your dreams too? Interesting." In fact, she had been thinking of advising him to write down or paint whatever he sees in his so-called nightmares. If she could interpret them, they'd be one step closer to finding what was troubling him for real. Maybe an old memory? Or a traumatic experience from the past?

"Taehyung..." She starts softly, as they keep walking at a slower pace towards his room. "Will it be too much if I ask to see your paintings? The ones with your dream sketches, I mean... It's purely for trying to understand your mind and see if I could help in any way." She raises a hand as if to prove to him there was no ill intention in her request.

Taehyung hums, his mind instantly falling back to the painting he made of her. He's pretty sure he had it hidden behind other works, so there was no chance of her seeing it. She probably wouldn't like seeing it... or maybe she would be flattered? But she wanted to see the nightmares.

''Actually, no...I painted a red dahlia.'' He continues before she's able to ask about the flower, ''You can... see my paintings if you'd like.''

"Right now?" She asks, coming to a stop in front of his room. She flashes her card to open the door for him while she hesitates on the threshold. She did request to see his paintings. But there was also the spontaneous lunch date she needed to get to. Chewing on her lip, her gaze flicks to her watch. Ten minutes, she could spare ten more minutes before meeting Namjoon. Hopefully he'd still be waiting.

"Thanks, Tae. I'd love to!" She tells him sincerely, stepping in behind him and tries not to flinch when the door clicks shut behind them. Venturing in carefully, she takes in the minimal decor of the large room— with the bed on one side with stark white sheets and the easel on the other, right in front of the huge window in the room.

"Red dahlia?" She goes to stand in front of the said painting, still mounted on the easel. It was beautiful in a rather lonely way, just a single large dahlia in the deepest of reds, almost like blood covered the expanse of the canvas. Reaching out in awe, she lightly traces it, the red pigment clinging on to her fingertips. "What does it mean?"

Taehyung stands next to her, observing his own painting with pursed lips. This painting was one that he made after a few days of coming here, when he wasn't sure that she was ever going to come back. He'd felt abandoned by the very doctor that is standing next to him, tracing the painting that he had created with tears in his eyes, and an ache in his heart.

''Red Dahlia'' He repeated with a nod, ''It represents... betrayal,'' he pauses to click his tongue when he finds an inconsistent transition in the colors. He really had to fix that, ''And loneliness.''

A lump lodges itself in her throat at his words, whispered so close to her ear, and she struggles to swallow past it to begin talking again. Her fingers recoil back quickly from the flower that made her feel guilty for reasons unknown, and she pushes a lock of hair behind her ear, accidentally smearing the red over cheek.

Hesitantly, she turns to glance up at him, her eyes wide and uncertain, as if she'd walked into a trap. Drawing in a swift breath, she opens her mouth to get the words past her lips.

"Why... Why the red dahlia? Did someone make you feel abandoned?"

Taehyung smiles sadly, eyes catching the splash of red smeared across her cheek. The red symbolizing his pain, from the flower itself, now perfectly placed on her cheek-- the very culprit of his pain in the first place.

''Oh, flower..'' He breathes out, reaching out to swipe his thumb across her cheek, wiping off most of the colour, the remaining hue still smeared on her cheek, ''I didn't feel abandoned... I was...'' He sighs, using his reddened thumb to fill in the missing spot on the canvas, completing the piece, ''I was promised two days. And when I realized, it wasn't the truth... I didn't know what to do..'' Once more, his eyes flicker back to her, ''Through his pain, came beauty.'' Taehyung quoted his favourite artist once more, the last time he did was during their first session together, ''What do you think, doctor? Isn't it pretty?''

Her skin tingles where he seemed to touch her and she follows his fingers with confused eyes when they come off looking red. "Oh?" Her lips part slightly, her heart clenching at the sadness in his tone.

"Taehyung..." She calls his name softly, as if it'd erase all the pain. "You know I didn't mean to, right?" Now more than ever, she wishes he could read the sincerity in her gaze as she turns to look up at him, not minding how close they were standing to each other. "You could've always asked for me. You know you could have." 

Her attention shifts back to the painting as she considers his question. "It's beautiful... looks almost real." She admits, her fingers rubbing her cheek to get rid of the stain as if it still lingered due to her guilt. "But beauty doesn't always have to be through pain, right?" She moves in between the painting and him, making him look down at her determined eyes. "If the voice inside you says you cannot paint unless you're in pain, you have to prove it wrong. It's the only way to silence him."

Taehyung ignored the fact that she said he could've simply asked for her. He never would've done that, he didn't want to have to. He trusted her. But her sincerity made him feel like... Maybe it truly wasn't all her fault.

He felt good about the praise, but before he was able to react to it-- even though his chest fluttered for a mere second, her next words did nothing but make his lips pull in a lopsided smile.

''Yeah? You think I can do that?'' He dares to crane his neck to look at her through his dark curls dangling over his eyes, ''That I can...silence him?''

He refers to the voice as a 'him', rather than an 'it'-- to him, it was a part of him. How could he ever find beauty without sadness? Well, maybe his daffodil was that beauty... But she definitely wasn't pain free to him.

Her own lips quirk up in a smile finding his unique grin too contagious.

"Yes..." Her fingers move from her cheek, reaching up to push his messed up curls to the side to see his eyes clearly. "I definitely think you can!"

Dropping her hands back to her chest just as quickly realizing what she'd done, she shuffles awkwardly on her feet feeling like they were standing too close for comfort. "After all, it's your favourite artist who said ‘silence the voice if it says you cannot paint.’" She whispers, finding she cannot move back without bumping into the easel. 

"You're not in pain now, are you?" She presses the question, knowing her presence alone in a way improved his mood even if she refused to acknowledge the reason behind it. "Why don't you try painting now? We'll see if it affects your art as much as you think it does."

Taehyung's breath hitched from her touch, not expecting it, nor did he expect his own reaction. It was so subtle, but he felt a shiver run down his spine-- as if his body abruptly remembered what she felt like. Fuck, he missed her hands...

No, behave.

He took a step backwards to create a larger space between them, his eyes moving towards an empty canvas leaning against the wall on the floor, considering her suggestion.

''I could... Would you... Stay and watch?''

The air leaves her lungs easily when he moves farther away from her. Albeit, it lasts only a minute until his question echoes around the silent room. Stay? Oh, no. She begins shaking her head before she catches herself. Denying him would lead to his disappointment and the cycle would just continue, especially when he already thinks she abandoned him in the first place.

She would have to apologize to Namjoon later, maybe go all out for their dinner date. Nodding at Taehyung with a half hearted smile, she moves towards his bed to take a seat.

"Sure... I can ask the nurses to bring our lunch here while you paint. Will that be okay?"

Taehyung couldn't control the boxy smile appearing on his lips, eyes squinting genuinely along with it, ''Yeah.''

He grabbed the current painting, carefully moving and placing it on the floor, letting it lean against the wall before replacing the empty space on the easel, a fresh canvas ready for him. He takes the dirty palette in his hand, and the tubes of acrylic paint to squeeze out the colours he desired. Without another word, he dove into his own world, a brush in his hand as he started to paint, delicately letting his wrist swipe across the canvas. It was simple, one thing in mind as he painted; his doctor. Green leaves, white bells... It was her favourite flower.

She lets the nurses know where to bring their lunch with a few taps of her fingers before she pulls up Namjoon's earlier message as well, apologizing and promising to make it up to him over dinner. Soon after, there's a knock on the door and two of them leave their wrapped up food on the table and excuse themselves once she thanks them. 

All through this, Taehyung stays intent on his painting, making her smile at the little lopsided grin on his face as he focuses on whatever he was visualizing on the canvas. Standing up from his bed, she steps closer to him but not enough to see what he was painting.

"Am I allowed to take a peek yet, Tae?" 

Completely indulged in his own bubble, he didn't even notice when the lunch had arrived, too focused on working on his art. However, the one thing that did snap him out of his bubble, was the voice of his doctor calling him out by his nickname. He glanced over his shoulder at her, nodding once, then back at his painting as he took a step to the side to show off his latest addition to his collection.

Lily of the valley. Doctor's favourite flower.

With a hand wrapped around herself, she takes a few steps to close the distance between them when he signals her to, only to gasp again in surprise. The flowers looked very real. Her favourites. This time, she's mindful not to touch the wet paint as she silently marvels at his brush strokes.

"Wow..." The sound barely leaves her lips, her eyes stuck on the portrait unblinkingly when she sees the little note in the end. "You did this for me?" She mumbles under her breath, too scared to ponder upon the meaning behind the gesture. Didn't he say he felt nothing for her? 

She turns back to him, with many questions in her gaze but settling on the most simplest one. "Why?" Her gaze rakes over his appearance— his messed up hair, unassuming eyes, the tiny little beauty mark on his nose amidst the streaks of white paint that he must have accidentally gotten on himself while painting. He looked far too innocent for anything he'd done so far. A beautiful conundrum that she was nowhere close to solving, but managed to reel her in with as much as a gentle smile that belied his true intentions. "Why the lily of the valley?"

Taehyung put the brush down along with the palette, pulling his sleeves up once more as they kept coming down.

''Well...'' he softly whispered, turning back to look at her. His tongue poked out to wet his dry lips, before his eyes landed on the flower on the canvas, ''Lily of the valley... it represents the return to happiness..'' He chuckles, shaking his head at how cheesy it sounded, “And you said it's your favourite... Maybe, I am the lily-- trying to return...ah-- nevermind..'' He shrugged. Maybe, in his own mind, he would like to think of every person being able to be represented by a flower. His doctor was his daffodil. So.. maybe, Taehyung believed he could be related to the lily, in the pursuit of his happiness.

She takes a step closer, tugging at his arms to roll his sleeves up wordlessly so he wouldn't get any more paint on himself. She stays silent throughout his rambles, her eyes carefully taking in each flick of emotion on his face along with it.

"You want to be the lily?" Of course she doesn't add the part where she knew he wanted to represent the lily for her. "Are you sure? Didn't you say they were poisonous?"

Taehyung's eyes quivered at the word, as if she'd caught the hidden meaning behind the flower.

But it's not like she didn't know. She was his therapist. And she's experienced it first hand.

''Aren't I, though? This part of me...'' he gestures vaguely towards his temple.

"You want to find your happiness even if it comes along with the poison?" By now, she was no longer sugarcoating her words. Maybe saying it aloud as it was would stop him from whatever he was trying to be for her. Slowly, this new Taehyung was becoming hard for her to turn her back on. The innocence in him invoking the need to protect, and she didn't know if it was just manipulation on his part or something genuine.

"We're trying to cure you of that part, Tae. I don't think you should want to be the lily... there are so many other flowers to choose from, right?"

Taehyung shrugs, the common expression of his when he simply isn't sure what he's supposed to respond with, ''I guess you're right.'' But secretly, he still hoped.

Turning back to the painting, he inspects it once more before a soft sigh escapes his lips,

''Anyway...'' His eyes glance at the lunchboxes, ''I'm hungry. Can we eat?''

 Nodding her head, she moves away from the portrait, her mind running in inconclusive circles at what to make of their time together after the session officially ended. Of course she stopped taking notes, but that didn't mean she wasn't trying to analyse each of his actions. She couldn't pinpoint what was bothering her really, but she didn't expect him to be so... docile. Was it because of the drugs? Or was he really on the road to recovery that quickly?

Moving to the table, she opens the lunch boxes and sets it up as Taehyung follows her. Right before he's about to take the chopsticks though, she slaps gently at his hands.

"You have paint all over your fingers. Shouldn't you wash them off?"

''Ah..'' He withdraws his hand, giving her a small pout, ''I want to eat now...'' A sigh, playful however, allowed to escape his lips before getting up to head towards the small bathroom he was provided with, turning the water on by the sink to wash himself clean.

As he's washing his hands, his eyes glance up towards his reflection in the mirror. For some reason, he felt like he was sucked into a trance-like state, unable to move away from his own eyes.

Why are you restraining yourself?

Why are you allowing them to weaken us, Taehyung?

''Huh..'' Is all he could muster to say, frozen in place as the tap water continued to ripple over his hands, scorching water that slowly turned the skin into a reddish hue.

She tuts at his childish pout, smiling softly when he walks away to the little ensuite to wash himself while she goes about taking out all the little boxes in each of their lunch packs for him to eat once he comes out. When she's done, she sits herself down at the two seater table waiting for him. Seconds turn into minutes and she glances down at her watch, noting he'd been away for more than ten minutes now. 

She's quick to make her way towards the bathroom, hesitating a brief moment before she knocks on the door lightly only to find it opening at the gentlest push. Her dilemma vanishes the instant she finds it unlocked and peeps her head in cautiously to see him standing in front of the sink. "Tae... is everything okay in there?"

By the time she was checking on him, his hands were gripping the edges of the sink tightly, leaning a little closer towards his reflection. He didn't even notice his doctors presence, gaze completely fixed on himself, quietly whispering, "Go away."

It didn't work.

Taehyung grew frustrated, wanting the mischievous smirk on his face to go away. It wasn't him.

I am you, you are me.

"Stop...."

Hearing his whispered words, she immediately thinks it for her and almost closes the door, mumbling apologies for stumbling upon him but stops when he tells her to. Feeling more than just confused at his hot and cold replies, she dares to crane her neck around the door to look at Taehyung, frowning when she sees him still standing in front of the mirror staring into it unblinkingly, as if he'd seen a ghost.

"T-Tae..." Her tongue stutters around his name as she leans in further trying to snap him back to reality. "Can you hear me, Taehyung?"

We are you, we are me.

He screwed his eyes shut, the grip on the sink so strong that his knuckles turned white, veins underneath his skin popping from the strain.

Gnashing his teeth together, his words come out in a hiss, ''Don't you think I know?!''

He chews his lower lip between his teeth. Why was this happening now?

Our little whore is here, Taehyung.

Taehyung's eyes fly open, turning his neck abruptly to look over his shoulder, a startled look on his face, small beads of sweat trickling down his temples, ''Doctor..''

 She throws the door a little wider, hearing the obvious hiss slipping past his lips. She's about to reach for his shoulders and shake him out of whatever it was when he turns around himself, a flare of recognition in his eyes— but wait, the earlier lightness in them was absent, the brown of his pupils all murky and she steps closer with concern painted over her features.

"Yeah, I've been trying to reach you for the past five minutes..." She takes his hand, wrapping her fingers around it to check his pulse which was indeed beating too rapidly like she suspected. Her other hand goes up to his face, first checking his eyes by gently pulling his lower lid down before she presses her palm to his forehead to feel for his temperature. "I think it's time for your medication again." Her fingers trail down to cup his cheeks, hoping her touch would calm him down. "Are you okay? Did something happen?"

The touch of her hand made his insides stir, the familiar heat he hadn't felt for a while burning underneath the skin of his hand. Fuck… He wants to..

Medication? Yes, it was time.

But he felt the darkness inside of him fighting against the thought. He didn't want to take them. The very moment her hands reached for his face, his eyes darkened further, widening as a sharp exhale allowed to push through his lips.

She was taunting him-- it. Unknowingly.

''I'm fine... I'm good.'' his voice was slightly strained, but his normal self was slowly drowning, fighting the urges growing within. 

Feeling his hand faintly tremble in her hold, she swiftly shakes her head as she observes his unfocused gaze along with his pinched tone— everything pointing at him not being fine. 

"No, you're not..." A part of her feels responsible for his relapse, having not monitored the time properly. She could fix it though, as soon as she gets him back into the bed and sends out a message from her tab for his scheduled dosage.

It would be so, so easy for Taehyung to just… Give in.

''No.'' He huffs out in response to himself.

"We just need to get you back on your meds and you'll be okay. Just—" She's struggling to force him back into the room when his refusal stops her abruptly. "What do you mean ‘No’?" Her eyes flash up to meet his almost unrecognizable ones. "Tae?"

Taehyung looks down to avert her eyes, refusing to meet hers. He doesn't want her to see his obvious struggle, but it was to no avail as his entire body was trembling…

"I'm okay."

He wasn't.

"I don't need it."

We don't want it.

His mind suddenly started to swirl. The door was locked unless his doctor used the card. Where was it? Around her neck. The tablet? On his bed.

It’s too easy.

He took a deep breath, one he didn't control on his own as the last shred of himself was drowned by his darkness. His nightmares shifted his entire demeanor. That's when his lips curled into a wolfish grin, finally lifting his gaze to meet hers once more, "My daffodil..."

Staring as the tremors travel through his body from his hands, she doubles her efforts to tug him back into the room and she's almost successful when he begins mumbling under his breath. Pausing to lean closer to hear him out properly, "You need it. You won't be okay until you take the meds." Was he just stalling because he didn't like the drugs?

"Taehyung..." She comes to a halt abruptly when he goes stock still making it impossible to move him anywhere. The trembling seemed to have ceased making her frown and try to peek under his messy locks only to freeze upon seeing those all too familiar cold and fathomless dark eyes staring back at her in glee. 

"No..." The word barely leaves her lips at the nickname he was all too fond of calling her by now. "No, Tae. Snap out of it!" Both her hands moved to his arms trying to shake him before he did something. "This is not you."

Taehyung tilts his head to the side, the grin on his lips only growing, his head bobbing a little from the momentum of her shaking him, his long fringe dangling over his darkened eyes.

''This isn't me?'' He chuckles, ''But isn't this the me you yearn for?''

His hands reach up to wrap around her wrists, stopping her from shaking him any further,

''We-- I... can finally feel it again.'' His grip tightens around her wrists, using his body to force her to walk with him towards his room-- his gaze fixed on the bed. He wanted her there.

''Doctor...'' He smiles, the boxy, warm smile appearing once more to mess with her head.

She turns completely still at his question. Did she long for this Taehyung? The answer comes in a blink. No. Never. Now, if only she could make him believe that and maybe push him back into his mind long enough—

Her feet unwittingly backs further into his room, giving in to his push like always. But her brows furrow together in confusion at his words. He spoke like Tae with that grin she adores so much and yet, his eyes remained cold and eery, filled with something too twisted for her to grasp.

Soon the back of her knees hit the edge of the bed, making her stumble and fall back into it pulling him along. A cold shiver passes down her spine realizing their position. It must have been his intention all along. It was impossible to get to the door with him hovering above her, and her tab was too far away on the table along with their long forgotten food. She can't even shout for help in these soundproof walls.

"Feel what? W—weren't you hungry just now? The food is right there..." She keeps speaking softly to buy herself some time, her mind rapidly thinking for a way out. "Tae, this is not you... please. Don't do something you'd regret."

His hands fall on each side of her head, hovering over her body with his own, his long curls hanging to frame his face as he stares down at her. Pursing his lips in an almost childish pout, he breathes out his frustration through his nose.

''Why do you keep saying that? That I'm not me...'' He leans down closer, his face lingering a little too close-- yet not, to him being this close to her wasn't that weird.. They've done more intimate things. ''Doctor,'' he repeats, his eyes quivering as he meets hers, as if there was something--or someone disturbing his mind. Fighting him.

She's all yours now.

Taehyung screwed his eyes shut for a mere moment, shaking his head.

''No---..'' Gnashing his teeth together, his internal struggle evident.

She swiftly turns her head to the side, pressing her cheek into the mattress when he leans too close for comfort. They might have done things in the past, but she was determined to be his therapist only and help him recover more than anything.

That's why her stance falters when she hears him call her doctor instead of daffodil. Her eyes snap open, darting back to check on him to know for sure. But she's met with his closed ones instead.

She peers around the bed to see if she could disorient him enough to roll away and hit the buzzer for additional help under the table. Throwing her caution to wind, she pushes at Taehyung's chest, knocking his form sideways and tries to roll out of the bed, only to end up stuck half hanging over the edge. What she didn't consider was how their legs were tangled from her previous fall into the bed, making it impossible to shake him off. Fuck.

Taehyung's eyes fly open when he's shoved to the side, watching as she struggles to get off the bed.

Bad move. The Taehyung she knew was no longer there, pushed to the very corners of himself by the darkness erupting inside of him-- triggered by her attempt to escape.

His lips curl up into a wicked grin at the sight, like a predator watching it's helpless prey caught in his web. He enjoyed it. No, he loved it.

''Oh, flower... '' He breathes out with a chuckle, sitting up on the bed before reaching out to pull her back in by the arm, swiftly flipping her down on her back as he straddles her waist, wrists tightly pinned above her head, ''Just what did you think you were gonna do?''

"No..." A helpless cry, muffled by their struggle, slips past her lips as she's forced on her back again on the bed with absolutely no room for escape with Taehyung's weight pressing down upon her. The situation slowly looked too dire for her as she glanced up at the shadow of the man she thought she understood so well by this point.

"Taehyung, please!" She pleads, twisting her wrists within his hold. By now, she'd unknowingly begun calling this version by his full name while she called the other one, Tae, not hiding her fondness for him. "This isn't what you want, trust me. Just... let me go and we can pretend this never happened." Her body unknowingly writhes below him as she tries to free herself.

The way she squirmed underneath him brought Taehyung a sick satisfaction, a low groan vibrating in his chest at the feeling, the slight friction against his crotch. He smiled, his eyes were dead cold as they stared at her face, wrap around her wrists tightening further.

“No.”

Nothing more, nothing less. He didn't want to stop.

They didn't want to stop.

So, instead, Taehyung made sure he had both her wrists pinned down by one hand, using the other to grasp her chin between his rough fingers, guiding her lips to his own in a, from his end, hungry kiss.

Witnessing how his face twists in delight as she fights more, her efforts only making the slow growing bulge in his pants rub against her thighs, she stops completely to not rile him up any further. But that only proves to be ineffective when he more or less takes her still demeanor for silent compliance when he forces his lips down upon hers, pressing down insistently.

As much as a dark part of her wanted to relish in it, her rational side won for now and she tries to shake off Taehyung's harsh grip on her chin to no avail. There's a particularly harsh squeeze of wrists together by his long fingers causing her to gasp and immediately, she could feel his tongue slip past her lips and flood her with his taste. And she's almost a goner by then, her mind flashing with memories of both pleasure and pain brought by him and him alone.

Taehyung felt her struggle less underneath him, a sick piece of him slightly disappointed at how easily she gave in-- another piece happy because he interpreted it as willingness.

The kiss deepens, a rumbling moan transferring to her mouth as his tongue swirls around hers, giving it a needy suck to taste her.

Fuck, he'd missed her taste. It was better than any of the drugs.

When he'd indulged enough in her lips, the aching in his pants was getting hard to ignore-- but he did his damned best to, he wanted something else… Slowly, Taehyung withdrew from the kiss to let his lips press against her jawline, down her neck to alternate between biting and sucking on her skin, adamant to mark her as his own, all while his body shuffled lower, instead positioning himself on his knees between her legs, forcing her to spread them as he pressed his rock hard bulge against her clothed core.

A soft cry of protest from her throat makes it clear how much she detests it when he begins marring her skin with his marks. She once again wriggles her wrists in his iron grip, making an effort to pry them free, but fails.

"Taehyung, stop marking me!" She yells out a hissed whisper, gritting her teeth together. There was no way she could explain them to her if someone, or worse, Namjoon saw it. And he was bound to, if she made it to their dinner date which was gradually looking impossible at this point.

When he shows no sign of stopping, she resigns to her fate with her eyes clenched shut trying to dissociate herself from what was happening. But not a minute later, they fly open when a very obvious hardness presses against her heat.

How? How the hell did he feel arousal when he was given hormone suppressants?

Her back arches off the bed, inadvertently pushing her breasts against his chest as she digs her hips into the mattress to keep his length from rubbing into her core. Tossing her head to the side, a tear slides down her cheek when a part of her feels sick enough to crave his touch, especially the intimate ones when she knows she shouldn't if she wanted to uproot this obsession he had with her.

He couldn't stop, he was too far gone, drowning in his desire for her as he continues to kiss her skin until he reached the neckline of her shirt above her chest. His hands quickly moved to tug at the fabrics to get them off, wasting no time in his need to see her, feel her. When he finally managed to get it off her, he sat up straight to simply admire. His dimmed eyes fixated on the bra covering her most intimate parts. Taehyung licked his lips at the sight, ''Beautiful.''

With just the tiniest bit of struggle, she lets him push her shirt off her frame, exposing her upper half to his greedy eyes. Her skin tingles self consciously at his stare, having never let him see her this vulnerable before. Despite his hands having left her wrists, she still keeps them above her head without even being asked to. Maybe there was a part that wanted this just as much as her brain seemed to be averse to it.

Her nipples perk up beneath her bra, straining against the lace under his eyes as she watches his tongue sliding over his lips wetly, making her shudder at the sudden want rushing through her. She knows this is wrong on so many levels, but the glutton for punishment in her drives her enough to want both the pain and pleasure of his touch. After denying him for so long, a little sound of need slips past her lips shamefully. "Tae..."

Taehyung felt as if his soul quivered at her words.

Finally, she's ours again.

''Say my name again,'' He smiled as he allowed his shameless hands to smooth over the skin of her stomach, all the way until he reached the laced bra blocking his view. He'd lie if he said he didn't absolutely love the way she looks in it though, laced underwear being just another add-on to his fetishes.

He toyed with the hem of the bra, slowly pulling it down to expose her breasts for his hungry eyes. Taehyung clamps his lower lip between his teeth as he cups her chest in his hands. This was the first time he felt her like this, and he cursed himself for not doing it sooner.

''Say my name again.'' His voice lowered as he repeated the request, eyes darkening even further, if that was even possible As he said the words, he rolled her nipples between his fingers, giving them a sudden pinch to draw a reaction, testing her pain tolerance.

"Tae..." She repeats at his demand, her tone getting a little surer this time as she rolls her lip between her teeth on seeing the pure need in his eyes. The softest gasp leaves her parted lips when his sinfully long fingers slide up her skin and bares the evidence of her own desire, her breasts that sag down with no support till he picks them up in his large hands.

Her breathing stutters at the feel of his warm palms perfectly fitting over her soft mounds and she unconsciously widens her thighs for him to settle between them more snugly. With each air intake, she pushes more of her chest into his hold until he squeezes her sensitive nipples making her whimper hotly.

There. There was the speck of pain she was looking for. But she also wanted the pleasure that only he can give her. "Taehyung, please."

Nothing sounded better to his ears than her whiny pleads. Taehyung hovered over her, rocking his hips against her core in a teasing manner-- to let her know exactly how hard he is already, just for her.

''So cute when you beg..'' He praises, leaning down to encase her nipple in his mouth. A low, muffled groan vibrated in his throat at the friction he provided himself through continuously pressing his clothed cock against you, his tongue flicking her hardening nipple in his mouth. Giving it a harsh suck, his dark gaze is fixed on her face, raising an eyebrow as if asking her to tell him what exactly it is that she wants.

Even if he already knows, he couldn't get enough of hearing how needed he really is.

Her chest flushes from his little praises and the attention he showers on her pliant form with his hungry eyes. She clenches her eyes shut at the first touch of his hot mouth around her aching nipple, making her stifle a loud moan. Her fingers, having a mind of their own, move down to sneak into his messy curls to hold him close to her chest as she sighs at the feel of his tongue playing with her pebbled peaks.

Her entire body shudders with each teasing thrusts of his despite the hurdle of their clothes, but it's the second infliction of pain on her sensitive nipples that makes her eyes flutter open to look at his coal dark gaze. Pushing his hair off his eyes, she tenderly runs her thumb across his cheek in a sudden burst of some unnamed emotion.

"Need you, Tae." She tells him softly, the dark and greedy part of her silencing her logical side in the presence of his lustful form hovering over to devour her whole. Waiting to ruin her for anyone else as if he hasn't already. "Want to feel you deep inside me, please..."

He felt his cock throb at her begging. How could he possibly deny her this? It's what he's been craving for her to say over and over, whining his name as he fucks her until there's nothing but a blank stare of lust in her eyes.

''I know you do,'' He murmurs the second he pulls away from her nipple to sit up straight on his knees, tugging at the hem of his pants to pull them down. There was no time to waste, each second precious before they'd come looking for her. He wiggles the fabrics down his hips, his rigid length proudly bobbing in front of him as he keeps moving his hands to pull down your panties, leaving the skirt on to please his own visuals. There was no time for foreplay, but as he expected; she was already fucking soaked for him. He could tell by the way her panties were basically crumbled together in a wetness in the crotch area, crooking an eyebrow as he tossed them aside.

''I've missed you,'' He stared down at her as he said so, speaking both to her and her body.

Another moment, taking it slow yet not wasting a single second. with one hand he gave himself a few slow strokes before lubricating his tip between her soppy folds, the other hand settling on her hip to keep her in place.

Whimpering softly when his lips leave her, she surrenders herself completely to his mercy as he pulls off her clothes as he wished. Her fingers itch to feel his skin and she gives in to the urge, letting one of her hands to tentatively snake down her body until it settles beneath the hem of his shirt.

They had never done this completely naked before and she knew she'd only feel even more vulnerable if she allowed him to see her. But she couldn't stop the part of her that craved intimacy even if she was nothing more than a warm body for him to satisfy his appetite.

As soon as he presses his leaking tip against her sloppy folds, her other hand slips under his shirt and she splays her fingers flat against his back to push him down upon her, effectively sheathing his entire length inside her in a single thrust. Her lips part in a silent moan at the stretch around his fat cock, "Missed this. Missed your cock..." She rambles as she locks her legs around his hips, rocking her hips up to see if he'd move.

"Fuck..." Taehyung bit back an eager moan when he felt her heat engulf his entire length, eyes fluttering shut for a second to just... feel. "Tight, just for me.." He breathes out, eyes opening back up slowly to stare down at her. He didn't waste time to start moving, grinding his hips into her to rub and prod her deepest parts, his lips parting as warm huffs slipped through them, arms flexing as he kept himself up on his elbows, inches away from her face to keep a close eye on every expression on her face. "Feels good, feels so good." He murmurs quietly, the undertone of his possessiveness growing more evident with his thrusts that remained slow but firm, gradually building up his momentum. He wanted to savor every stroke, every moan, and every clenching of her cunt around his length.

She nods her head hastily at his words. It felt good. Too good. And this was why she let him have her over and over again, more out of her own greed and need to be satisfied in every way possible, and only Taehyung ever came close to that even if she knew she should have never crossed that line which made it harder to go back the more she stayed in his presence.

Her moans turn into whimpers with each of his deep thrusts, her insides clenching around every ridge and curve of his delicious length that was splitting her apart. Snapping her eyes open, she glances up at his own, his irises dark like two black holes, sucking her in like there was no tomorrow. Snaking her hand up his back and into his hair, she tugs it back sharply till his neck arches out towards her eager lips. Pressing a kiss to his Adam's apple, she gently sinks her teeth into it before sucking a mark on the skin as it bobs beneath her lips.

She tightens her legs around him, pulling him close until there's no distance between their flushed and sweaty skin, raising her hips to meet his, angling herself so the tip of his length would rub against her sweet spot repeatedly. Moving her lips away from his throat, she trails open mouthed kisses up his jaw messily till she reaches his ear and licks into it.

"More, Taehyung... please!" She gasps softly, feeling something different in the way he handled her body unlike the times before. But her brain was too much wasted in the pleasure coursing through her limbs to analyze it anymore.

One throaty moan after the other slipped past Taehyung's lips. He relishes how breathy and clear her voice sounded in his ear-- ‘More, Taehyung. Please!'

She's asking for more, Taehyung. You're too soft on her.

We want more.

Taehyung clenched his jaw at the urges building in his body, his thrusts growing rougher. Low grunts rumbled in his throat, trying to keep himself occupied-- this was good, so good.

But something was missing. He missed her sobs. Her cries in pain. Her begging through tears.

"Shit..." Taehyung hissed. It was too tempting, his desires already overtaking him entirely. She was right there, begging for his cock. She wants it.

Taehyung did something he'd never done before in the midst of it all. He grasped her chin, guiding her lips to his own in a gentle kiss. Nothing behind it, no lust, no pain. Only an unnamed emotion. He pulled back to look at her, a hint of his brightness flashed in his irises before they were once again devoured by the darkness within.

Taehyung got up on his knees, hands firmly digging into her milky thighs as he pushed them back properly against her chest, watching her wet cunt spread for him as he began moving his hips at a punishing pace.

She's still reeling from the unexpected kiss he presses upon her lips so gently, the surprise in her eyes evident as she blinks up at him when he changes his angle. She'd seen the brief flash of clarity beneath the dark embers that burnt her through his gaze and now more than ever, she was determined to find it once again and make it stay.

The barest hint of his saner self was enough to reel her back into an alarming sense of safety, trapping her deeper into his clutches as he rammed himself into her folded form with a renewed vigor. One of her hands travel up his chest and towards his cheek, cupping it gently to make him look down at her as her breasts bounce against her thighs every time he mercilessly pushes inside her, almost making her body jolt off the bed.

Too much. It was slowly becoming too much for her sensitive body to take anymore. Her moans stutter down to cries, begging for release, her hair falling wildly on to his pillow escaping its updo as she thrashes beneath him. With her eyes closed now, the squelching sound from the way he thrusted into her dripping folds seemed too obscene.

"I'm close... so close, Tae. Don't stop!" She sobs out loud, clearly confused between his two selves as her clit thrums with her impending release, her mind muddled completely from the way he was ruining her.

"Gah..." Taehyung grunts between heavy breaths, driving his hips forward over and over, repeating the sinful motion as he fucks into her like there was no other purpose he desired to fulfill.

He felt her fleshy, squelching insides constrict around his fat length as her orgasm quickly built up, only spurring him to continue-- and even accelerate the power behind his thrusts.

More. Give her more.

Louder... Harder.

"More." Taehyung said it out loud, the faint yet loud whisper in his head that fueled the fire in his body, desperate to find his own high. Pleasure, it was all he wanted. To feel something.

And because of her, he was able to feel the closest to alive he's ever felt.

"Cum on my cock-- fuck!" Taehyung growls, the darker corner of his mind on fire, growing stronger the closer he gets to his own release. He is tireless, greedy to feel as much as possible, to hear the way his cock plunges into her hot flesh, the sound so sinful it makes Tae's length throb heavily.

He just needed one last push. To feel her cunt squeeze around him like a vice grip to be able to reach his limit-- to hear her choked wails as she cums, silent cries in pain when he keeps fucking her past her sensitivity. The mere thought of this makes him moan out loud, grinding his hips into her to allow the swollen head of his cock to abuse her deepest parts.

Tears stream down the sides of her face, drenching his pillow behind her as pain begins to overwhelm her vulnerable body. Her fingers grapple to find purchase as his thrusts jerk her up further on the mattress, making the headboard bang against the wall with each of his movements. Wrapping her fingers around his arms that hold her almost folded in two, her nails dig into his skin enough to draw blood as he pushes himself even deeper into her if it were possible, making her feel his thick length pulse all the way inside her womb.

With his guttural voice moaning deeply above her, one last punishing thrust from Taehyung finally pushes her over the edge as pain and pleasure mingle together wrecking her body in agonizing waves of orgasm. She unravels with a strangled moan, her lips open in a muted scream as more tears flow down her face when he seems to take her with no pause even as her drippy orgasm is fucked out of her.

"T-Tae... please!" She begs as she cracks open her eyes to watch him fuck her hapless body brutally through her orgasm. "I can't... please— too much, baby." She gasps out breathlessly, trying to inhale in the air despite the pain in her ribs. "Baby stop!" She tries one more time, clawing at the strained muscles in his arm to make him see he was hurting her.

"Don't give in to the darkness, Taehyung. L-let go... and come back to me." The last part is said in a whisper as she fights the exhaustion trying to shroud her mind. She can't pass out. Not now. As one last try, she squeezes her insides around his cock tightly to make it harder for him to move. "Let go baby..."

Taehyung barely hears her pleas, too deep down in his own sea of rapture from the way her body squirms and clenches around his cock. Every sound she makes fuels the fire inside of him, the broken skin on his arms burning-- everything adds to the powerful high he feels.

"No, n-no...." He huffs, slowing down just slightly to look at her through his stringy fringe, still rubbing his swollen cock deeply inside of her. "I'm gonna cum inside."

And hurting her in the process didn't do anything but please him. After all, the sadism he possessed seemed to have grown stronger since he met her, and yet it seemed.... less. This entire illness contributed to the fact that he was even put in a facility, and here he is, on the edge of indulging fully in his sick desires.

But he doesn't cross it. Although his fingers itched to grasp her small throat in his large hand, it seemed as though she was on the verge of passing out just from his cock. And a sense of pride beamed within him. She squeezed his cock tighter, attempting to make it harder for him to move. But what she didn't realize is just how much he loved the tightness it provided, as if he had to work harder to spread her insides with his girth.

"Fuck, keep doing that... I'm so close...unff..." Taehyung's deep voice cracked into a whine when his orgasm hit him after one last rough thrust. He pins her body in place, keeping his cock deeply lodged inside as his cock pulsates rhythmically to empty himself of everything he had to offer. It's a feeling he never grows tired of, carelessly pumping his cum into her as if she's now claimed by his essence.

He breathes heavily, slowly moving his hips in a few shallow thrusts, staring down at her with possessive eyes-- eyes that didn't wash down to go back to his normal self as quickly as it previously would've.

Unable to hold on to her consciousness, her legs fall limply from around his hips held up only by his large hands that had her completely folded up. Her fingers tire from the constant clawing, simply wrapping around his arms now as her eyes roll back into her head briefly as he rams into her with one hard and final thrust, beginning to fill her ruined walls with his hot seeds.

She wanted to shake her head. To tell him to stop from pumping her full of his cum because she didn't want to risk a pregnancy in their current states. But no words make it past her swollen lips as he indulges fully in her exhausted body, making her realize how powerless she really was in the fact of his unbridled lust.

A muffled moan sounds from her throat, her neck and jaw hurting from the way she had to hold back most of her cries. It felt like he had filled her up heavily to the brim. There was so much more than the one time she'd let him have her before, her womb swelling up slightly from the amount of cum he dumped into her.

Taking in steadying breaths to not completely slip away into the blackness dotting her vision, she slowly pries her eyes open to see him above her, her body immediately shuddering at the dark look in his gaze that failed to disappear even after he'd found his high.

"Tae..." She rasps out, her throat feeling like sandpaper. "It's okay. I— I'm all yours now. Only yours. Come back..." She gently coaxes his other side, hoping to not trigger the monster in him again as she's sure she wouldn't survive if he decided to take her one more time.

As if the darkness slowly melted off of him by the second as it had been sated, his expression morphs from wicked to concerned-- with a hint of a smile when she says the one few words he'd longed to hear for so long.

"I'm here, doctor." He leans in close, lower lip trembling when he kisses her forehead gently, then withdraws to look at her. He swipes a thumb underneath her damp eyes, sighing at what he's done once again-- he'd succumbed to the darkness that seemed to overtake his senses more frequently..

But look what it gave you, Taehyung. Look where it brought her. Right into your grasp.

"Don't worry, I will always be here." Tae's smile grows to reassure his doctor, the familiar box-shaped grin that could melt the coldest of hearts. It's as if he wasn't just tearing her apart for his own sick pleasures. He pulls out finally, groaning quietly as he does so, sitting up on his knees. He places a warm palm on her trembling thigh, soothing it with a rubbing movement. "You mean it, right?"

He seems to be back. The crazed and uninhibited possession in his gaze has softened a bit. The monster has retreated to its hiding place, for now. Despite any amount of reassuring words, it still lives within him--that much is certain as she tries to lift herself to a sitting position and struggles to do so. 

She nods, strings of sweat-matted hair sticking to her forehead. “I mean it--” The door handle rattles.

“Doctor?” Namjoon’s voice rings from the other side, clear as a bell.

Get rid of him. 

“Don’t,” Taehyung whispers, but not at anyone in particular.

“Fuck… Tae, get dressed.” 

“Doctor, is the patient with you?”

Another rattle. This time, it’s stronger. A key card scans for entrance, and that’s when Taehyung’s voice grows louder.

“Don’t come in!”

“Tae!” She rasps in a whisper, clamoring to tug her clothes on. “Keep your voice down!”

He’ll take her away. 

“It’ll be fine..”

“What are you…” She leans in to look at Taehyung and notices what little light he’s harbored in his eyes has now left indefinitely. “No, Tae, please... Don’t do this. Not now.”

Another rattle, and finally, the door flies open. With little to no notice, Namjoon stands in the open doorway with a startled expression.

“Step away from her.” He says it in a low tone with concerned, dark eyes. He strides into the room and shoulders the easel out of his way, causing the fresh painting to fall and crumple beneath the firm wood. Cautious footsteps tromp over Tae’s work to get to them quicker, smearing the paint and tacking it beneath his shoes as he strides. 

The white of the bells have barely dried, meshing into the green that surrounds them. But the shape is still distinct, and it’s all Tae can see. His attention snaps back to her as her fingers mindlessly intertwine into his for comfort. This time, it’s for her. 

“Don’t look at it,” she soothes, running her thumb over his hand. Taehyung stares down blankly at their hands, then back at her. His eyes are vacant, but his lips tug into a warm smile. Before he’s able to speak, Namjoon’s voice demands their attention.

“Don’t touch. Please, just..” His hands clasp together in front of his chest, assessing the sight before him. He’s a patient man, and he’s seen a lot during his time as the head of the facility, but nothing like this. “Doctor, please...release the patient’s hand. We need to take him in for evaluation. His behavior is erratic.”

“Hah..” Taehyung crooks a bushy brow Namjoon’s way when he looks up at him, “Erratic? She’s the one holding my hand.” 

“I’ve got this under control, Joon..” Her voice cracks as she tries to hold her composure, half-naked and trembling with nerves. No matter how she tries to clarify what the facility head has walked into, it’s no use. 

 “No, you don’t.” Namjoon shakes his head lightly, with grave disappointment. “Let go of him.”

It’s harder than she’d admit, feeling a sense of comfort in the warmth of her patient’s hand that she could never describe to Namjoon. As long as they’re touching like this, she knows his humanity is intact. He can’t hurt her or himself.

“Give me more time with him. He was turning a corner, I just--”

“It’s over,” Joon tuts, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have reassigned you here. It was too dangerous.” He refrains from making a grimace at the way Taehyung’s small grin grows wider when she only grabs his hand tighter. Namjoon sighs, keeping his eyes on the other man instead of the half-dressed state she’s in, “And… get dressed. The nurses are on their way.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“This is serious. You’ve become...compromised. If you don’t cooperate, I can’t save you from this.”

“We made a breakthrough.” She swallows tight and squeezes Tae’s hand tighter, earning light red imprints where her fingers lay before releasing. “It’s not conventional, but it was working.”

“Just put some clothes on and we’ll talk about it, okay?”

Taehyung watches with intrigue, the way she followed Namjoon’s orders without much of a fight. He didn’t bother to get dressed more than the sweatpants he had earlier, crossing his arms over his broad chest. It seems there isn’t much he can do to change the direction of where this is going, so he keeps his cool and instead decides to marvel in the last few minutes he’s got left to look at her. 

“Keep your eyes on me,” Joon directs the patient. “Stop looking at her like that.” He turns his attention to her, relaxing his shoulders with relief when he notices her bare skin has been covered by more clothing.

Two nurses enter the room and naturally make their way to Tae, gently holding him by the arms to pull him out. 

“Wait..” Her eyes widen when Taehyung is lifted from the bed and removed from her side. “W-wait!”

“Please, keep calm,” Joon warns. “Let’s not make a scene.”

She latently realizes that this could be the last time she ever sees him. Even after all that he’s done to her, she struggles to separate her work from the bond they’ve formed. How could she forget, when his cum spills from her body and onto the bed. The bruises and marks are visible on her skin, and despite resisting them before, she wishes there were more.

Taehyung complies with the smallest boxy smirk on his lips, looking over his shoulder at her.

“I guess this is it, little daffodil,” Tae says with a smile, but it doesn’t reach his dark eyes, “For now.”

“Take him to solitary to be evaluated.” Namjoon walks to the bedside and wraps her shoulders with a blanket, to preserve her modesty. “We need a moment.”

The nurses followed his orders and left them to speak, sworn to the highest level of discretion by order of the facility head. 

“Come,” one of them prompted, nudging Tae slightly to pull his attention from her. But Tae’s gaze never wavered, not until he was out of the room, ushered and contained. 

“Bye.” she quietly replied, too late for him to hear.

Once they left, there were no witnesses or eavesdroppers to validate what was shared between the two of them. What’s certain is, after a week of bureaucratic back and forth and a mountain of paperwork, she was gone. Without formal notice, left of her own accord. ‘Personal reasons,’ the official documents said. 

Tae was transferred to another facility almost immediately. Namjoon was expedient in delivering his case to another establishment, well equipped for the likes of him. More barring, more locks. It was a tight-knit program with more rules and limitations, but he wasn’t Joon’s concern anymore. 

With Tae’s relocation came rumors amongst the facility staff. Why was he moved so suddenly? There was plenty of talk around it, but none of the gossip stuck. As weeks passed, so did the news around infamous Kim Taehyung and his short-lived treatment under their care. 

That was it, and life moved on. For everyone else at least.

The memories lived with her, everyday. 

Time passed. Weeks turned into years. She moved from job to job, and her time with Taehyung was left at the facility that day. What she remembers clearly is that Namjoon asked her to leave in return for his favor of silently dealing with her mistakes. And he did a good job dealing with them. It was his way of showing he cared, by giving her the chance to walk away and start anew. 

So she did.

A tall vase of daffodils sits on her dining room table, brightening up the room with their cheery yellow petals. Springtime arrived, which she enjoyed now-a-days, finding the most vibrant flowers at the market to decorate her home with. Their beauty fades day by day as they begin to wilt, but she holds onto them as long as she can. It’s a simple pleasure that brings a smile to her face, pleased to nurture something with such care.

She walks to her coffee pot to pour a new cup. It’s late in the morning, but she still wears her robe and slippers, uncaring of doing much more than step onto her front porch for a bit of sunshine before going back inside to watch television. With a steaming mug in her hand, and the aroma of mouth-watering coffee filling her senses, she does just that.

Sundays are lazy and quiet, for the most part. There are very few surprises out in the countryside. However, a slip of paper on her doorstep is atypical, to say the least. She unfolds it with the tip of her slipper to inspect it further, and uncovers what looks to be an original painting of violet irises. The paint smells fresh, like it had dried just before it was placed for her to find. 

She kneels down to take a closer look, pinching the note between her fingers.

“Through his pain...came beauty.” She reads it out loud, but pauses between words. Her voice strains to continue, but presses on. “…His art.” 

Heart pounds in her ears as she lifts her eyes to a small patch of wild irises she has growing in her garden. Starting at the base of the plant is a pair of boots, which seem to sprout from the floral bed. She trails up a pair of long legs, over slim hips and broad shoulders, until she reaches the face that’s haunted her for years--one she left behind in what feels like another life. 

Luscious curls, a sharp jaw...almond eyes, framed by full lashes. It’s all there, just as she remembers it. There’s even that dark and innocent gaze staring back at her, devouring her, making up for lost time. Once they lock eyes, she forgets everything she wanted to say to him. Years of practice, and all she can muster is the smallest--

“Tae?”

Taehyung’s toothy smile grows wide at the sound of her voice. Years of patience finally paid off. He slowly approaches her as to not startle her, like a deer in headlights. With a gentle touch, he reaches out to brush his thumb against her damp cheek.

“Hello, daffodil.”

He can tell by the way you mime along to the lyrics, the rhythmic pattern of your head bangs alone that you listen to the same playlist everyday while you sweat it out on the treadmill. People tend to be pretty ritualistic as it is, even if they don’t know it, but this was just too concentric to be coincidence. He was right though, in the end. It didn’t take much, slipping into your room at night while you’d been sleeping and unplugging your phone from the charger on your nightstand beside your bed. Stopping to look down at your sleeping form, brush an errant strand of hair away from the frame of your face, watch you twitch in your sleep. He wonders what you dream of. Peaceful, listless, little dreams while you believe no one’s watching.

He airdrops your playlist from your phone to his, technology is such a fickle thing, making our lives easier, making our info easier to steal. He won’t be malicious with it, no, not much. Just invasive enough to strengthen the bond between you, now he can listen along while he watches you run, queue up your playlist at the same time you do, watch you up the speed and take your first steps while the first notes begin to sound through your ears and his.

It makes the subtle rhythm of your hips make sense, the timing of your poses and moves fall into place. You kind of half-dance-half-run. Fucking adorable by the way, he’s got more than one snap of you striking that same cute little pose for that half second between steps every time your favorite song comes around. He knows it’s your favorite by the way you disrupt the normal flow of songs in order to play it over again, a luxury you don’t afford any other song in the mix.

Scrambling to keep up with the tread as you snatch your phone from the cup holder where it sits while you run to start it over. You don’t even have the patience to slow it down so you don’t damn near trip every time. It’s a precaution you skip, one among many others that’s led him to be able to keep as close of tabs on you as he’s able. You really should be more careful, it's another lesson, one among many others that he’ll have to teach you.

He doesn’t mind, it’s a bit of an honor really, though he doubts you’ll see it that way. It’s a miracle you hadn’t been singled out before now with the way you so carelessly choose to lead your life. Prancing around your house half naked, windows drawn but not quite closed, tease. The ADT sign you planted in the turf of your lawn was a nice touch, too bad a sign was all it was, those security plans sure are expensive. He wonders, if you knew now what you’ll know then, would you have forked it over.

You come home with a migraine, it developed somewhere between the stoplight outside of work and the small traffic jam in front of a four car pile up two blocks from your house. You took some excedrin when you were finally able to get in the house. But not before pulling the trash can up from the edge of the road, gathering your mail from the box and going back to the car three times to look for your purse which you set down in the bathroom for some reason, god only knows why.

While they normally kick in within the hour, by the time three had come and gone you’d given up hope. It was a ‘lay on the couch, watch shitty tv and pray to whatever deity is listening to please stop tightening the invisible vice around my head’ kind of evening. All fore-planned events and activities had been canceled in lieu of lounging around like a sloth. You couldn’t even keep your eyes open half the time anyway, it’s how you knew when you called it an early night that you’d need the little, black silk, travel mask you bought precisely for occasions such as these.

Light is evil, light is the enemy, only darkness is your friend. You climb into bed after double checking the locks on the doors and windows. You've heard about “Roseville’s Ghost”. It was all over the news and in the papers. Better safe than sorry, though you didn’t worry much about those things. It could never happen to you, of course.

Settled into bed with your brain still under a full frontal assault you promptly pulled the soft black material over your eyes and felt just an inkling of immediate relief. It was both minuscule and monumental. It wasn’t long before you fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

“Wake up.” Your eyes spring open only to be met with the same resolute blackness you’d been familiar with before opening them. You are certain you’d heard someone. At least fairly certain, you don't have any dreams staining the backs of your eyelids to have heard that voice from but you’re certain you’d heard it. You go to lift the mask from over your eyes, light a match in the darkness of your uncertainty and quell your fears but your arms won't move, neither your right nor your left. The first thing to spring to mind is sleep paralysis, you’d dealt with it a few times prior but never after a migraine, never with you unable to open your eyes. You’re unsure if that makes it better or worse.

But you are sure it’s sleep paralysis. You know because there’s that tell-tale heavy, immovable weight on your chest. The only difference being you cannot see the terror that preys upon you, suspending you in this half-asleep-half-awake nightmare spell. You wonder how long you’ll have to endure it. You don’t get to ruminate on it long before that voice speaks again.

It absolutely has to be coming from the thing on top of you, although when he does speak again you can feel it as well as hear it and that’s new. Perhaps, with one of your senses removed, your others have grown more keen. Or your sleep paralysis demon is becoming more evolved, feeding off your fear and manifesting into something more physical. Your terrified mind gets so lost in its own demented circles you don’t hear what it says the first time.

“W-what?” Your eyes widen behind the mask, you’re fairly certain you’re supposed to be unable to speak in these situations, complete paralysis. It’s in this split second, with this single, small epiphany that you realize this isn’t a dream, or a nightmare, or something in between, but real. Actually happening to you in real time, with a real man sitting on your chest whom you can’t see.

“I said, I’m going to take off your mask. Don’t scream.” You’re sure that won’t be much of an issue, since you've realized this is in fact not a nightmare but indeed a real ongoing situation your vocal chords have locked up tighter than a drum. You’re unsure you could have spoken even if your life depended on it, even if your screams were to be your only saving grace, you’re fairly certain you’re currently incapable of sound, bound to compliance by sheer terror, obedient against your will.

You feel fingers at your temples and your eyes automatically shut as the silken mask is removed. You should keep them that way, resist whatever sick curiosity tempts your lids to lift but you can’t, you have to know, you have to see.

You wish you hadn’t. The man striding your lower half is large, dressed in black he appears as a solid block that blends his outline with the shadows. The one thing you can distinguish is his face. Pale white and elongated into an unending scream. Sunken eyes and missing a nose, it seems to mock you with something akin to pity, though the man behind the mask seems anything but sorry to inconvenience you.

“Good.” He praises as you stare up into his lifeless face, wondering how in the hell you could possibly have let yourself fall into a situation such as this.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. When I say, you’re going to get up and walk over to that chair over there.” He motions to your computer chair, pulled front and center into the middle of the room. “And you’re going to sit nice and still for me and if you move I’m going to make you wish you hadn’t.” He pauses like he’s waiting for a response. “Do you understand?” Surely you’re dreaming, this absolutely can NOT be happening right now.

The answer to your internal question is answered promptly as you feel him lean down over you and press something sharp, sinister and cold against your neck, you don’t dare shiver against its chill. His next words are a whisper, the overwhelming stench of cheap plastic clogging your nostrils as he leans down close. “I said, do you understand?”

You nearly choke on the dried strip of leather that’s become your tongue trying to say yes, not daring to nod. It comes out a ghost of the word, a breathy pathetic excuse for speech but it must be good enough for him as you feel him pull the blade off your neck and you begin to feel like you can breathe again, at least momentarily.

He lifts off you and your brain insists that you should take some sort of initiative, be brave, strike back. But one look at the man before you once he’d risen to his full stature abated all thoughts of bravery. Tall and lean, his choice of attire did a good job of masking much of anything else discernible of his appearance and of course the mask completely covered his face, the hood pulled up over the edges of it even made it impossible to see any of his hair either. For all you could tell the man was literally a ghost, though one with weight and presence and deadly intentions.

You realize he’s watching you analyze him, racking your eyes up his body and trying to size him up. Normally, in movies and such, the bad guys are always trying to get you to hurry, get what they want and get out of there. Not him, there’s an odd quality about him, the absence of rush, almost prodding his way through this, like it’s more of a game than a strategic offense. But that’s not to say he seemed amateurish in any aspect, quite the opposite. It was clear he was fully in control, so much so in fact that he could afford the leisure of toying with you a little.

“Like what you see, doll?” You can hear the cocky smirk in his tone, feel him oozing with it as he goads you in jest. He watches your expression shift from confusion to alarm and then one of hastily tacked on offense. “What? No fucking way you-!” Your sentence falls away, left hung in the air unfinished as you realize you’ve momentarily forgotten you’re in a home invasion scenario and not dealing with some normal asshole from off the street and any snarkiness you may have been ready to serve back to him dissipates as you switch back into survival mode. “Please I-“

“Get up.” He cuts you off, firm and authoritative. Fear fills your legs like lead and makes them uncooperative but it only takes a flash of the blade at his side, the promise of pain in the glint of the steel to make you pull back the covers and try. He’s patient with you as you amble out of bed slow and jerkily. Even though you only make it to sitting up, legs thrown over the edge and eyeing up the computer chair he’d centered in the room like it’s rigged to carry electric voltage. You knew once you were tied to it it’d be your final destination.

A wave of his blade recaptures your attention, with two flicks of the tip he motions you to rise. You did as he bid, without much other choice. Standing across from him that instinctive fight or flight urge rises from the marrow of your bones and makes your legs twitch with action’s potential but ultimately you end up meandering to the chair and sitting, resting your hands in your lap pliantly as you await further instruction.

When you still he comes to life, moving around behind you and gently pulling your hands from your lap and around the back of the backrest. With this time you have nothing else to do but observe, honing in on his individual boot falls, glancing down to register his combat boot clad feet, as blacked out as the rest of his fit.

Forced to pay attention to the way his hands move over your skin, the heat radiating off of his body warming to your back. The even, repetitive, lulling quality of his breaths in your immediate space. Even the faint sting of cheap cologne burns the hairs in your nostrils, making you lightheaded in a way that’s not entirely unpleasant.

There’s the shift of fabric and the sound of him unfastening something you can’t see from beyond your peripherie. You feel his gloved hands glide over your skin before the cord wraps around your wrists, binding them. He’s surprisingly slow and methodical; not overly rough until he has to be, the knots require a certain use of force that leaves you wincing.

He stands and moves about the room, silently adjusting it to his liking. Closing your bedroom door, drawing the curtains tight, pushing open your bathroom door to throw a little more light into the room. While he completes these menial tasks you pick up on something unsettling.

Just the ease with which he traverses the room. This house has a runner seam, a raised board that rides the centerline of its entire length. After moving in it took you months to stop tripping over it, to mentally identify the mapping of this new space in your brain that allows for an extra inch of clearance automatically. Over the span of your occupancy you’d had a few boyfriends and none of them lasted long enough to get used to that seam. Not even your parents who’d been over the most, helping you unpack and make a few minor repairs had ever gotten used to it. Everyone you’d ever had over has tripped over that runner seam, but not him, not once.

He pulls one of your kitchen chairs up from out of the shadows, the legs squalling against your hardwood floor until he sets it in place right in front of yours and sits. Scooching up nice and close to you, your knees bumping against each other as he settles in. You try to avoid touching him but his legs are long and he spreads them out wide so both your knees are bracketed by his, his plastic face regarding yours with that same mock-pity expression as the cold fingers of fear rustle up your spine, making you shiver.

You need to get this man out of your house in any way you can. Your first instinct is to try and scare him away, maybe you are no real threat but perhaps the idea that there will be more people added to the equation will be enough to get him to reconsider.

“Please!! Please just go! My roommate’s gonna be home soon a-and she.. she’ll see you and scream and- and-“

His head cocks just so, like he’s staring at a picture frame that’s askew, off in a way he knows just at a glance is wrong. “Let’s skip over the bullshit, shall we? I already know everything there is to know about you, babygirl.”

“She works late but she’s gonna be back any minute now!!” You reaffirm, trampling over his unsettling comment.

“You don’t have a roommate. You’ve lived in this house by yourself since your last roommate moved out some… hmmm..” he pauses, you can almost see the numbers fly past the whites of his eyes as he, no doubt, flips through the calendar in his head. “14 months ago.”

Horror floods your veins but you push past it, insistent. “My parents, they’re coming over first thing tomorrow morning.” He chuckles, a knowing sound filled with humor like you’ve just made some kind of inside joke, but it leaves you nothing but bloated with dread.

“On a couples retreat to Acapulco. Left a month ago, won’t be home for another two.” Your throat tightens, it makes your next try come out less confident and more shriekish.

“My brother-“ You rebuff.

“Lives in Michigan.” He interjects.

“Sister!” You scramble to refute.

“Don’t have one.” He adds confidently.

“My boyfriend!” A last ditch effort, even you can hear the desperation leaking into disbelief as you say it.

“Oh, sweetheart. Stop. You’ve been chronically single for how long now? Nine? Ten months?”

Your mouth plops open like a fish out of water. Your eyes the size of saucers as he expertly thwarts every attempt to deter the inevitable. How could he possibly know? Oh my god! Who cares! You’ve got to get this guy the fuck out of your house and now! Fucking think! You’ve seen this stuff on the news over and over. What do they always say? Don’t fight. Just give them what they want. Give them what they want and they’ll go away. Now you’ve just got to figure out what it is he wants.

“I-I- I’ve got money. Y-you can have it. All of it. It’s-“

“Nine hundred and forty five dollars even in the little black Sentry fireproof safe. Hidden under your floor, under the board that creaks in front of the closet.” He says matter of factly and there’s a hidden smile in his tone, like he’s waiting for the praise that comes posthaste with answering a problem promptly and correctly. When he doesn't get his immediate gratification he antes up.

“It’s even because any change you have you save up in a jar for the end of the month when you carry it up to the bank and exchange it for bills, which you add to the safe after you pull out the board and put in your passcode. 974703.” Your mouth hangs open in speechless horror. How could he know that? You always go to the bank at the end of the month, you figure he could deduce that but your passcode? You’ve never even written that down. How would he know your passcode? “Ohhhuuhhhghh my god.”

The floor feels like it’s dropped out from beneath you. He’s speaking but you’re not really registering the words, lost in your own spiral towards insanity. This man knows you, he knows things about you, approximate information about your life, your relationships, your schedule. And yet you don’t have any idea who he is.

His voice is not familiar to you. He has no accent nor any unique qualities or lilts that you can discern or recognize. He’s well spoken and intelligent, cocky and in a way you won’t admit outside the safety of your own thoughts, oddly charming. He doesn’t want money, can’t be bartered or bought. There seems to be no clear motivator for this man’s actions. You’re running out of bargaining chips with which to trade for your life.

If you can’t tempt him then maybe you can reason with him. Perhaps it’s not too late to get him to change his mind. Part of you reasons that if he’s wearing a mask it’s because he wants to keep his identity from you, which must mean he plans to leave you alive. There’s all kinds of potholes and washouts in your theory but under the influence of fear the mind can bridge gaps in logic that rival the Mariana Trench. That’s when it comes to you and you’re almost giddy with the realization. Your reaction is animated, making you nearly jump up in your words’ enthusiasm to escape your lips. You laugh at the simplicity of it, a nervous little sound that’s half relief, half insanity. God why hadn’t you thought of that sooner!

“I haven’t seen your face! I have no earthly idea what you even look like! You can just go! Like for real, just leave! And we don’t have to do this.” There’s a rumble from his chest. A deep, dark laugh like a resounding rock slide from above and it means one thing and one thing only, danger. To your horror, one gloved hand begins to rise to the cusp of his mask and you wrench your eyes closed, titling your head back until your neck is jacked and your face lifts to the ceiling above, screaming all the while. “No! No, no, no, no, NO!” You feel one hand reach up to grasp your chin, pulling it down. You fight, but he ultimately wins, his leather clad fingers anchoring your chin to your chest. “Look at me, sweetheart.”

You chant no like a mantra. Like if you say it a certain amount of times fast enough, if you try and believe hard enough he will disappear from existence, like some kind of reverse childhood mirror game. You can not see him, therefore he cannot see you, therefore poof! Begone intruder! You shake your head back and forth, yelling it louder and louder all the while. He can drag your head down to his heart's content but he can’t possibly open your eyes for you. That’s impossible.

You feel the knife before you ever see it, slipping along the curved flank of your bare thigh. It’s steely edge biting just ever so slightly into the plush flesh, as if sampling an offered morsel of meat to determine its rarity.

Your eyes fly open of their own accord in reaction to the pain and stare right into his own dark, dark, brown orbs. There’s a sick warmth in them, something sinister masquerading as compassion, as if they don’t belong to the same man who’s digging a knife into your leg as your eyes lock, but rather to a man feasting his eyes upon his bride for the first time dressed in chiffon white. “There she is.”

You don’t maintain eye contact for long, yours sliding off his to register the huge knife he’s casually dragging the edge of along your exposed thigh, your first good look at it up close. It sports a wicked tip, glimmering dangerously in the diffused light shifting in from the bathroom.

He eases his downward pressure but your leg still stings like hell. His thumb finds the wound in the dark and laves over it soothingly, though it has no soothing effects, just leaving a dimmer, muted burn in its wake.

“Is it all falling into place yet, sweets?” He leans forward into your personal space, like the answer is just on the tip of his nose and you’re somehow still missing it, like this revelation should have been obvious from the start.

You can’t think, mind drawing blank after blank. You try to rationalize this crazy man’s actions in your mind. Why would he do this? Why me? Have I wronged him? Have you wronged anyone at all in the last week? Month? Year? How far back should you be retracing your every step? How long would a person sit on a grudge before exacting this level of revenge? What could you have possibly done to make this man angry with you?

But is that true? Your mind glosses over the fact that he seems anything but angry with you. Menacing? Yes. Threatening? Demanding? Absolutely. But angry? No. Not in the slightest, though you’re so worked up it leaves you blind to these facts.

It dawns on you then. How could you be so stupid? The killer. This is the guy behind all the murders. Your sleep clouded brain shouldn’t have been any excuse for you to oversee what was right in front of you all along. Your face instantly falls as you come to the second realization sitting just behind the first. You’re going to die, this is it.

You switch gears and immediately begin to plead with him, the individual words streaming out of your mouth so quickly they’re stumbling over each other. He watches you like that, watches as you crumple into a desperate subhuman right before his very eyes. You peer up at him from below, done attempting to form coherent sentences as your brain is unable to handle them, now reduced to the simplistic but hopefully moving enough, “Please.” Though repeated over and over and over in rapid succession.

You’re hoping to appeal to this mystery man’s better nature, if there’s one inside of him to speak of. But the next words out of his mouth make you really doubt it. “As much as I love the sound of hearing you beg, I need you to stop so I can speak.”

You’re unable to. It just keeps falling from your lips like someone left a faucet on in your throat and it’s starting to overflow, filling up the swell of your cheeks and beginning to leak out as hot, briny tears from the waterline of your over blinking lashes. He starts shushing you, oh so gently, until your tears begin to ebb and your sobs begin to hitch. You look up into his deep brown eyes, your chin trembling with the might of your fear as your hands wriggle against the cordage wound tight around them behind your back.

“Please.” It’s your last plea, begging him one last time not to do this. His head tilts as silence fills the space between you. “Please!! I don’t understand why you’re doing this!!”

“You want the truth, doll? Want me to just come out and say it?” No, not really. What you really want is for him to just disappear or better yet for you to simply wake up from this living nightmare to find you’d never even made it to bed, just fell asleep in front of the tv and the awkward position you’d fell out in on your lumpy couch plus the remnants of this terrible headache had given you night terrors so real they were beyond anything you’d ever experienced prior, vivid beyond your wildest imaginations.

But it’s not a nightmare because no matter how hard you try, you can’t wake up and he’s still here sitting in front of you and it just keeps on going. “I came here to kill you. But I couldn’t…” Now this is a turn. Did he just say he couldn’t?

“I’ll be honest, babygirl. I can’t decide.” He begins to explain it to you but as he goes on it becomes less and less apparent he’s even talking to you at all. “I watch all my intended targets before I make my design, it’s standard procedure. But the longer I watched you the more invested I became. And then three months came and went and I knew your schedules, your routines, your patterns.. you.” His tone begins to lighten as his eyes lift to meet yours, like something out of some twisted romantic comedy. At least you’re hoping for a comedy, anything other than a tragedy at this point would be just fine with you.

“But I was oddly conflicted.” He continues, dropping your eyes again. “Typically I get visions, increasing in intensity. It starts out mild. Breaking in when they’re isolated, sneaking up to them while they sleep, plunging my knife into their chests, watching their eyes spring open to meet mine before death consumes them. Then, as I watch them more and more, they get more violent in scale, more visceral in nature. The longer I watch, the stronger the blood lust gets, until I’m slicing them open by their stomachs and dragging their intestines out to hang from the ceiling.”

His fists clench and you catch a glimmer, just a passing glimpse of what this man is capable of. His whole body tenses as he’s briefly consumed by his afflictions as he recounts them. His shoulders tense and you can hear the squeaky protest of his leather gloves as he balls his hands into fists ever tighter. The fabric around his forearms bunches and tightens against the muscles straining beneath.

“Sometimes I think about really taking my time with it. Maybe I don’t go straight for the heart, maybe the first strike is less than lethal. Leave them alive a little longer so I can play around a bit. When their lungs start to fill with blood they become less and less capable of screaming and I do love a good scream.”

He smiles up at you with a sharp, toothy grin. The whites of his eyes burning into yours as you try not to look as horrified as you feel. Try and hide the disgust germinating in your gut. But as his eyes meet yours his expression changes. His smile remains but shifts from one filled with humor to one shy and adoration filled, almost bashful in its softening. Your ears perk as he starts to go into more detail regarding his experience with you.

“It was the same with you at first.” His eyes lose contact with yours as he appears to be diving headfirst into another daydream.

“Imagining myself slipping into your bedroom in the dead of night. Finding you deep asleep as I stand over your bed. Burying my knife into your chest.” The way he so casually describes to you his fantasies regarding your murder at his hand makes you short of breath and you wonder just how out of touch he has to be for him to not consider this to be, at the very least, extremely uncomfortable for you.

“But then it changed. Things took a more provocative turn.” Your veins flood with alarm and your eyes widen but he doesn’t look back up at you to catch it, too enthralled with the memories of it. “I saw myself walking up to the side of your bed and climbing over top of you, telling myself it was for a more intimate, close-up kill. Or maybe a better angle in which to plunge the knife into your chest.”

He looks distant, troubled as he speaks. “But that never happens. Now when I enter your room and climb up over you.. you always wake up and look up at me and it’s like I’m frozen. It’s like you see right through me, right through the mask. I know what I should do, I know what I have to do, but I can’t. So instead I always envision myself slipping off the mask and leaning down to kiss you.”

Your cheeks flare with heat at what he’s describing, it only gets worse as he continues. “And I thought it was a fluke and over time everything would go back to normal and I’d dream about killing you again. Except it never did, it just got worse. All I could think of, all I’d dream about was climbing over top of you and grabbing fistfuls of your comforter and ripping back your sheets. Running my hands through your hair and yanking your head back just so I can lean down and place my lips against your neck, finally getting a taste of your skin.”

Your wrists had begun to ache in your binds and it’s only then do you realize it’s because you’re restless in them, pulling at the cordage to distract yourself from the impossible. Your thighs squeezing together against the familiar yet unwelcome sensation of arousal. It’s not real, not a genuine reaction, this means nothing. It's the bizarre circumstances, the adrenaline, the way he’s vividly describing these incredibly intimate actions in such close proximity to you. It doesn’t make you some kind of degenerate, it could happen to anyone in similar circumstances. If anyone was to blame it was him, he’s sick, he’s obscene.

He stops living in his mind for a moment and comes back to you and for once you’re grateful for the distraction. It’s easier to fear him than process your body's reactions. He notices, because of the deliberate way he’d centered the chair so that the light from the bathroom would be cast upon your face, that your eyes are now slightly dilated. And while he knows, through research and personal experience, that the human eye certainly will dilate in response to fear, he also knows that the same reaction occurs when aroused. But the key difference between the two responses is that only one typically makes an individual rub their thighs together and now you won’t meet his gaze.

The thought thrills him, but he lets you keep your secrets a little longer as he continues. “I can’t kill you… but I can’t let you go…” Your brows furrow and you seem to be becoming increasingly distressed. “Why?”

“Well for one, you’ve seen me now. That part was all you. It wasn’t my initial plan but you tempted me and I couldn’t resist. But you see my dilemma, cupcake? You make me do things that are not in my best interest and I never act out of my own interest. Everything I do is planned, methodical, purposeful. But not with you, ever since I singled you out things have changed and they must go back to normal, do you understand?”

You don’t. None of this makes any kind of rational sense. You’ve already begged him to go, begged him not to do this. What does he want from you? Some kind of essay on why he shouldn’t kill you? Two pages front and back double spaced with standard margins? “No.” His eyes bore into yours as he imparts the task with which you’re responsible.

“I need you to convince me not to act within my best interest.” He flashes you a smile that’s meant to be winning as your ears try and fail to process what he's just told you. He wants you to convince him… not to kill you. He can tell it’s not setting well with you.

“You need to relax.” He says nonchalantly, like it’s as simple as taking one big breath and counting to three. Like he didn’t just dump this huge yet vague responsibility onto your shoulders. “Well excuse me if I’m a little riled by a fucking psychopath in my bedroom at three in the fucking morning!!!”

His mouth twists in an annoyed grimace. And for the first time you feel as though your foot has been lodged firmly in your throat. You’ve angered him and now you’re fucked. Way to go, in three seconds flat you’ve made his mind up for him.

“Firstly, I’m a sociopath, not a psychopath. Psychopaths are unable to form emotional bonds or even struggle to feel real, human emotion at all, and I think we both know that’s not true with me. Secondly, it’s midnight, not three a.m, silly. And lastly, this is exactly what I’m talking about, honeybun. You’re stressed out, high strung. I can fix that.”

You lean back as far as you can in your computer chair, the shittily constructed plastic and screws squalling in protest of your weight as he reaches for something your petrified mind can only conjure up worse and worse images of being.

You instinctively recoil and then dumbly relax as the flick of a lighter sparks to life a tiny flame in the otherwise dark of your room. It illuminates him for a moment, the whites of his eyes focusing on something other than you for a change. The dim light throws irregular shadows across the planes of his face. It’s the first really good look you get at him, though you know you shouldn’t. You should be taking every opportunity to forget you ever saw him, only a vague shadow in the dark if you ever wish to make it out of this nightmarish situation alive but you can’t help yourself. He’s just a few feet away and the lighter keeps drawing your eyes like moths, fluttering over his features in passing flight.

He’s got that smoldering, troubled look. Dark eyes, dark hair. Angular jaw, strong chin. There’s a fat joint precariously clenched between his plush lips that he brings the flame up to the end of, taking two quick puffs to light as the end blooms a cherry head and smoke begins to voluminously rise from.

He’s pretty, you begrudgingly have to admit. Naturally attractive in a way that unsettles you to say, the fact worms under the skin at your nape and stands the thin wisps of hair growing there on edge. Especially now that he’s imparted his great secret with you. It would be easier if he were revolting, but he’s not.

It makes you wonder how different the situation would be if he’d just approached you naturally. How easily you’d have fallen under the spell of this man’s witty charm had he had the good sense to try and court you normally. It horrifies you to think how easily you could imagine yourself falling in love with a man holding back a secret as dark as this, a man capable of this level of debauchery. He speaks and snaps you back to the present.

“I won’t untie you. You seem like the tricky type, my love. You’ll have to get your fix another way.” You glower at him to hide your disappointment. As much as you hate to admit it, you’d love a hit right about now. If you’re to die, there’s no better way than high.

“Don’t pout. You’ll get yours.” You instinctively pull your arm towards it for a pass but you’re stopped short by your binds. He must notice, letting out a dark chuckle you hate to admit sends chills down the column of your spine.

“Oh that’s fucking adorable. Hold still.” Before you can move he snaps up a camera you hadn’t noticed dangling from his neck and the bright flare of a flash momentarily blinds you.

When you can see again, he’s staring down into the screen of his, suffice to say, really nice ass looking camera, though you’re no tech expert by any means. His smile widens, flashing a toothy grin down at the image of your face and then up to your real and present one.

Satisfied with capturing the moment, he drops the camera back down to hang from his neck as he eyes you precariously before taking a long, slow drag from the joint. He pulls away and motions you forward with two fingers. You hesitate and get to watch his eyes darken in real time, watch him shift from being personable to something much less tolerant in an instant.

He exhales and a plume of smoke permeates the air in your vicinity, saturating it with the funky, pungent odor of bud. The space between you is noticeably thicker and not just from the smoke. His voice drops that cheerful quality and you suddenly understand that this whole time he’s been being nice to you. He drops your gaze and scoffs to his lap. “I lit this just for you. If you don’t at least indulge me you’ll hurt my feelings.”

When his eyes take hold of yours again they’re anything but friendly. “And you wouldn’t wanna hurt my feelings, now would you doll?” There’s an unspoken threat, an underlying message left unuttered but nevertheless fully understood by both parties.

You are now at a crossroads, humor him or face the alternative and the choice is yours, for him it seems, it wouldn't really be a bother either way. Ultimately you lean in, you’re not exactly in any kind of position to refuse.

He takes another hit, larger than the first, a punishment perhaps for your inhibitions the first go around. Though you know what you’re doing, he still takes a moment prior to coach you, a single word that sends a surge of need shooting down your spine, making you shiver in what you tell yourself is disgust. Without choking or sounding even remotely bothered he orders you around a lungful of smoke.

“Suck.” It’s all you get before his lips push up against yours. They're soft and warm and you feel his hand lift up to cradle your cheek. Intimate, sweet, in a way one could call almost gentlemanly, though you know better. It helps steady you in place before you feel his lips part slightly and blow warm, thick smoke into your mouth that you suck down deep into your lungs. His lips linger long after the smoke is gone, ghosting over yours in casual chase, almost like a lover’s would.

With the hit exchanged, he pulls back from you suddenly and lifts his hand to cover your mouth and nose, his thumb wrapping under the curve of your chin, the pad digging into the soft underbelly and locking your jaw shut.

Your mind can’t help but register the way he easily covers the bottom half of your face with the breadth of one gloved hand. A move that makes your eyes widen and gaze up into his own as he stares you down intensely. “Hold it.” He instructs as your lungs burn, it’s been a hot minute since you’d smoked and the hit is warm and stinging to your fresh, unabused lungs.

A moment passes.. and then two.. and you begin to internally panic. It’s then you realize he means to kill you like this, there’s no other explanation for such cruelty. He intends to asphyxiate you with one hand, force you to choke on the poisoned last breath he’d personally fed into your lungs. You hitch and nearly sputter behind the suction of his gloved palm but his eyes hold yours hostage as he watches you struggle through it, relishing in it.

You had angered him with your earlier comment, it seems. Made up his mind for him and now he’s going to end his issues single-handedly. You’d always heard the old adage “I wanna watch the life drain out of your eyes as you take your last breath.” You’d understood it before at face value, a thing said to provoke, to strike fear, to rattle. You’d never dreamed of the moment it’d happen to you, to experience it first hand, to stare into the eyes of your unmaker.

You’d imagined, in your last fleeting moments, the space behind your eyes would be filled with memories. Life’s intrinsic moments. People, places, family, friends. That’s what people always say. But it wasn’t like that. In those moments you believed were to be your last, all your brain could fixate on, all you could think about with the last of its magnificent power, in all its infinite wisdom was his eyes.

The deep sedentary shade of his twin orbs, the flecks and streaks of paler and deeper hues. A spectrum of browns infinitesimal in the pools of his irises. These are the eyes who’ll witness your last moments, the transfer of your consciousness from the here and now to wherever it is we go after this. These are the eyes of the reaper.

Just when you believe you’re on the cusp of passing out; your focus doubling and then tripling and then beginning to recede all together, to be followed close behind by the cold embrace of death, he releases and your lungs follow suit. Purging themselves in a last ditch effort for survival. The residual smoke puffs up from both your nose and mouth simultaneously, as you fight to expel it and drag in fresh, cool air.

It sends you into a coughing fit that doubles you over as far as your binds will allow. He catches your chin with his gloved hand and pulls you upright by it, keeping your head above your shoulders and shushing you through it as you are violently pulled away from the brink of death and after a minute, begin to quiet down. “That’s it. Breathe, doll.”

Your vision blurs around the edges, shadows drawing into shadows as you recover and there’s spittle on your lower lip from nearly coughing up a lung. He notices and swipes his thumb across the expanse of your lower lip, dragging the pliable flesh clean. You go to express your gratitude, for his chivalry, for his restraint, for your life. It seems there’s perhaps some humanity in him after all.

“Thank yo-“ It dies in your throat as you watch him, without even skipping a beat, bring that same thumb up to his lips and suck your saliva off his digit, a devious glint in his dark, guile-filled eyes. “So sweet.”

You’re dizzy, whether it be from the hit, or lack of oxygen or just him, you’re unsure. You’re at a loss for what to say next but it seems he isn’t finished. “I could fill a million SD cards with just your expressions, babygirl. You’re awfully photogenic, has anyone ever told you that?”

You’re unsure what to say, you’ve never been good with compliments in the best of situations, let alone one given under duress and you’re still reeling from, well, everything that’s happening to you.

It seems he still hasn’t decided what to do with you after all. Your head spins from the whiplash, it’s impossible, after all, to try and make heads or tails of the hairbrained decisions of the mentally ill and if there’s one thing this man sitting across from you is, it’s mentally ill. Though you have the comfort of saying so in the safety of your thoughts you won’t dare tempt him by saying it aloud again, unpredictable as he is.

“I love all your little marks and moles, birth or stretch, they’re all perfect.” You give him a look of violated disgust, you believe at this point you’re beyond surprised at anything he could say to you, it’s clear he meant what he said when he told you he’d been watching you.

“Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t like, strip you bare and thoroughly examine you with a magnifying glass or something. You just toss and turn a lot in your sleep.” And he says it like simply ‘watching you sleep’ is somehow kind of tamer, more justified, noble even.

“At least.. not yet.”Just when you believe you’d collected your thoughts you feel the tip of the knife grazing your skin again, riding the curve of your thigh upwards towards their apex, not hard enough to cut, but just rough enough to keep your attention fixated upon its ascent.

You stiffen, taking all of the relaxed lean he’d cultivated out of your posture and pressing back into the cushion of the rigid computer chair. He skips up your abdomen, passing over the skin of your navel. The sharpened point catches momentarily on the silky hem of your nightshirt before tension meets drag and then it’s cutting, a brand new part ripping right down the center rising ever higher up towards your sternum.

For a moment, both of your focuses eclipse on the tip of the knife, yours erratically panicked, his lasciviously engrossed. The roaring purr of the fabric shearing apart is loud in the otherwise quiet room, the only other sound the backdrop mix of your combined, labored breathing.

When the sea parts, the thin straps of your nightshirt slip from the slumps of your shoulders as the fabric, now separated, falls away from your chest and comes to rest as a useless bunch around your waist. His eyes fixate on your newly exposed flesh, locking acutely on the swell of your breasts, your nipples pebbling at the weight of his heated gaze upon them.

You instinctively hunch forward, your shoulders and back contorting their best to cover as much of you as humanly possible. Without so much as tearing his eyes away, he brings the tip of his blade forth and presses it into the valley of your chest. “Don’t hide yourself from me.” The stabbing pain of it becomes too much and you bow back reflexively, effectively revealing yourself to him again.

When he pulls back, a dark red spot forms in the knife’s wake, lengthening into a slow, smooth trickle into the valley of your breasts. His mouth parts and as he leans in you lean back, until your back is straining against the chair, until you can’t possibly back away any more.

And then you feel it, the hot, stiff, flat of his tongue, trailing up your crimson streaked skin. He feels you stiffen and hears you whimper in what you want him to think is terror, but at the same time he feels the full body shudder that quakes through you, feels the way your back arches off the chair, bucking back into him, chasing the sensation. You want him to believe you’re opposed to this, but he knows better than that, he knows you better than that. It’s just about getting you to give into your urges and stop leaning on your morals. He shed himself of the burden of his a long, long time ago.

He hardly pulls away, speaking into your skin as your lungs heave air and you squeeze your eyes shut at the restraint you’re exerting, straining against the questions swirling in your head you can’t bear to answer. Why is this affecting you so greatly?

“I don’t want to kill you, sweetheart. I will if I have to but I’ll be honest, it’d be a real bummer.” He pulls back and your eyes crack open, hoping against hope that maybe he’s done. With an audience he makes a spectacle of pulling off a glove, slipping the tip of one leather finger in between his teeth to pull his hand free of it. While his eyes never leave yours, you watch as it closes the distance between you to finally make contact with the exposed swell of your hip.

“Give me a reason, babygirl.” A spark of something like electricity runs through you upon your first skin to skin contact and you inhale sharply at the sensation. He drags it up your body, mapping your curves and planes like he’s setting it into memory.

Up the lattice of your rib cage and over the swell of one exposed breast, your nipples harden under his palm as it glides ever higher. He passes over the expanse of your heart to feel it beat in real time, just as fast and as forceful as hummingbird wings under the surface of your skin. He continues over the structure of your collarbones and stradles the column of your throat, his fingers conforming to the contours and dips along your jawline. All the way up til his palm cups your cheek, his thumb resting softly overtop the pucker of your lips, brushing along their part and lathing over the soft, thin skin. When it stills your eyes flick to his again and there’s a searching, hopeful quality to them that makes your stomach twist up into knots. “Give me a sign.”

Your eyes read his lips as they mold and form around his words, soft and cooing. Your mind races, you don’t want to die, don’t really want these to be your last moments. Would it be so bad? One night stands aren’t a new concept to you, men the likes of whom you wake up next to without an inkling of their identities or even the circumstances behind your acquaintance. Is this really all that different?

As he leans forward you decide that it is and turn your head away at the last possible moment. He stops and his head drops, a little disappointed sigh sounding from between his lips and your eyes close as your insistence on survival quarrels voraciously against your rigid moral upbringing. Like he’s somehow read your thoughts he speaks them.

“Is that what’s holding you back? Cause I know you want this. But it’d be too… improper. too.. unladylike to let a stranger break into your cute little home, tie you to your cute little computer chair and be forced to admit to me that I’ve got you flustered, wouldn’t it? It’d be just downright shameful if I slipped a hand into these cute little sleep shorts..”

His words narrate his actions, as one bare finger slips the last few inches left between him and the heat of your sex, shifting past the hem of your crotch on one side and sliding against the soaked gusset of your cotton panties in a firm, exploratory sweep. You have to bite your cheek against the moan it threatens to elicit. Bucking against his hand, it’s unintentional but damning all the same. And the smile that pulls at the corner of his lips is predatory in its victory, prideful in your defeat.

“and found you absolutely fucking soaked for me.” The last of his sentence comes out in a growl, ground between the grit of his teeth and spat out in a rumble that does nothing to ease the burn between your legs, burning brighter as he pulls away and brings his hand up to the light, both of your eyes drawn to the way it glistens in the lowlight.

“I don't mind playing the bad guy, babygirl.” His voice coils around you like liquid smoke, wrapping warm around the base of your spine and pooling low in your belly as his head dips into the crook of your neck, breathing in the heady scent of your fear and sweat. “If that’s what you need from me.” You feel his lips grazing ever so lightly over your pulse point, feel him grinning wicked at the way your heart quickens just for him. “If that’s what it takes for you to keep that moral, good girl image that’s so, so precious to you in your pretty little head.”

He whispers against the shell of your ear and you have to squeeze your eyes shut against the heavy, lascivious weight of him. You fear you’ve read this one before and you’re fairly certain you know how it ends. Eve and the snake in the garden all over again, just a taste is all it takes, indulging sin.

“Does it make it easier for you if I force you into it?” He brings the knife to your neck where he just was, planting the blade firmly up against the soft, soft flesh of your jugular, less than an inch from your carotid artery. You stiffen against him, keeping stark still, not even daring to breathe.

His tone falls into a hush, words whispered closely against your thrumming flesh. “If I take away the illusion of choice?” You can feel the heat radiating off his skin even through the glove, the roiling coals in the palm of his hand as it rides further and further up your thigh, leaving trials of fire in its wake, closing in on where you weep for him. “If I just choose to make you mine?”

He’s leaned in so far he’s standing above you and with your back against the wall and his knife to your neck there’s little else for you to do when his lips close over yours than to just take it. It’s intense, no warm up, no gentility or ceremony, just overwhelming, sweeping desire that you feel in your bones. He’s done waiting, done giving you choices, he’s had enough of the games.

You move with him as best you can in fear of his control over the blade slipping. His tongue wants to lick past your lips but your jaw refuses to budge. He lets out a sound of displeasure against you before you feel the hand that had been resting against your thigh push forward again to rub roughly right over top of your clit and you gasp inwardly in response. An opportunity he takes full advantage of as his tongue breaches your mouth to gain dominion over yours, the knife slips in lieu of his desperation, much more eager to roam your skin than keep up the threat. You feel the blade pull free only to be replaced by his ungloved hand a moment later.

His palm wraps around the expanse of your neck and squeezes, just enough to make you lightheaded and pliant as he ravages you, not that you could do much to resist him tied to the chair as you were. His hand between your thighs grows bolder, slipping down to where you’re wettest and pressing inwards with the pads of two of his fingers as far as the fabric would stretch, pushing into your entrance. The sensation had you groaning into the kiss, a surrender he rewarded with a nip to your lip as he continued his onslaught against your senses.

He pulls away from you, leaving you flustered and short of breath as he drops to his knees before you, coming up level with your chest. You hardly have time to register his change in position before you feel his lips ghosting over one of your nipples, planting them over one of your stiffened peaks and pulling it into his mouth. You arch up into the sensation, hardly stifling the sharp cry in the back of your throat. With you distracted, he pulls his blade from his sheath once more and makes two quick cuts, sliding his knife between you and the fabric of your panties to cut them away from your body where they cling like a second skin without so much as nicking you.

It’s only when you feel the cool air, chilly against your warm sex that you realize you’re now completely naked in front of him, this stranger, this invader. He lives up to his namesake as you feel his fingers at your entrance and he wastes little time as you feel him sinking in with two up to the first knuckle. You can’t stifle your moan this time, it bubbles from your throat and out of your mouth like sweet siren song.

He’s cocky about it too, boisterous in his boasting. You can feel his smirk against your skin as he licks up your chest to tease your breasts once more, reveling in the way he can feel you tightening around him in response. “Mmm.. So fucking wet for me, doll.” He moves the fingers inside you slowly as he stretches you open for him bit by bit, gentle and coaxing. “I don’t know, baby. From where I’m sitting, I’d have to say it seems like you’re enjoying yourself a little.”

Your head tips back and your eyes squeeze shut as your thoughts reel, unsuccessful in forming a shred of any kind of coherent thought. No rebuttals or quick witty quips to refute his claims. His fingers are thick and he keeps nudging something inside of you with each inward thrust that scrambles your brain and leaves you blank. You see, even through the opaque veils of your eyelids, the telltale momentary glare of his camera flash. Taking full advantage of the opportunity to capture your fall from grace, searing it into palpable visual proof he’d left his mark on you. “Please.”

And worse yet, without any context he defaults to your original opposition and stops which you find is actually the opposite of what you were begging for. With the last of your resolve you smother the whine that threatens to spill from your lips.

Without the mind numbing distraction of his ministrations you finally have a moment to breathe. “Wh-wh-“ You squeeze your eyes closed, the only way you can manage to pull your thoughts into some semblance of order in such close proximity to him and after a shallow, shaky breath, begin again.

“What do you want from me?” When your eyes reopen his bore into yours, pupils blown from more than just the weed. “I want you to give in to me.” He dips below your line of sight as he brings the knife up to your throat again, preventing you from following his lower descent. You feel him where you can’t see, pressed up close and personal with your neck, speaking his words against your flesh.

“I want to feel your little.” Kiss.

“Fragile.” Kiss.

“Sense of reality.” Kiss.

“Fucking shatter.” Kiss.

“As I make you come.” Kiss.

“All over my cock.” Kiss.

He wages war on your holy shores with his sordid tides. Corrodes your resolve with his sulfuric touch and it’s working, you’re beginning to slip. Can feel yourself losing this long, drawn-out battle of wills he’d pushed upon you. You’d been on a downward slope since the start and you’re nearing your wits end when it comes to fighting him. A victory he’s pulling from you one kiss at a time. “I wanna fuck you til you scream.”

You gasp inwardly as he sucks hard against your pulse point, teeth nipping into your supple skin, staking a claim you’ll no doubt be able to see in the morning, if you live to see it. You have to stifle the moan that follows, pushing at the cusp of your throat like a bird bound to fly the coop. He moves you then, no longer content with your quaint little cat and mouse game. Taking the reins for himself and pulling away from you, it’s like an oppressing weight has lifted from your shoulders but by that time it’s much too late.

He’s already moved around behind you, strategically cutting away the section of rope anchoring you to the chair, making you able to move but keeping your wrists bound at the small of your back. He tugs on your wrists and forces you to rise, coming back around your body and towering over you as you’re helpless but to move as he directs you. His legs bump yours, bullying you back until your calves hit the bed and you fall backwards onto the plush surface.

You catch one last glimpse of his eyes, possessed by lust before he’s flipping you over onto your stomach and pulling you back by your hips until your ass is perched at the edge of the bed. Panic begins to set in, like a buzzing in the back of your brain you realize you’re nearing a point from which there is no return.

You squirm and writhe, trying to flip yourself back over or slide off the bed until you feel him socket himself between your legs and plant a knee into the cleft of your ass, stopping your struggles. He applies downward pressure and your legs are forced to spread to accommodate the girth of his still clothed knee, grinding your heated sex up the length of his thigh as yours part, until his knee meets the bed.

“Still resisting me, doll? After the show you were putting on for me earlier, I can’t say I’m convinced.” He talks but all you can focus on is the jingle of his belt as he undoes it as he speaks. You feel him pull his leg away followed by the rustle of fabric and you know he’s undressing behind you.

“Wait! No, no! Wait!” But it’s too late, you feel the head of him pressing against your lips, sliding the blunt head of his cock up your slick seam, getting it nice and wet. Your body betrays you, salivating at the thought of finally getting fucked after such a long and unforgiving dry spell.

“I don’t think you really want me to.” And with that he pushes forward, sinking in inch by slow agonizing inch. He’s thick and any quarrels, any kind of protests or reservations you may have had dissipate with each newly fed inch. Unfortunately for you, you’re coming to terms with the fact that he may be right.

“Goddamn, babygirl.” You take in a sucking breath just to immediately expel it as a broken moan. When he’s buried to the hilt he stills there for a moment, enjoying the feel of your walls twitching around him, silently begging him for more.

He obliges, pulling out halfway only to plunge back in, his hips slapping against your ass, driving his cock deep in one fluid thrust. He picks up a steady pace like that, slow methodical thrusts while you both adjust to the stretch. “For all the fuss you made for us to get to this point you sure are gripping me awful tight, sunshine.”

You bury your face into the sheets to try and save some last shred of dignity, he may have invaded your walls but he will not hear your cries. That is, until he grabs a fistful of your hair and pulls, hauling your head back and forcing your moans to be heard by the heavens. With each thrust he pulls a noise from you, punched out of your lungs by the force of his cock alone. “And all these sweet little noises, all this for me, doll?”

You whimper and whine but it’s true. He’s fucking you so god damn good, so toe-curlingly thorough that you’re barely holding on. You told yourself that while he was busying himself inside of you, you’d come up with some sort of a plan, some kind of brilliant plot to get loose or get away or just get back at him. Twist and writhe in your binds until they’d have enough wiggle room to maybe save yourself but since he’d penetrated you all thoughts of escape plans or revenge plots had been put on hold. It had been so long since you’d had a real man in your bed that you lost yourself to it a bit.

He was handsome and confident and he knew what he was doing and on top of all that he’d made it his personal mission to see to it that you succumb to this. You’d fought, and fought as hard as you believed you could have and still gotten away with your life, and you were tired of fighting.

He lets go of your hair to get a better purchase on your hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh and yanking you back into him on every thrust, forcing you to take every inch of him as he splits you open from behind. Your back is forced to arch for him like this, pushing your head back into the sheets, lucky for you because you nearly start to wail with the devastating pleasure this new angle provides him, to your chagrin. Though little it matters, you’re beyond the ability to hold back anything from him.

You groan out a low and defeat-addled “Fuck.” into the sheets and he knows he’s got you. He speeds up a bit as you feel a dark, victorious chuckle quake out of him and into you. “Yeah, doll? Just like that, hmm?” He pounds you into the mattress, the frame of it knocking loudly against the wall and you can’t comprehend how he’s still so damn cocky, how he’s even still coherent when in two seconds flat of being buried inside you he’s rendered you stupid.

If he’d meant for you to answer he’d be sorely disappointed, as all you could manage were a range of moans, whimpers and whines. It seemed to suit him though as he continued on without any response, taunting you while laying waste to you from above. “Just think, babygirl. We could’ve been doing this so much sooner if you’d have just given into me from the start.”

“All that resistance, all the fight and for what, doll? Just to end up cockdrunk beneath me in the end just like I knew you’d be.” You feel him lean down over you, dwarfing your hunched frame with his as his mouth hovers just behind the shell of your ear to whisper.

“I told you from the start, I know you. I know everything about you, I know the things you never tell anyone, things you’re too embarrassed to speak of. I know about the things you won’t even admit to yourself. Every filthy, depraved thought you’ve ever had. All your darkest fantasies, all your most shameful desires. And you know what else?”

There’s gooseflesh rising on your skin and you can feel it building, pooling low in your belly. His steady thrusts, the weight of him overtop of you, his silky deviant voice in your ear. He’s driving you insane and closer, ever closer to your impending climax.

He’s got you held raptly on the edge. Clinging to his every word, his every move, his every whim. He nips at the shell of your ear as he continues to fuck you while fucking with your head. “I can tell by the way your breathing is picking up, the way you’ve gone almost totally silent, the way you’re clenching down on me...” He groans in response to your body's immediate reaction, seemingly tightening on command as he speaks so obscenely of you, his voice dropping into a low, strained growl. “…that you’re getting so close for me, aren’t you, doll?”

You feel one of his hands sliding off your hip and snaking down your body into the crook of your thighs, your eyes widen as you feel the pads of his index and middle finger make contact with your swollen clit and start to make slow, tight circles. The contact has your already sensitive nerves sparking and you seize up beneath him as you careen violently towards coming, your eyes squeezing shut as you completely surrender yourself to him. Release the last of your resolve and give into the potent, raw euphoria that threatens to envelope you and swallow you whole. “Fuck, yes!!”

You arch up into him from below, pressing your hips up into his as you race towards the tidal wave of pleasure rushing towards you. “That’s it, babe, just like that. Fucking come for me, come all over my cock.” Your orgasm crashes through you, drowning in its intensity. Your hands tighten into fists, nails digging into the palms of your hands as your toes curl where they rest overtop of his combat boots. He fucks you through it, dragging it out and grinding into the hot, tight clutch of your spasming walls.

You vaguely feel him shifting behind you through the fog of pleasure. Your eyes open when he nestles in just beside you, one arm outstretched, his camera clutched in his grasp. You hardly have a second to register it before it blinds you with its flash. You turn your head to the side only to be met with the dark endless pits that are the eyes of his mask. At some point or another he’d slipped it back on, leaving you the only identifiable person in your impromptu little photo shoot.

“This one’s gonna be the best of the lot. When baby finally broke.” Humiliation swells within you, sobering the high you’d just climbed down from. The horror of what you’ve just committed to falls over you like a dark cloud and you begin to squirm in place beneath him, but still sheathed fully inside you as he is, there’s little you can do.

His arms clamp down on either side of you, restricting your range of motion as he pipes up confidently in your ear. “I never took you for a selfish lover, babe. You got yours, now it’s my turn.” He pulls off of you and you take the opportunity to flip around, it takes you a few tries before you’re facing him again.

The mask stares down at you with its sympathetic gaze, his shirt is rucked up and his pants and boxers are pulled down low, revealing his chiseled abdomen and toned waist. He looks deliciously devilish above you, the mask adding an all new element to the allure that you hate to admit stirs the remnants of your arousal, especially when you recall how hard he’d just made you come. No matter how hot you must admit he looks, you’re done playing nice with him, readying yourself for a fight as he looms overhead.

He drinks in the sight of you. He must have angered you, whether from his words or his actions or a combination of the two, somewhere between your sweet surrender and the flash of the camera you’d flipped the script on him. It seems to matter little as you glare up at him from your place on the bed, your arms still tied uselessly behind your back, your legs pulled up in a semi-fetal position, feet poised and ready to strike and kick and block him at a moments notice, from below he still gets peeks of your glistening pussy, still wet and glossy from your very intense orgasm only moments prior. But he can tell by the way you’re eyeing him up you’re not entirely offput.

He laughs cruelly from above and it shakes your spirits a bit but serves to only ground you in your defiance. You wanted nothing more than to claw his eyes out of his head. “Oh doll stop, I can only get so hard.” And he is, the hardened length of him, coated in a sheen of your arousal is still held in one hand, stroking it idly as he peers down at you from behind the mask. You bare your teeth up at him in anger.

“That’s the way you wanna play it then? Fine by me.” He strikes, grabbing onto your ankles with both hands and pushing them up towards your chest. You push back with all the strength in your legs, calves and thighs straining against his weight and there’s a moment where you do counter him, where you’re able to hold off his advances but it’s only momentary as he doubles his efforts and you’re forcibly rolled back until you’re laid flat on the bed and your knees are smushed into your chest. His mask leers down at you, sad as ever just inches away.

He’d bested you again, and it wasn’t much of a struggle, despite the might of your anger. You feel him at your entrance again, cold from the time you’d spent separated. “NO!” You yelled up at him from below, still intent on fighting a battle long lost.

And then he’s pushing inside you again, driving the air out of your lungs in one fluid thrust and just like that he’s balls deep in you again. Hovering over you, buried deep and still just to stare down at you as you adjust to the girth of him again, just to watch you keen around him as the light of your defiance burning in the flames of your eyes begins to dim. He starts to move, planting an arm along either side of you as he pushes you down into the mattress.

He watches your internal struggles play across the features of your face. Your lips part and your brow furrows as you fight to stave off the treacherous part of you that already wants to turn cheek and submit to him again. With your eyes scrunched shut you only realize he’s shed himself of the mask again when his lips crash back to yours, ruthless in their reclamation of you.

You know from experience this is how he’d pulled you under the first time. So this time you fight it, pulling back your lips from his in order to bite into them. He’s quicker though, pulling away just a split second before you’re able to sink your teeth in. But your actions have consequences and, still supporting himself with one hand, he lifts the other and smacks it down firmly on one of your conveniently exposed flanks hard with a firm, open palm, making you cry out.

“If you wanted it rough doll, all you had to do was ask.”

He does it again and then one more time for good measure all in the same spot, until you’re wriggling underneath him and letting out sweet little sorrowful pleas.

His lips find yours again and you don’t dare lash out a second time, letting him have his way with you. You’d imagine, after making such a show of force to keep you in line he’d be domineering in his control over you, brutish in his kiss. But he’s actually rather gentle, almost playful and coaxing with his teeth and tongue. A stark contrast to the nature of his thrusts, eager and unrelenting in the snap of his hips to yours. He’s once more driven all coherent thought away, reduced to nothing more than a passive pile of dough below him, able to be kneaded and shaped in his image.

He lifts up and pulls your knees apart, peering down into the newly made gap, his eyes glued to the spot where the two of you are joined. Watching himself pull out and then drive back home into your soaking wet heat, mesmerized by it. Your head tips back as his dips down, capturing a perky nipple in between his teeth and suckling it as he feels you clench down around him in response. He knows just how to touch you, months spent watching you do it to yourself to know just what you like and now he’s intent to use this litany of knowledge, his area of expertise, to break you into submission.

Your arms begin to ache where they’re pinned beneath you and you squirm and shift to try and ease some of the pain. He takes notice and trails kisses up from your breast to your neckline where he speaks softly. “If you promise to be good, I’ll untie you.”

Any thought of being good in any sense of the word has refusals gathering on your tongue but the thought of being let loose is rather enticing on its own, your arms and shoulder shriek at you to jump at the chance but you hold your tongue and twist away from him.

“Oh come on now, you can’t stay mad at me forever, doll.” You feel one hand slip down over your navel and press, applying pressure to both the bulge of him nestled deep inside you and the bulk of your wrists tied behind you. You groan low at the mix of discomfort and shooting pleasure that has your already fractured mind splitting at the seams.

Your mouth cracks open but reluctance keeps you quiet. “Say it with me. ‘I swear I’ll be good.’ Just five little words and I’ll make the pain go away.”

“I s-swear.” It’s a start, but not exactly what he’s looking for. He pushes down just ever so harder, rutting into you and making you howl out. “All of it, babygirl.”

“I swear! I swear I’ll be good! Please!” He ceases before wrapping one arm around you and lifts, pulling you up and against him. You’re pushed up into the warmth of his chest, your chin jutting out over the cliff of one broad shoulder, leaving you neck to neck. You can feel the heat of his skin against yours, the scent of his sweat mixing with his cologne fills your sinuses, pungent and stinging and intoxicating all the same, you find yourself breathing it in as he makes quick work of slicing through your binds.

With a final tug your arms are free and you immediately pull them back around towards the front of your body to alleviate the ache but somehow they wind up wrapping around him, almost clinging to him as he lets you down gently to fall back to the bed. You go, reluctantly and before you can come back to your wits to come up with what to do with your hands, he’s grabbed them, one in each of his. He presses them down into the bed as he resumes fucking you.

The pleasure starts to build again but as much as you detest it, there is no stopping it. You can feel him losing himself to it too. He becomes less watchful, less coherent as his head dips down next to yours and he plants kisses like flags, marking over the territory of your skin. He starts talking into your skin. Rumbling out sweet, nonsensical, outlandish declarations between kisses as he draws closer to his release. Promises made into the sacred altar of your flesh as he fucks you both senseless.

You hear scraps and bits, torn between being lost to the euphoria and coherent enough to make out his pleasure drunk ramblings. You hear him promise to never let you go, never to make that same mistake again, never to stray from the path if he’s granted just this one thing. It becomes increasingly clear he’s talking to someone or something, holding a conversation you can’t keep up with as you’re privy to only half of it, and only bits and pieces of that half are discernible in your present state.

You feel him pick up speed with a renewed vigor, thrusting in and out of you at a frenzied pace as you both near your release. You feel one of his hands slip from yours and the next time you’re aware of its presence it’s holding a knife to your neck for the umpteenth time of the night. No matter how many times you find yourself in this position you can’t get used to the shock of the blade, the feel of the edge of it so very close to the soft skin of your neck, that little leap your heart does in your chest.

“My name’s Danny. And I wanna hear you say it when you come, or you won’t live to come down from it, do you understand?” Your eyes squeeze shut as you draw closer to the edge, even despite the threat of death. “Yes.”

“Good girl.” He feels you buck up into him, chasing his thrusts at his praise and doubles down on it. “Such a good fucking girl for me.” Your head tips back away from the blade but also inadvertently exposing your throat to him in the process, a sight that only spurs him on. Like a sacrificial lamb you give yourself to him willingly and it’s almost too perfect for him to bear.

“Fuck me.” He growls, feeling his balls tighten as you start to clamp down around him. “Come with me, doll. I wanna feel you come again.” You do, his command pushes you over the edge and he follows right behind, just as soon as his name falls from your lips in a desperate, pleasure drunk whine. His hips stutter against yours as his climax rocks through him. Your eyes open in time to see his head tip back and his eyes glow a deep, ominous, crimson shade. Your mouth drops open as you feel his seed fill you to the brim, hot and heavy and deep in your belly.

You blink and it’s gone, his eyes are the same brown they’d always been, they fall to yours abruptly and a smirk as wicked as sin tugs at one corner of his lips. You blink again and then once more trying to replicate what you’d seen but you can’t. He bends down, still sheathed inside you but softening by the moment and recaptures your lips in a searing kiss.

One you give into, at this point you figure whatever hell you’d woken up to, whatever ill will you’d stumbled upon must be almost over, best to end it on good terms and leave this horrible nightmare scenario with your life intact. The sooner you get him out of the house the sooner you can get up and get dressed and run to the store. It’s unclear in his haste to have you if he’d stopped long enough to consider protection but you really doubt it.

He doesn’t make it hard to enjoy, the way his lips graze passionately over yours, his tongue slipping along the line of your lower lip teasingly before sucking it in between his lips. You get lost like that, intertwined and still falling from two of the best orgasms you’d had in well over a year.

You come to terms with that as he pulls out and climbs off of you, his knife still held in one hand. “You thirsty?” He asks politely and you find that you are, indeed, very thirsty. You nod at him and he points the tip of the knife in your direction. “Don’t move.” You nod cutely, hoping to stay in his good graces as he turns and heads into the bathroom. You hear the tap and after a moment he returns, glass in hand.

He hands it over as you slide to the edge of the bed, sitting up to accept it. You drink eagerly, it isn’t until the last drops slide down the back of your throat that you register the bitter aftertaste. Your eyes snap to his immediately, untrusting. “Sorry, doll. I couldn’t just leave you as is. It’s not something I wanted to do, especially after all the fun we’ve had, but it’s a necessary step to ensure our future.”

You drop the glass and it shatters on the hardwood, fragments of glass spreading far and wide in all directions and he quickly moves forward to catch you as you begin to fall. You fight him at first, intent on making good on your desire to see his eyeballs ripped from his head in your last breaths but your limbs soon lose their prowess as your body loses its strength.

You try to speak but only slurs come out, the room spins and tilts wildly. He shushes you and slides you into bed and under the covers. “Shhh, it’s ok. It’s just to help you sleep. We’ll figure everything out in the morning. I’ll be here when you wake up, I promise.”

As you drift off you feel him pulling the soft, silk mask back over your eyes just as he’d found you and hear the distant, dreamy call of him saying. “Sleep tight, babygirl.”

You had lucked out at the office white elephant party this year. You drew the shortest straw, which normally was a bad omen, but in this particular situation meant you got to pick the last gift, or steal the gift of your choice, assuming it hadn’t been stolen twice already and when it finally came down to the last present and you ripped open the wrapping on a candle scented as something called “Caramel Cashmere” you knew you’d be taking your pick of the lot.

You surveyed the circle with sharp eyes. Two mugs, a blanket with a kitten surrounded by pink feathers emblazoned on it, a sample tray of exotic meat sausages, a gift basket from Sephora, An assortment of flavored Schnapps nip bottles with a set of shot glasses, a pair of AirPod pros (that had already been stolen twice and were thus, out of the game), two tickets to see some standup comedian named Roy Ramheart at the Holiday Inn over the weekend and lastly a two week trial to the brand new bougie gym that opened up downtown.

You turned slowly in the middle of the circle, shitty candle in hand, eyeing each person and their presents one by one. Sharon was shaking the blanket with the feathers and kitten on it, trying to entice you with it. Mark, the gym rat, was trying to hide the two week gym trial under his crossed arms. Maureen was already unpacking the Airpods and changing the heads to one’s that would be most comfortable to her ears, everyone else looked beyond bored. You did one more rotation before stopping in front of Mark who let out an irritated huff as you held out the large beige candle to him. He snatched the candle from your hand and reluctantly held out the gym brochure.

You grabbed it and opened it, leafing through it as the rest of the office stood and began to chatter about their new gifts with heated exchange, there’d be secret swaps later no doubt. Someone turned the music back up and the circle slowly broke and dispersed into a half drunk crowd of sloppy dancing and idle chatter.

Mark came up to you, obviously upset with your steal of the gym trial. “You could’ve had the Sephora gift basket. Maybe you’d get laid a little more if you indulged in some makeup.” You looked up at him, a winning smirk on your face, unfazed by his nasty jest and looked back down at the flashy brochure. Your office bestie Nancy came over and Mark strode away, annoyed at losing out to you and failing to get under your skin.

“What was that about?” You looked up at her and rolled your eyes as she stared after him. “Sore loser.” She eyed the brochure in your hands. “I see you got Mrs. Magna’s gym trial.” You smiled and popped the trial in your purse. “So it was hers, I had a feeling.” She handed you a little red cup full of spiked punch. “Got it in the mail yesterday, she’s already gotten four of them and I was about to throw it out with the rest of the junk but then I remembered she still needed something for the white elephant thing so I saved it back, good thing too, the other option was a airmall catalog from her last business trip.”

You rolled your eyes, your boss had always been contemptuous at best, and if she held the whole of the office at foot level she held your best friend Nancy, her secretary, in the dirt. You had spent countless hours after work, drinks in hand listening to her vent about being Mrs. Magna’s doormat for forty hours a week.

You sucked down the last of the punch in your cup and regarded the hazy swirling quality the room had taken, it was time to go home. “I’m headed home, Nance. You wanna catch a ride with me?” She looked down at her feet, a look you’ve seen all too often, one that meant she’d be taking it face first again. “Gotta stay and clean up. She’s got an early board meeting in the morning and they’re having it here, so I’ve got to have this place spotless by 6:15.”

“God, does that woman ever give you a break?” She pulled you in for a hug and took your empty cup from your hands, replacing it with your purse. “Get home safe, and text me when you get there, yeah?” You smiled and nodded before turning for the door, pulling out your phone and opening up Uber.”

When you were home and locked up tight you texted Nancy, brushed your teeth and fell into bed, letting the buzz carry you to sleep.

You woke up the next morning, sour taste in your mouth and head throbbing dully. You slowly lurched from the nest of your bed and shambled into the bathroom, wincing at the brightness of the lights as you flicked them on and breathing out shakily as you shut them off again. With the little corner window casting gentle waxy rays into the space you turned on the shower and set about brushing your teeth. Bad taste gone, you climbed under the flow of steamy hot water and let the force of it all wash away your grogginess and began to feel just a bit better.

When you were out and dressed you made a light breakfast and pulled your white elephant gift from your purse. The front showed the shiny new building and the fancy letters at the top read “Baliquinox”. The brochure outlined the extent of the trial, all amenities available for the duration of the trial, including but not limited to the scheduled hot yoga, cycling and something called gravity assisted pilates. The gym also advertised a sauna, a full length Olympic sized pool, an in-house smoothie “artist”, as well as massage therapists and personal trainers on staff.

On the back of the brochure various payment plans were listed for membership packages, starting in the thousands, you immediately flipped the brochure back over to the front, two weeks was all you had, but you were going to make the most of it. If you could come up with a routine that you could do at home then you could give up the luxurities that came with the cushy admission price.

A week later you found yourself in front of the glitzy building, gym bag in hand as you stared at the shiny made up people behind the gleaming doors. Walking into the bustle of people you are met with a long white desk, there’s two people behind the counter, a fit beautiful woman and strong chiseled man, both already occupied with customers. But while the actual humans are occupied there is a row of kiosks set up with a sign above them that claims they can help you.

You walk up to one hesitantly and find that it’s actually a really simple process, you scan the barcode on the back of your brochure, type in some preliminary basic information, your name, address, email and phone number, and your free two week trial has begun. The machine spits out a laminated wristband at you. You tear it at the dotted lines, place it around your wrist and now you’re good to go. The machine wishes you a very productive workout and sends you on your way.

You walk further into the building, following a colored line on the floor that claims it will take you to the locker room. As you follow the line your eyes scan your surroundings, to your left are three glass rooms. One is currently occupied by a spin class, the next some sort of dance exercise class, the thumpy music felt through the floor in your feet but unheard to you outside of the walls, the last was a hot yoga class, you could tell by the mats on the floor and the condensation on the glass but as you were watching the instructor pressed a button on the tablet she was holding and the glass grayed out before your eyes, concealing the room from view.

You passed a room which you guessed held the pool, the sounds of echoing splashes crashed against the walls. Finally you could see the locker rooms before you, a door split off into men’s and women’s, keeping to the right you found yourself in an expansive room filled wall to wall with lockers. You came up to one with a green light on the front and pulled on the door, it opened freely and you began to change. When you had on your workout clothes you put the bag inside and shut the door, as you stepped away the light changed from green to red, signifying it had locked and you left the locker room.

You found the open gym space by following a different line on the floor. The room was split up into sections, one for machines, one for free weights, and one for cardio. Meandering into the cardio section you found a row of Peloton treadmills that stretched the length of the wall while the other side were full with cycle machines. You opted for a run to start with. There were a couple treadmills in use at the front but the ones in back were empty. You picked one by the far wall, stepping up onto it and putting your headphones in. You looked up at yourself in the mirror lined wall, taking in a deep breath before finding a song and picking a speed.

Head down and focused you let your footfalls come to the forefront of your mind, the only thing that mattered, soon the room around you faded and became unimportant. You had just broken out a sweat, head lifting and eyes opening to meet the mirrors of your own on the wall, but that wasn’t all.

Standing behind you, eyes connected with yours was a ruggedly handsome man, he stood behind you a few feet back from the treadmill and when you caught him staring he didn’t look away ashamed, just held your gaze with shockingly pale blue eyes. He wore black athletic shorts and a white shirt with the gym's name across his chest, he definitely worked here, personal trainer maybe, judging by his ripped physique. His lips turned up in a smirk and it was you who finally broke the locked gaze.

You looked down at your phone, shuffled through a few songs before checking the mirror again, he was still there. You were about to turn and speak to him when he turned on foot and headed out of the cardio section and out of sight. You stopped the machine and took a moment to take in your surroundings. There were a few more patrons in the cardio section of the gym but they didn’t seem to notice this interaction between you and the handsome stranger at all and there didn’t seem to be some kind of maintenance going on or equipment around you that was needed, warranting the long stare you’d received from the employee.

You turned back to your machine and after looking once more over your shoulder for any other disturbance you resumed your workout, picking up the pace and settling into a jog. It wasn’t five minutes later that the man was back, this time though he was strolling the area and looking, quite obviously, anywhere but you. You felt heat rising in your cheeks and somehow more exposed than before, you almost regretted this isolated treadmill towards the back of the room.

He had passed the other patrons at this point, there was no reason for him to walk back this way any further other than to speak to you. Still you felt compelled to keep your head down, like somehow you weren’t supposed to be here. He stopped behind you once more and the hair on the back of your neck pricked to points. As you made up the courage to confront him he took the first step, walking up to the side of your machine and tapping the handle arm.

Pulling one earbud out you turned the machine down to a walk, a little annoyed at the interruption but compliant and friendly as you could be. “Yes?” He flashed you a smile and gods was he handsome, tan skin, nice white teeth, he looked like he’d stepped out of a magazine, absolutely a personal trainer, but what did he want with you?

“Hi, m’name’s Johnny. I’m a personal trainer, dinnae think I’ve seen you around before.” His voice is gruff and that accent, Scottish? Maybe. Delicious whatever it is. “I’m new, first day.” He rocked back on his heels slightly, smile never faltering. “Ahh, I see. Ken I’d never seen ye before, would’ve remembered such a pretty face.” Charming as well, you couldn’t help but avert your gaze for a moment, the intensity of his presence a little faltering. When you speak your voice is a bit higher pitched than you’d wish and he knows he’s flustered you just a little.

“Yeah. Yeah, just umm.. just started my workout actually. Didn’t get very far.” You turn to go back to the machine but he reaches out and grabs your wrist and it stops you, your eyes flick back to his baby blues. “Have ye set your goals?” One eyebrow shoots up. “My goals?” That dazzling smile is back, it’s bright, nearly blinding. “Yer workout goals, cannae start yer workout without yer goals, hen. Gotta ken where yer at and where yer goin’.”

You consider this for a moment, a little off guard before stuttering forth an answer. “I’d like to work on my cardio.” It’s a simple enough answer, and seems stupid considering that’s what you were doing before he interrupted you and you thought maybe it was enough for him to leave you be, as handsome as he was you wanted to be polite but you also wanted to get back to it.

“That’s a good start bonnie. But we need to know where yer at still. Follow me.” And then he turns away, obviously expecting you to follow him. You stop the machine and stand idly for a moment, unsure what you’ll do, you probably could just go back to walking and that’d be the end of it, and maybe that’s what you should do, but you think it’d be rude, he was being nice so far and maybe he could help you set some real goals to accomplish, he is after all a personal trainer. It would be stupid to pass up his professional help. You climb off the treadmill and walk towards him, speed walking a little to catch up.

He carts you through the gym, and it feels like you’ve walked the whole length of the building, passed through a few sets of double doors, long since stopped seeing any patrons actually exercising. Now you feel like you’re in the back rooms of the gym, maybe where you’re not supposed to be. But you still follow him, keeping track of where you’ve been and how to get out if you have to, you know, just in case.

He finally opens the door to a room and pushes you in, it’s small but furnished. A single ancient treadmill pushed into one of the corners, a few scales against the far wall, charts explaining how to find your BMI and the nutrition pyramid are tacked to the wall. He shuts the door and the room takes on a warm and stuffy quality.

He starts by measuring your height. There’s a laminated ruler all the way up one wall and he pushes you up against it, kicking your feet until your heels touch the wall. You feel the strength in his hands as they bracket your hips, controlling you with just the minute movements of his wrists, caging you closer to take “the most accurate” measurements.

His breath is in your face, warm and minty as he places a finger at the tippy top of your head to pinpoint your height. You would think he’d have some sort of chart or goal sheet to jot these numbers down but he’s typing them into his phone instead, after all everything was online these days.

When he had your height he motioned for you to step on the scale, something you were a bit hesitant to do. “Don’t be fashed, bonnie. S’all part of the process.” You step up on the scale and after he takes a careful moment to be sure it’s settled he records your weight. You think it all might be over and you can go back to your workout when he says “Open.” You stare at him for a moment, dumbfounded and he waits patiently for you to comply.

“Open?” He grips you by the chin gently and taps his thumb against your lower lip, and your breath hitches at the gentle but intrusive gesture. “Open up.” You slowly part your lips and he smiles, his pretty blue eyes staring at your lips and you’re beyond flustered, thighs shifting uncomfortably. “Wider.” You do as he says, not sure how any of this is necessary but too far gone to stop now. “Good girl.”

He rocks your head from side to side, thoroughly examining your mouth, you feel his thumb apply pressure to your plush lower lip, drawing it down and you feel the saliva in your mouth gathering uncontrollably. The weight of it dips and you're backing away so as to not drool on his hand, your lower lip plopping back in place, but not before a drop of it collects on his thumb.

He looks you, unabashedly in the eye as he lifts his thumb to his lips and pushes the digit with your drool on it into his mouth. Your eyes are as big as saucers but without skipping a beat, and without recording any kind of data on that last test? Measurement? Examination of your mouth, he moves you over onto the treadmill and starts it up. He starts at a low speed and as the tread begins to move under your feet you have no choice but to move along with it.

It’s a walk, no sweat and you look over to see him watching your hips, his eyes flick up to yours and he leans forward and ups the speed. Now you’re at a light jog and you can no longer watch him directly. You hear him walking around the treadmill, alternating between being directly behind you and off to your side. He ups the speed again until you’re full on running, arms pumping as you try to keep up with the tread, you’re breathing quite heavily, chest heaving with each breath.

He turns it up again, just a notch but it’s past your limit and you’re struggling to keep up now, the heels of your feet nearly dangling over the end of the tread, you speak in between breaths, telling him you can’t keep up, it’s too fast. “Just a little more, hen. Keep goin’.” He’s behind you, you hope he’ll catch you if you come flying off the end, and just when you thought you would he comes up and hits the emergency stop and you feel the tread’s speed dwindle beneath your feet. When it stops you stand there, heart beating triple time in your chest, your arms gripping the arm rest until he comes up and makes you place them interlaced behind your head.

He says nothing while you recover, just plugs more data into his phone and when you’re better he looks up at you with cold assessing eyes, the baby blues icing over and chilling you. But then that smile resurfaces and they melt into pools of tropical blue and he speaks.

“Alright, lass. I'll do it.” And he just stands there not explaining until you ask. “Do what?” He laughs and it’s a gorgeous sound that still manages to unnerve you. “I’ll be your personal trainer.” You have a lot of questions and are about to voice them when he pulls you out of the room and has you following him again, talking the whole while.

“We’re gonna stretch your goals a bit. “Working on your cardio” isn’t exactly gonna cut it. We will work on your cardio, because trust me lass, it needs work.” You’re slightly offended at this, but he pushes right on through without soothing it. “But we are gonna get you in shape together. Dinnae worry, Johnny’s got a whole plan mapped out for ye already.” He takes you into a little cove by the front where a bunch of people are seated and drinking smoothies. This must be the smoothie artist you read about in the brochure. He walks up to the counter, bypassing the line and orders something you can hear from the table you sat down at. He’s handed two drinks and brings them over.

Handing one to you he sits across from you and when you don’t try it right off he sets authoritative eyes on you and deadpans in a no nonsense tone. “Drink.” You bring the straw to your lips and suck, which seems to please him and the fruit mixture that floats to your tongue is sweet and refreshing. “Now I want ye to do some homework for me when ye get home tonight. Two… nah. Make it three sets of sit-ups, two sets of toe touches and ten lunges.” You look at him and know that now is the time to tell him, you guess he just didn’t know or didn’t think to ask. “Johnny.” He looks up at you, eyes alight with excitement. “Yes, hen.”

“I’m only gonna be here for two weeks. I’m doing the free trial thing.” He keeps on staring like what you’ve said hasn’t registered and after a moment he adds. “And?” You thought it was clear but it seems you’ll have to go further. “I’m not sure I’ll be committing to coming back.” This is a lie. You know you can’t afford a membership and after your two weeks are up you simply couldn’t keep coming. But this seems to not matter in the slightest as he replies. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, yeah? Til’ then three sets of sit ups, two sets of toe touches and ten lunges.”

You don’t know what to say so you just nod and he smiles and despite yourself you feel almost relieved to see it. “Good. Come in tomorrow at three and we’ll get started on yer first real workout.”

“But I don’t get off work til 4.” He smiles and knocks once on the table with his knuckles. “4:30 it is then. Don’t be late.” With that he stands and walks away, leaving you with a half finished smoothie and conflicting emotions.

Later that night after you found yourself compelled to at least finish the “homework” he’d assigned and after you’d repacked your gym bag with fresh clothes and climbed into bed, the image of him pushing his thumb into his mouth filled your head until you burned in bed like a torch. His pale blue eyes, dark hair, tan skin, all very conventionally attractive aspects of his features but there was more, a more secretive darker part of you that was drawn to the way he picked you out. Took notice of you immediately and coerced you into training under him, even after he knew you might not commit.

You grill him with questions, demanding him to explain to you what he’s talking about. It seems obvious to you that he knows something he’s not letting on. The words fly from your mouth in a panic. “What do you mean it’s not safe? What are you talking about, Johnny? Explain!”

You see him get a little heated, a reaction you hadn’t expected, in fact the whole exchange following your inquisitions is so out of left field that it renders you speechless.

“Obviously hen, ye were a victim of a crime last night. Do ye nae see that?” You hadn’t seen that, it was so hard to remember anything about last night that drawing any kind of conclusion had so far been beyond you.

He sees it starting to click and continues, striking while the irons hot. “How many times in the past have ye gotten black out drunk, bonnie?” You have certainly had your fair share of ragers but black out drunk? To the point of almost total memory loss? Never.

“Did ye really think wakin’ up an’ nae bein’ able tae remember a damn thing was normal? Open yer eyes, lass.” He did this so well it seemed, had a way of breaking you down and making you feel small just to build you back up how he saw fit, cutting through the walls and all the bullshit to speak directly to you in a way no one before him had. It was humiliating and liberating all at once.

He sees he’s made his point. “Ah’m nae kiddin’, lass. I think ye were drugged las’ night an’ ah’d say yer awful lucky ah showed up when ah did.” His voice had taken on a kind of verbal growl, Scottish accent deepening so that it was almost hard to understand. He seemed genuinely upset, more than you could seem to get even though you were the victim, but you could feel it settling into your bones now, the unease.

Your face must be a mask of your emotions because he starts to calm now that he feels he's gotten through to you and he takes your hand into both of his. “Ye need tae understand somethin’, hen.” He seems to be mulling over the words in his head, unsure of the next thing to say. “I care about ye, I want ye tae be safe an’ happy an’ I think ye should stay with me. It’s nae safe fer ye tae be livin’ on yer own.”

You feel a bit surprised at his candidness, a show of emotions you hadn’t expected and it sends a hot flare up from your stomach and heats your cheeks. “Johnny I can’t stay.” He forces his gaze to yours, holds you hostage with it. “Why nae?”

That’s a good question, one you didn’t have an answer for. Why couldn’t you stay with him? Would it really be so bad? You’d been living on your own for so long maybe you were afraid of that change.

You opened your mouth to answer but he stopped you before you could. “Jus’ think about it. I’ll ask ye again tonight an’ if ye dinnae want tae, ah willnae make ye.” He closed it with that, getting up off the bed to signal the talk was over. “Come on, time fer yer warm up.”

After changing, you followed him out the door and into unfamiliar territory, the rest of the house you’ve yet to see. He leads you into an open living area that blended into a nice big kitchen. The house looked like it could house a whole family let alone just the two of you. You followed as your head craned and took it all in. The rent must have been astronomical but it was still Johnny’s house and he didn’t bother with extravagancies. It was spacious but also sparsely decorated making it look huge in perspective.

You cut through the space and into another room. You hadn’t really expected him to have a personal home gym, since he worked at one you naturally assumed he’d just go to work to exercise. The middle of the room was empty and matted, heavy duty, black pads interlocked like puzzle pieces made a twelve by twelve square in the center. The walls of the room were lined with full weight racks, adjustable benches, a treadmill and a power tower.

He stops in the middle of the black square and motions for you to sit. You sit, criss cross applesauce, across from him and he motions for you to begin. You start to go through your warm ups, starting with your sit-ups. He holds your feet and keeps count for you, his grin widening as you progressed.

Today was different and in more ways than one, when you’d finished he had you sit up and hold his feet, meaning for this to be a joint session for the both of you instead of just one sided as it normally was. You had to sit with your knees on the toes of his feet to keep him weighted down and he went for three reps of twenty instead of ten. You could feel the strength he possessed, the power held in the corded muscles of his thighs and calves by just holding him down.

You moved through the first set and into the next, keeping count of his push ups and even clumsily crawling up on his back when he insisted on needing your added weight. While it’d only really been a week since you’d stopped, you found that you’d come to miss this. Partly the healthy routine you’d built with him and partly his presence itself. Slipping back into it was not only easy but welcoming and this new way of having him doing it right along with you was something you secretly found yourself falling in love with.

You practically floated through your warm ups, hardly feeling the burn of them. You sat on the mat with your legs stretched out in front of you in a V. Without any assistance from him you managed a full, complete split and you couldn’t quite hide the elation you felt when his eyes lit up and praise poured from his lips.

Limber and pliant you both rose up from the mat and he walked you over to the power tower, standing out from you as you positioned yourself underneath the pull up bar. You jumped and grabbed ahold of the cool metal. You began, pulling yourself up until your chin passed the bar and then dropping down again.

It was hard but you were determined to finish, huffing and puffing by the last rep but still able to pull yourself past the point without stopping. You caught your breath as he muscled through his. You had long recovered when he finally jumped down, making your measly three look like light work as he managed a solid fifteen before finally coming to a halt.

You knew the next portion was the treadmill but as you made to mount it he stopped you. “Let’s go fer a real run, what dae ye think?” You stopped to consider it. You’d always wanted to go for a real jog, much preferring the open air of outside to the confines of an automated conveyor belt but had been much too scared to attempt such a thing on your own.

You’d always heard stories of women going out on jogs and simply never returning, their bodies found weeks later floating in rivers or lying in ditches. As alluring as the idea was your fears had always kept you inside but with a man like Johnny by your side you could pretty much garuntee total safety.

The prospect of finally getting to do as you pleased excited you and you found yourself chomping at the bit to go. He grabbed his house keys and escorted you to the door, locking it tight behind him and stepping up beside you on the sidewalk. “Are ye ready?”

You smiled at him and nodded, it must have been contagious because one of his own sprung up on his face, lighting it up and making his blue eyes sparkle in the sun.

“There’s a park just doon the way. We’ll head there, do a lap an’ loop back.” You started at a light jog and was pleasantly surprised to see him keep the pace you’d set. You were a bit worried you’d be struggling to match him the whole way, although he did talk most of the way while you struggled to manage anything more than one word replies.

It was a beautiful day, the weather was mild and there was a cool breeze at your back like gentle fingers prodding you encouragingly along. You were suddenly glad for this strange turn of events, as troubling as it seemed at first. Feeling down all last week and then reluctant to go out with Nancy, the anxiety you’d felt in the drive to the club and then somehow ending up in Johnny’s bed the next morning.

Somehow even unable to remember any of the events from the night before, something that, in all reality should leave you mortified and sick left you only feeling a strange sense of calm, like in the end it had all worked out how it was meant to be. You found yourself thinking about this morning and how he’d been almost mad at you for not being more concerned about last night, but you just couldn’t feel it.

There was eventually an underlying sense of unease that he’d practically forced onto you but it was only fleeting, like someone who’s fallen asleep at the wheel only to wake up in the hospital and be informed that you were lucky to be alive. It was hard to understand the reality of your danger when you’d walked away unscathed and without really having experienced it.

Maybe it was shell shock and you just weren’t completely grasping the reality of the situation but you weren’t holding your breath, and as far as taking him up on his offer you just weren’t all that convinced. While it was, admittedly, a problem that you’d drank too much and been unable to make it home last night, you failed to see any real danger in living by yourself.

You’d been doing fine thus far and didn’t see why that should have reason to change. You decided then that you’d made up your mind, you’d spend the day with Johnny, as gratitude for taking such good care of you in a time of need and just to enjoy it as well, it was only early in the afternoon but it was turning out to be a pretty good day in your book. You’d tell him later on when he asked that there really was no reason for you to stay with him. He’d understand, you were sure.

“Lass?” You were pulled away from your thoughts and back to the present. “Hmm?”

“I said what do ye think about havin’ fer dinner. I make an ossobuco that’ll bring ye tae tears.” You had no idea what that was but just expressed your interest anyway as you turned off of the sidewalk and into the entrance to the park.

It was one you recognized, beautfiully landscaped and as old as the hills, this park had been around for as long as you could remember, although it’d been ages since you’d been. They’d updated the playground and had redone the bridge over the pond, there was a flock of geese preening themselves on the surface of the dark, calm water.

You came to a stop at the peak of the bridge, glancing down at your Fitbit and checking your pulse. Johnny leaned his forearms onto the railing and leaned down for a look into the pond as you both caught your breath. He broke the peaceful silence that had settled between the two of you.

“I brought me mum here once. She used tae love feedin’ the swans at the pond near our house when I was wee. Used tae take me over there on our morning walks and I used tae make her laugh tryin’ tae catch one. Ah’ve taken more than one swan nip tae the arse as a lad.” You couldn’t help but laugh imagining him chasing the birds that probably matched him in size as a kid and then laughed some more as you imagined them chasing him, angry and nipping at his heels.

He laughed with you and as you nestled in next to him to stare out on the pond, just as the fit settled he leaned in close, nudged up against your side. “Ye’ll meet her if ye stay long enough ye know. She’d love ye.”

You felt a pang of uncomfortable awkwardness as he brought up the idea of you staying again. You didn’t want to dissapoint him by ruining the moment but you didn’t want to lead him on either. “Johnny…”

He stopped you. “Nae. Dinnae say anything yet. Ah was jus’ sayin’.”

You fell back into silence, a much more uncomfortable one this time but he wouldn’t let it set in as he pushed you back into a jog and lead you over the end of the bridge. It looped back around to where you’d started and it was only a quick jog back to his place where you ended your session for the day.

You both go inside and head for the kitchen, he pulls a blender hidden in a cabinet and sets it up on the counter before pulling out a litany of fruits along with a knife and small cutting board. He chops as he talks, going over your progress and performance, comparing it to your starting time and pace and mooning over the results.

He stops talking as he dumps the fruit into the blender and turns it on, the concoction inside swirling into a deep green slurry. When it’s homogenous he stops and pulls two glasses from a different cupboard. The juice makes a wet plop as it fills the glass and he slides one your way after sticking a bright orange straw down into its depths.

You pull it in front of you and take a long sip, confident in his smoothie skills at this point and relish in the way the sweet cool drink slides over your tongue and down your throat, already working to rejuvenate you.

He downs his quickly, an amazing feat that would surely leave you numb with brain freeze. Setting the glass down in the sink he rounds the counter to you. “I’m goin’ tae take a quick shower and then it’s yer turn.” He slides up close, lean chest pressing into your back and placing a kiss on the back of your neck that sent chills down your spine. “Unless ye want tae join me, that is.”

You do want to, nothing sounds better but you’re still tired from your session and you’ve experienced Johnny in his fulty, intense and unrelenting. If you went at it now you may never recover so you decline, opting to finish your drink and wait your turn. He leaves you and you turn on the stool to take in the decor. The little there is of it seems to be concentrated on a shelf in the corner.

You hop off the stool and walk tentatively over to it, surveying the shelves. There’s a few trophies, the plaques on each read that they’re awarded from some gym for a weightlifting competition. His name and the years were engraved in the middle of the plaque, he’d won them three years consecutively.

The other shelves were adorned with photographs. You glanced at them one by one, picking out Johnny’s radiant smile in each. Here’s one with him on the bank of a river, huddled together with a bunch of people all wearing the same bright orange helmets and yellow vests in varying states of soaked, they’re all holding short stubby oars and smiling.

The next one is a much larger group of people, they’re all different ages but share similar qualities, their eyes and noses on different faces but seem to be shaped from the same clay by the same hands. They’re assembled in front of a sign that reads “MacTavish Family Reunion” and it takes you a moment to pick out Johnny from the crowd of baby blues and deep rich browns. You finally spot him clustered in the back with two other young men hanging off of his shoulders. They look like three of a rambunctious kind.

Beside that is Johnny in a long black robe and mortarboard, from the cap dangles a dark green tassel that hangs in the poofy frizz of long dark brown curls belonging to a shorter stout woman. Her eyes are so bright and shockingly blue they couldn’t belong to anyone other than Johnny’s mother. She looks soft and sweet but strong as she beams at the camera. Her face exudes nothing but pride and adoration for her son. Johnny looks young and happy, his eyes reflect the yet untapped potential of the start of his adult life.

“That’s mah mum an’ I at mah graduation.” His sudden presence startles you and you’re glad to have only been leaning in to observe the photographs instead of holding them, you’re certain you would have dropped them had it been the case.

“Jesus, Johnny. You scared me.” He smiles, a deep grin that you can tell he’s a bit satisfied to have been able to give you a start, despite his following apology. “Sorry lass, Dinnae mean tae make ye jump.”

There’s a small span of awkward silence and to cease it you ask him about the first picture, the one by the river.

He lets out a small hearty laugh and reaches past you to lift the frame off the shelf, bringing it closer like having it here in his hands will give him a better feel for the memories they contain.

“Ah used tae go white water raftin’ all the time. This was a group I joined when ah started. We had just cleared a class four river fer tha first time.” You smile as he reminisces, telling just by his eyes that he’s reliving it a little as he talks.

“Do you still do it? River raft?” He shakes his head and places the picture back on the shelf where it had been. “Nae anymore. Too dangerous.”

He sighs a little, the golden memory disappearing and perhaps leaving a plume of mild gloom in its place but if it had affected him too badly it didn’t show, as his ever radiant smile resurfaced like it’d never retreated.

“Yer turn, hen. The bathrooms in mah room it’s the far door on the left.” You make your way back towards his bedroom as he stations himself behind the sink and busies himself with the dishes.

You pick through the bag on the bed, hem hawing over what to wear when you just decide to bring the whole bag with you into the bathroom. You turn on the shower and let it warm as you retrieve your soap, shampoo and conditioner.

After quickly undressing you step into the warm jet and let it soak into your skin. There was a lot to think about and showers had always seemed like the best time to ponder things. You’re still, even now, in awe at just how things had turned in the past day. You certainly didn’t believe you’d be showering at his place at this time the day before. You poured some body wash into your palm, lathering it as you ruminated.

And then there was his offer, so out of the blue and generous of him. To stay at his place with him and for what? Why? Because you’d drank a little too much the night before and just couldn’t recall any of it? While it’d never been the case for you before now didn’t mean it was impossible for you to become black out drunk. It wasn’t an impossibility, you’d read somewhere that the body's chemical makeup changes roughly every seven years. People all the time grow out of and even develop new allergies as their life progressed. Meaning it was completely possible for your reactions to an influx of alcohol to change over time.

At least, that’s how you justified it to yourself as you rinsed the suds from your skin and began to wash your hair. It just didn’t make sense to jump to conclusions so hastily. And stay for how long? Certainly he didn’t mean to tell you that you were welcome to move in indefinitely. You don’t just extend that kind of an offer to someone like that, he barely knew you. Or did he?

It didn’t matter. For now you just couldn’t bring yourself to impose upon him like that, even if he did offer it up so willingly and insistent. After dinner, you’d gently and politely refuse. He did after all say he wouldn’t make you if you didn’t want to.

You rinse off and turn off the stream, letting most of the water drip off you before stepping out and wrapping yourself in a warm, fluffy towel from the rack. You finally pick out an outfit and stick with it, pulling it on and cleaning up after yourself as you finished, you’d rather not leave a mess for him to contend with later on top of everything he’d already done for you.

You close the door to his bedroom behind you as you step out into the open living room. You had expected him to be unwinding on the couch but instead he was up and pulling on jacket, he had his shoes on and keys in hand. As he spotted you he smiled and stepped towards you.

“Ah need a few things from the store fer dinner. Will ye join me fer a ride?” You smile and nod, turning back towards the room to put on some shoes and retrieve your phone and wallet before joining him to leave. It’s a short walk through the front entrance of his home to the garage. It’s barren save for a big red toolbox and a few boxes stacked in a far corner. His truck takes up the majority of the space, a fairly new dark blue Toyota Tundra. Totally on brand for him, clean and gleaming under the fluorescent lights overhead. He pulls open the passenger side door for you to climb in, which flusters you a bit.

You scurry to climb into it and sit back into the comfy seat as he shuts your door and rounds the vehicle to climb in on his side.

You ride in comfortable silence as he drives you a few blocks down the road to the little grocery mart you’d been to on occasion when you were in need of something on this side of town. He parks and you’re glad to scoot out of the door and join him before he has time to come around and open the door for you again. The chivalry was nice but always managed to make you feel awkward instead of special.

You’re taken by surprise as he takes your hand in his and both make your way towards the entrance. The warmth of his hand envelops yours, his thumb draws lazy, soothing circles on the back of your hand and the flustered feeling you’d been feeling, a combination of the new experience of being seen with him in public and him being so gentlemanly, eases.

You walk side by side out of the car park and into the brightly lit store. He picks up one of the little baskets from a metal cage and begins veering towards the back of the store. He seems to know exactly what he needs and where it all is so you just lose yourself a bit in the moment, looking at things on the shelves and watching him as he shops.

Normally when you shop by yourself it’s a race. A race to get everything you need and get out as fast as humanly possible, it’s something about being out in public for too long that makes your skin crawl. But this. This is different. Something about being with Johnny puts you at an inexplicable ease. He’s confident and knowledgeable, and for once you don’t feel like your mind is moving a million miles a minute under the scrutiny of every other set of eyes in the building. You can just simply relax and be, let him take over.

In produce you watch him pick up three different onions that, to you, look no different but he rolls them in the palm of his hand and gives them each a light toss in the air. Somehow— that decides it and he puts two of them back and places the chosen one down in the basket.

Every time he lets go of your hand for something you’re sure that’s the end of it, just knowing the moment will be lost but he surprises you each time anew when he comes back to you and takes it again, leading you through the sections hand in hand.

You stop in the spirits aisle and grimace as he picks up a bottle of dry red wine. The front is embossed with a duck in a yellow slicker, an umbrella cocked jauntily and tucked securely under one white wing, shielding him from a shower of rain falling from a single dark cloud that looms over its head. In a bright gold scroll underneath this curious image are the words “Rain Duck”. The image is very reminiscent of the Morton salt girl you’d always seen in the spice cabinet of your childhood home.

He looks over and catches your look of disgust and laughs, a hearty cheerful sound that momentarily wipes the scowl from your face and threatens to send you into your own fit of meek giggles. “Dinnae worry hen, s’just fer the sauce. Will nae even taste it, ah promise.”

He sets it down in the basket and heads towards the front of the store to checkout. You stand in line and wait your turn until the cashier clears the person in front of you and Johnny begins to empty his basket onto the conveyor belt one item at a time.

By the time he’d finished, the cashier, a tall skinny man with dark rimmed glasses had already begun to ring you up and Johnny suddenly smacks the palm of his hand to his forehead. “Ahhhh shite. Ah forgot somethin’. Stay here with the groceries bonnie, I’ll be right back.”

He takes off in a power walk towards the back of the store and disappears around a shelf. You rock back and forth on your feet and pray that by the time the cashier is done Johnny will be back. You know if he’s not you’ll cave to the pressure of the people behind you and end up paying for everything yourself, just so you don’t hold the line.

You crane over the partitions of shelves that mark the separate checkout lanes in search of Johnny but your attention is redirected when the cashier clears his throat and calls out to you to get your attention. “Excuse me, miss.”

You turn, dreading the worst but there’s still a good amount of items left unscanned and he’s got the bottle of Rain Duck held past the scanner, looking to you attentively.

You let out a sigh of relief as you realize he only needs your ID to finish ringing up the wine. You pull your wallet from your purse and the relief you had felt instantly dissipates. The pleasantly relaxed state you’d been lulled into suddenly felt like the calm prelude to a horrifying nightmare. The clear plastic pane that normally covered your horrible ID photo was empty. You tipped it open, hoping for some horrible trick of the light or optical illusion but the sleeve was empty.

You quickly shuffled through the individual card sleeves, hoping against hope that you’d somehow slipped it into one of them by mistake but it wasn’t there. Your ID was missing. The panic sets in the pit of your stomach like a lead ball as Johnny squeezes up behind you holding a carton of heavy cream. His smile disappears when he sees your face.

He quickly sets the heavy cream down on the belt and puts a hand on your shoulder. “Bonnie, what is it? What’s wrong?”

The cashier calls out to him impatiently. “Sir?” Johnny looks up at him, with death glaring from his eyes before turning back to you. “Come on, lass. What’s the matter?” You whisper because it’s all you can muster, your vocal cords withered to nothing in fright.

“My ID. It’s gone.” The cashier tried again to get Johnny’s attention and you barely hear Johnny as he speaks very low and angrily at the man behind the counter. Johnny must have done as he asked though because soon enough you feel Johnny’s arms gently pulling you towards the exit. It makes you snap out of your horror for a moment and offer to help carry the bags back to his truck but he’s having none of it, insisting on carrying the whole load in two huge armloads all the way back himself.

You slip into the passenger seat as he puts the groceries in the back and only look up from staring at the lines in your denim jeans when the driver side door shuts and the cab is silent for a moment. He’s looking at you, very concerned and you realize he’s waiting for you to explain in more detail.

“My ID is gone. Completely gone.” He seems to think for a moment before he responds and asks if you’d checked your purse. You quickly do as he’d suggested and go through it but it’s not there either and the momentary hope you’d felt at his suggestion died almost as soon as it’d been born.

“Maybe I dropped it at the club.” A smile begins to form on your face as you grasp at anything other than the truth. “That’s it Johnny! We’ve gotta go back to the club. They’ll have found it cleaning up! And we can go get it and everything’s fine!” He doesn’t look convinced as you look over to him for validation.

“Lass, be honest with yerself fer a moment. How often do ye take yer ID out of yer wallet when ye need it?” Your smile began to fade, he was right. Anytime you needed it you just opened it and flashed it without ever taking it out of the slot, you’d bought that wallet specifically for that feature because you were so worried about losing it.

“I ken ye didnae want tae believe what happened tae ye, but there’s no denyin’ it now. Someone targeted ye last night. Picked ye out of the crowd and drugged yer drink when ye werenae lookin’ an’ they took yer ID in case they couldnae seal the deal right away. He’s got yer address an’ yer name an’ even yer picture.”

You listen to him talk as the cold, cruel hand of reality closes around your throat and the disgust of being violated in such a thorough way begins to worm its way under your skin. You can feel Johnny struggling to find words to comfort you from the seat next to you but he must not find any that are adequate because he starts the truck instead and drives you home in a silence that had on the way been comfortable and passive but now was pregnant with tension and doom.

You get back to his place and he unloads the truck as you sit inside and try not to panic at the situation you’ve found yourself in. You thank your lucky stars that Johnny had found you and brought you home now. If you’d somehow miraculously made it home without incident this mysterious man could have crept into your home while you were incapacitated and done any number of things to you. You imagined all the horrifying possibilities, each more daunting than the last as he unpacked and put everything away.

He must sense your spiraling thoughts because he calls you into the kitchen with him as he starts to cook. Chopping onions, heating shallow pools of oil in two different skillets, measuring out beef broth and flour and water in varying amounts as he practices the fine art of mise en place.

You try, really truly try not to let the fear of your predicament gnaw away at you too hard but it’s almost an act in futility. He looks up at you after cracking his third shot and missed joke while dredging the ox tails in flour and notices you staring down at your hands in deeply troubled thought.

He stops what he’s doing and comes over to the counter, bending down to lean over its sturdy surface and get your attention. You look up at him and feel your heart skip a little as he has no business being so damn attractive covered in flour like he is.

“Listen hen. I ken yer goin through it right now. Probably spooked right out of yer tree, but I promise ye yer in no danger here. I dare him tae walk through that door right now. I swear tae ye ill dismantle him with my flour covered hands before he even so much as touches a hair on yer bonnie head.”

You can’t help but smile as you imagine him wrecking your faceless oppressor, flour flying about in clouds as the impact of his blows knock it loose from his hands.

“There’s tha’ smile. Now be a doll an’ open mah wine fer me. I forgot before ah got all messy.”

You stand from your stool and open the drawer he directs you towards to locate the corkscrew. The rest of the preparation you do in a much better mood. While you had a brand new serious problem on your hands there was no need in sulking over it when there was nothing you could do at the moment and anytime spent with Johnny was hard not to enjoy.

He plated your portion and set you down across from him so he could watch your first bite. You wanted him to eat with you, a bit self conscious at him just watching you eat but he insisted he had to start on dessert before he could sit down to dinner.

You cut the big chunk of meat with your knife and fork and then dipped it down in the pool of sauce just as he’d instructed you to. He watched you intently as you brought the fork to your mouth and took your first bite.

Your eyes widen before half closing, you can’t help the soft moan that resounds as the tender meat and rich, savory sauce feel like they pull your taste buds into their arms and hug them soft and sweetly. It’s absolutely divine and you look up from your plate to see Johnny, smug as a bug grinning wolfily at your reactions.

“Told ye it’d bring ye tae tears.” You can’t even respond, just swallow and take another eager bite, this time with a little of the risotto from the bed that the meat is resting on. “Jesus Christ, Johnny. Where in the fuck did you learn to cook like this?”

His grin is so wide you’re worried it’ll be stuck that way and to your amusement you can tell his cheeks have reddened even under his nice, even tan. “Yer makin’ me blush, hen. S’just what ah’ve picked up along tha way. Ye could do it too. I could teach ye.”

You nod enthusiastically, you’d like that very much and you have a feeling so would he. You really dig into your meal in earnest as he works. His back is to you as he prepares dessert on the stove and you wonder just what it might be. Steam rises up in thin streams as he pours something into two ramekins and sticks them in the oven.

By the time you’re done he’s cracking into his own dinner as you begin working on the dishes. He protests but you stay firm that if he cooked the absolute least you could do was help clean up. He finally relented and let you work as he ate as quickly as he could so he could help dry the dishes at least.

By the time everything was done so was the dessert and he pulled it from the oven to cool as he leaned over the counter and held your gaze raptly with his. “It’s time, lass. What have ye decided?”

But with the way he’s staring you down it feels like he’s on the edge of his seat. Those blue eyes piercing yours and you know every second you don’t answer is killing him, you can read it all over his face so even though you’d made your mind up you told him you weren’t sure.

He looked a bit dejected but it wasn’t the broken disappointment you knew you’d have been graced with if you’d downright shut his proposition down. His eyes light up suddenly in a way you hadn’t been expecting like he’d just had the idea of a century.

“Play a game with me, lass.” You regarded him distrustfully. “What kind of game, Johnny?”

“I’ll show ye, come on.” You follow after him into the bedroom, a bit wary. He stops in front of the pull up bar and turns back towards you.

“Johnny you and I both know there’s no way I’m besting you in a pull up contest, I’d be mental to even try. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“Ohhh no, hen. Nothing like tha’, yer right t’wouldnae be fair. All I want ye tae do is hang from the bar. Can ye do that?”

You jump up and grab the bar to see if you’ve got the right idea and he smiles and nods. “Jus’ like that, all ye’ve gotta do is not let go. Think ye can handle it?”

You eyed him suspiciously. “What’s the catch?” You felt like there was something hidden in this that he wasn’t revealing and you weren’t wrong.

“Well it would nae be a game if there was nae some kind of a catch now would it, hen?” You swallow hard and watch him saddle closer, pinning you back into the cool metal bars.

“Ye’ve got tae hold yerself up until ye come.” His smirk widens as your mouth drops open a little, at first for some kind of rebuttal but you can’t come up with anything to say so it just hangs open as your mind blanks.

You finally get a grip enough to ask him to explain. “Well, yer goin’ tae hang onto tha bar an’ ah’m goin’ tae try mah hardest tae make ye come. If ye can hold onto it just until then, then you win but if ye cannae do it, an’ ye let go then I win.”

You mull over his terms and he just leans back a bit and lets you, waiting for your answer. Instead of giving him one you inquire further. “What do I get if I win?”

His answer is another simple question. “What do ye want?” A simple question that was complicated to find an answer for. What did you want from him? After a moment's thought you answered. “I want you to tell me everything you remember about last night and I want you to help me find this guy that did this to me. I don’t want to live in fear like this. You take me up to the club and we ask if they found my ID and if not then we ask to see the video footage of that night.”

“Hen, there’s no garuntee—“ You stop him. “I know. Just promise me if I win you’ll help me.” He looks a bit troubled, like he hadn’t meant for this to take this kind of turn and you wonder for a moment if he’ll back out.

“If I win ye have tae tell me the real reason ye never came back to the gym an’ never texted me an’ just disappeared.” You go to answer when he adds. “And ye stay.”

You sort of knew he was going to play that and even though you’d anticipated it, it still manages to fluster you hearing it.

You think about it real hard, just being around him had you more or less worked up all day, you were fairly confident that you could come quickly, even now just having discussed the game with him you knew your panties were damp. But could you hold yourself up for that length of time?

Reluctantly, you accepted. You even felt sure enough to jest him a bit about how easy of a win this would be for you, it was a decision you came to regret as he leaned in close to your ear and whispered. “Ah’m goin’ tae make ye eat those words, hen.”

A shudder of anticipation passed through you as he kissed you on your neck, just below your ear with a pass of his velvet soft tongue, giving you a little taste of what was to come.

The game had apparently begun as he stooped down to help shed you of your jeans, pulling them down and kissing the skin revealed as he exposed it. Next came your panties and they were damp, a fact that tore a rumble of approval from his chest but he wouldn’t touch you yet.

“Cannae give ye too much of a head start now can we?” He patted the side of your thigh curtly. “Up up.”

You do as he says and it’s a little late to be self conscious now but you can’t help it as you dangle from the metal rod and he spreads your thighs so you’re open to him. You worry he’s going to cheat you a bit as he stares at your bare pussy and you begin to complain when it dies in your throat as his tongue licks a broad stripe up the length of your slit. “Shit!”

He chuckles a little and dives in, resting his hands in the crooks of your knees but offering no support as he begins to eat you out in earnest. You can’t help but moan, your eyes glossy and unfocused as you stare down at him feasting on you from below. It feels like nothing you’ve ever experienced, the strain in your arms adding an element of pain that scratches a hidden itch in the back of your brain.

You shift in his hold uncomfortably as his tongue darts into your entrance, collecting your juices on his tongue and drinking them down. You want, so desperately, to be able to grip him by the Mohawk and hold onto him for dear life but you can’t so you squeeze the bar in your grip and sweetly moan his name instead.

His tongue finds your clit and it just about throws you over the edge but proves to be not quite enough as you chase it in hopes of victory. His hands squeeze and grope the flesh of your thighs and ass as he eats. You thought at the start of this that you would have had this in the bag but the stretch of your arms was outweighing the pull of your pleasure.

It wasn’t for a lack of Johnny’s enthusiasm, his head stayed buried in the heat of your pussy the whole time as he drove you towards the edge as quickly and efficiently as possible. Despite the burn in your biceps you could feel your orgasm building to a boiling point, you had no doubt you’d be coming soon but would it be soon enough for you to win?

He suddenly began to run quick sharp circles over the top of your clit with the pad of his thumb, while his tongue laps at your entrance like a bear to a beehive hole. It’s so good you can’t help but moan, low and dragging as you careen towards the center of the nova of pleasure threatening to consume you whole.

Your wrists tremble and a cramp unlike any you’ve ever experienced begins to glow like a white hot coal in your armpit and it’s beyond you to be able to hold on any longer. Your pinky finger slips first and then the rest quickly follow. You squeal as you realize you’re going to fall but his arms push your legs up onto his shoulders and he catches you just as you let go.

A flood of relief flows through your aching arms and you realize you’ve lost but the sting of defeat plays second fiddle to the massive orgasm that takes you by the throat just an instant later. He holds you up with the strength in his arms alone as you come undone above him. He spins around as your thighs still tremble and gently places you on the bed.

You are still very sensitive and your thighs go to clench shut when they’re blocked by one wide knee. He wastes no time in slotting himself between them, his mouth crashing to yours as you taste yourself on his lips and tongue. He cages you beneath him, pulling off your lips to bite and suck at your neck. His hands roam you freely, pulling at your top until it’s up over your head and lifting you up for access to the clasp of your bra.

With it successfully pulled away from your breasts he dives down and devours them, lips wrapping around one pert nipple as the other he gropes with the full palm of his hand, trying to hold as much of it as possible. You nearly shriek with the overstimulation of it and he pulls away to whisper both praise and apologies.

“Jus’ cannae help it, bonnie. Need tae be inside you, please? Let me fuck you, hen. Been cravin’ tha’ perfect little pussy. Come on, lass. Give it tae me.” He’s rubbing the very prominent bulge of his cock against your thigh all the while and you can’t help but clench around nothing in anticipation.

“Fuck Johnny! Do it! Fill me up.” He wastes no time, quickly abandoning your breasts to free himself from the confinements of his jeans. He doesn’t even get them down all the way before he’s fishing himself from his boxers and rubbing the tip hurriedly up and down your slit. You jump and squeal at the sensation and he coos more apologies at you before lining himself up and pushing inside.

You moan in unison as he stretches you open and his arms come up to brace himself on either side of your head. He muffles your moans with his mouth as he leans down and kisses you, swallowing them up as he begins to move and your hands fly to his arms, bracing yourself against the onslaught that is the drag of his fat cock.

You pull away for air and immediately expel it into a high pitched whine as he picks up a fast and steady rhythm, hips knocking into yours on each upward thrust. The fact that you've already came does nothing to alleviate the burn that accompanies the stretch of him. He’s a force and you can do nothing against it but hold on.

You try to make sense of what he’s saying as he fucks you stupid but only catch half of it. Something about keeping you safe forever. Poorly worded promises and vows pouring from his mouth as he uses you to reach his release.

You can feel it fast approaching and can do nothing but steel yourself against it as he pounds a second orgasm from you, the snap of his hips and the drive of his cock demands it of you. “Aww fuck, hen. Are ye gonna come fer me again? Hmm? Let me feel it. Come on lass, let me take care of ye forever. Ye can have this fer the rest of our lives if ye jus’ come fer me right now.”

He says it like you have a choice in the matter as you become locked in the throes of your ecstasy brought forth by his hand and in the midst of yours you vaguely feel him reach his. Coming hard and fast deep inside the tight clutch of your pussy.

It takes you both an eternity to recover and when he finally rolls off you, you realize you’d half fallen asleep, cradled safely under him, worn out and sated.

After a moment he gets up and leaves the room and he’s gone forever to the point where you almost get up to go after him but he comes back in with two small white dishes in hand along with two spoons.

You sit up on one elbow as he hands you one and the accompanying silverware. Looking down at it you can see a dark golden brown crust, a glassy glaze over the surface but are otherwise clueless as to what’s before you. You watch him experimentally as he takes the handle of the spoon in between his thumb and index finger and brings the bowl of the spoon down on top of the crust with an audible smack. The crust breaks and there’s a jiggly dense cream beneath.

Following suit, you bring your spoon down onto yours and scoop up a glob of the pale white gelatin. You take a bite and smile as the cool, sweet cream melts over your tongue. You sit there with him, basking in the afterglow of your orgasms and eating crème brûlée.

It gets you thinking, you could have this indefinitely. Do this every night if you’d like and as if reading your thoughts he speaks.

“I won, but the choice is still yers. Stay with me, hen. Ah’ll keep ye safe. No worries, no lookin’ over yer shoulder forever or double checkin’ yer locks all yer life. Let me take care of ye. I want to, an tha’s honest.”

You stare at him, his blue eyes are soft and filled with adoration and honesty. He really wants you here with him and is that really so bad? How many times are you gonna pass up this opportunity before it’s gone? And will you be looking back later with regret once the door has closed?

You have to drop his gaze to decide but recapture it once you do. You go to tell him “Ok, but only until I’ve found a new place.” but he seizes you in his arms after the first word and pulls you hard against him like a five year old child handed a cat and told they can keep it.

“Johnny! You’re squishing me!” You complain but the sensation isn’t entirely unpleasant.

He does everything with you side by side for the rest of the night. He changes with you, he brushes his teeth with you, he even lingers around when you try to go to the bathroom before bed, it takes a good amount of effort on your part to make him leave the room but you know he’s stood just outside the cracked door that he neglects to close on the way out.

Climbing under the sheets with him you wonder just how sleeping together for the first night is gonna go, actually wondering if you’ll get any sleep at all but then he pulls you into his chest and to your surprise he doesn’t try anything sexual. He doesn’t rub a hard bulge against you or grope your tits. He just wants you close, his warm chest filling out the dip of your back, his legs entangle themselves with yours, his feet even nudge yours affectionately in lazy passes.

It’s a while before either of you speak and Johnny thought you’d been long asleep when you say “I can’t afford a membership.” There’s a pause in your words and just when he understands what you’re saying you say more. “That’s why I didn’t come back to the gym, I thought it’d be easier.. for both of us.. if I just disappeared.”

And there’s something about your honesty, the way you’d remembered and honored your whole end of the bargain, the candidness of revealing you struggled with the decision, the mild sleepy drag of your voice that’s barely audible in the darkness that pulls directly on his heart and he couldn’t articulate a response if he’d tried so he doesn’t.

Maybe you believe he’s asleep and maybe it’s better that way. But he’s not. A few moments later he hears your breathing even out and he knows from the previous night that you’re asleep. He lays awake long after that holding you.

He thinks about you and how he’d finally got you to see reason. He thinks about times when the outcome of a situation is more valuable and important— the greater good one might say, than the means it took to reach it. Omelets, for instance, constitute broken eggs.

It takes a certain amount of necessary malice for these things. An agent who realizes what’s at stake and what’s to gain, willing to act on these conditions and set them right, no matter the cost. And lastly, he thinks about your ID, sitting snuggly behind his in his wallet. Tomorrow after he drops you off at work he’ll dispose of it. Maybe burn it, maybe shred it, maybe tie it to a heavy rock and throw it off the bridge at the park, watch it sink into the murky, goose poop filled pond until it gets too deep to see.

Johnny realizes he’s obsessed, that’s what makes him different. An insane, deranged person doesn’t know what they’re doing, doesn’t actually see the boundaries they’re crossing. Completely oblivious to the downward spiral they’re on, but Johnny can see it, he knows he’s losing the battle with himself.

It’s that damn Fitbit. It was an impulse buy, he saw it, saw the opportunities it created and jumped on it. It didn’t matter the price, money was no object, he’d buy you five more in five different colors if that’s what you’d like. It was the dilemma it created for him that did him in. It gave him 24/7 access to you, unrestricted, unsupervised looks into your life at any given time that he just couldn’t get any other way.

He checked in on you constantly, almost ridiculously often, sometimes he couldn’t stand five minutes between opening the app. He’d scroll aimlessly through his social media only to switch back to it. He tried putting his phone in his locker while he worked out but just after warm ups he’d cave and go retrieve it.

It was the closest thing he could get to shrinking himself down and climbing up on your shoulder, a fly in every room you’ve ever entered. It only provided him the most basic of information, your vitals, heartbeat and respiratory levels, your stress levels and location, but it was enough, just to know you were breathing halfway across town put him at ease.

He wished he’d altered it before he gifted it to you, plant a bug in it so he could hear you all the time, just the sound of your voice would be enough to make the hours between sessions pass by faster, make them more bearable. But he’d been in such a hurry to give it to you, to see your reaction, be more in tune with you that he’d passed up on it, it just simply would take too long.

He contemplated sneaking into your apartment in the night, using the cover of darkness to infiltrate your home, sneaking back into your room and planting it then, he’d even have the opportunity to watch you sleep, but there was always the risk of waking you up and while you hadn’t called the police the first time you’d discovered he’d been in your house that might become a different story if he did it in the dead of night, while you were actually home.

He’d been in your house, many, many times. Typically between your commute to work and your break for lunch when it was most unlikely for you to come home for anything, plus he always had the app to tell him if you doubled back for something, like last time. He’d hidden in your shower as he listened to you unlock the door, come back to your bedroom and grab whatever it was you’d forgotten.

He waited for you to turn off your street and continue on to your job before he came out, lying down and stretching out on the expanse of your sheets as he watched you make it to work safely. This became a routine for him, a guilty pleasure he found himself indulging in more and more often.

At first he resisted, he really tried not to but then he found himself on your block, and then in front of your place and then inside. Like clockwork it’d become a part of his routine, he’d wake up, monitor you through the app as you woke up. He’d text you good morning, always leaving you baffled on how he knew precisely when you were awake every single time without fail. You’d do your morning routine and leave for work, then he’d head over. He’d always catch sight of you turning off the street as he came up the other end, timing it just right so he could watch you turn the corner.

He’d been in all your drawers, raiding through your panties and thoroughly examining your vibrator. He’d been through your bathroom, looking through all your soaps, shampoos and creams. He’d been through your closet, looking at all your clothes and imagining you in all of them, like a little doll he was playing dress up with.

He was very careful to put things back just as they were, so his intrusion would continue to go unnoticed and he could continue his secret excursions into your home. He just wanted to know you as completely as he could, to be a better trainer to you, to know those things that maybe you’re too shy to tell him.

If that made him a bad person then so be it. He could live with that if it meant being able to perform above and beyond for you. It was these circumstances, these chain of events that led up to him seeing you walking through the gym with Jason that perhaps pushed things into motion, this extreme sense of closeness that made his emotions take the wheel and his anger blind his better judgment, a catalyst in this chemical equation that had blown things out of proportion.

He was particularly hard on you that day, trying to push you a little farther than you’d been performing and it had left you tired and sore. You had just finished the cardio portion of your session, coming off the treadmill and lacing your fingers together behind your head, trying to catch your breath.

Johnny took down your time and used the app to capture your vitals and stats while you recovered. “Did good lass, makin’ steady progress.” When he looked up from his phone you were rubbing soothing circles into your lower back with a pained grimace on your pretty face. “What’s wrong, hen?”

You shook your head and tried to downplay it but he wasn’t fooled so easily and he pestered you about it until you caved and told him. “I’m just a little sore is all.” He hovered around you, pulling on each arm and massaging each of your legs, insisting on a thorough check for any injuries.

You begrudgingly let him, but insisted you were fine and just needed a little rest, but his mind was already filling up with ideas. He could take you home, draw you a nice hot bath, of course he’d have to climb in with you and wash you, he wouldn’t want you to strain yourself, get you all nice and soaped up, really work those muscles of yours and give them some relief, then maybe you both could find a little release in each other.

He was drawn from his plans by an ear piercingly loud squeal from behind him. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention and dread seep deep into his bones. He knew that squeal. “Johnneeeeeee!!!” He turned in time to receive the full push of her ample breasts in his face as she jumped up and onto him, he caught her but only because she’d caught him off guard, he would have been more than happy to let her drop straight to the floor.

He pried her off in time to stop her lips from reaching his face, where they were headed for a peppering of excited kisses. The woman in his arms was an old client of his. She was well off, extremely bubbly and the epitome of annoying. She also happened to be madly in love with him and to top it all off she was the gym owner's daughter, which in turn made him unable to ever be rid of her so long as he worked here.

You stare at the scene before you, a bit bewildered and his eyes snap to yours, swimming with an emotion you can’t quite identify, it’s when the conversation starts you realize it was actually a mix of shock and panic.

“I’m back! Are you happy to see me? I missed you! Did you miss me?” A rapid series of questions she doesn’t even wait to hear a response for before she’s firing out another. He starts to speak when she speaks over him. “Who’s this?” And the look on her face is of a toddler who’s been given a present only to open the box and not like what he sees, unfiltered, completely crystal clear disgust.

He physically moves away from her to draw you closer, tucking you under his arm possessively. “This is mah new client.” You give her a warm smile and introduce yourself, though it’s clear she neither cares enough to remember it nor introduce herself.

She ignores you completely and looks back to Johnny. “I came because I’ve been cleared and we can start back our sessions.” He rocks back on his heels and his mouth twists into an unsure grimace. “The doctor was very clear Olivia, you need time to heal.”

She walked up to him and pokes a manicured finger into his toned chest, response dripping with confidence. “Actually mister, I got cleared for regular exercise yesterday, so long as we don’t play too hard.” She turns to you with a sly smile, like she’s going to impart some great secret that you were just dying to hear. “This one tends to get a little handsy with his teachings.” She winks and you just stare at her blankly as Johnny shifts foot to foot impatiently the whole time, clearly uncomfortable.

The first chance to get a word in edgewise he starts to speak. “Olivia, can I talk to you privately?” She beams with enthusiasm. “Already trying to get me alone, I see. Let’s go.” Johnny turns to you with serious eyes. “Dinnae go anywhere, I’ll be right back.” And then he’s gone, his shadow a fit blonde in a tight pink tracksuit.

You stand by yourself a moment before your feet begin to protest and you pick up your gym bag and find a little bench out of the way to sit down and rest.

You sat patiently for ten minutes, but ten turned into twenty and twenty turned into thirty and you felt yourself actually drifting off as you sat in the busy gym and waited for Johnny’s return. Your legs were tired and you still had to walk home. You were rubbing at your screaming calves when a shadow was cast over you.

You looked up to see a man, a very strong, handsome man standing over you. Where Johnny was uniquely attractive, defined features and jutting imperfections coming together to create an unconventionally attractive image this man was the opposite. You’d seen him a hundred times in every mildly attractive man you’d ever passed on the street.

He was handsome, yes. His perfect white teeth, tanned skin and trimmed hair said so and you started to wonder if maybe they all went to the same dentist and tanning salon as some kind of job requirement. But he was also easily forgettable, the kind of face that would make you blush in passing if your eyes locked but one that you couldn’t quite recall later on in memory.

He introduced himself as Jason and said he worked at the gym as a massage therapist. You do remember vaguely reading in the pamphlet that they had massage therapists on staff but you had just assumed that meant by appointment or something. You should have known better though because you’d originally assumed the personal trainers worked the same way and Johnny had certainly not made an appointment to train with you.

“I can see you’re a little sore, am I correct?” You gave him a polite smile and tried to give him the same run around you’d given Johnny but it seemed you just lost your knack for being a convincing liar somewhere along the way because he didn’t take your word on it either.

“I can help you out with that if you’d like.” And before you can even give a reply he’d reached out and grabbed your leg, lifting it and began pressing into the meat of your sore calves with his thumbs and it was like magic, you instantly melted into his grasp and he smiled as he hooked you and began to reel you in.

“Oh yeah, so much tension in these calves, no wonder you’re in pain.” And then he stopped and the magic was gone and you took a deep breath, holding in the urge to frown.

He gently set your leg down and sat down next to you, close enough for you to smell his spicy aftershave and feel the warmth of his minty breath as he spoke. “Let me take you back to the table. Five minutes that’s all I’m asking and you’ll feel good as new. I promise.” You think about it, you were supposed to wait for Johnny but he really was taking forever and you really were a bit sore. “Come on, it’ll be quick.”

So you get up and follow him, chasing the glorious sensations of his magic hands on your aching muscles. Johnny watches from across the gym, his hands have turned into fists and his brow is furrowed. He watches you follow after Jason and disappear into the massage rooms and he can feel his cool begin to slip.

You follow him to a set of rooms, he picks one, knocks once on the door and enters. Following him inside you see a scarcely furnished room. Two tables are the only furnishings to speak of. One, off to the side has towels, bottles of water and a radio covering the surface. The one in the middle of the room is padded and looks comfy.

He instructs you to undress and lie down on the table but you refuse, not quite comfortable enough with the situation as it is, you still feel in the pit of your stomach like you’re doing something wrong. He tells you that the clothes will mitigate the massage and just get in the way and then leaves, leaving no room for argument. You pull your sweats down your legs but opt to keep your panties on.

You lie down on the table and cover yourself with the towel he’d provided, grumbling at the minute size of it as it came to rest just below the swell of your ass. You lay there feeling uncomfortable in your own skin and wonder how long he’ll give you before he comes back but you don't have to wait very long.

You hear the click of the door open, a slight pause and then you hear it shut, by the sound of the footsteps on the carpet you knew someone had entered but they’d yet to announce themselves and it made you a bit uneasy. Jason had been chatty enough before but now he’d fallen silent.

There was a pregnant moment of silence and you were right on the verge of speaking up when you felt hands on you, warm, strong. They began at your calf, smooth firm passes that had you holding your breath. It really did feel just divine, you had no idea how much tension had built up, all that running and exercising had made your new muscles sore and taut. You sighed as they moved down your leg and eventually down to your feet.

You tried hard to keep quiet but the way he was rubbing your feet let little moans escape your lips, quiet timid sounds but sounds nonetheless. The silence was peaceful but held an uneasy quality you still couldn’t shake. The warm hands left your feet and you all but whined at the loss of contact. You felt them once more on your lower thighs, grabbing handfuls of your flesh and kneading them carefully.

They rose higher and higher to a point you thought increasingly inappropriate. You found yourself suddenly thinking about Johnny as crazy as that was, it didn't make it untrue. You felt like maybe you were crossing some kind of line, you weren’t together but you weren’t not together either. Did casual sex make you off limits to other people? It was a boundary you as of yet hadn’t discussed because honestly your whole relationship was mostly undiscussed. He’d picked you seemingly at random and decided you were his new client, no questions, exchanges or substitutions.

But it wasn’t like you were fucking Jason, he was just helping you with your sore muscles, he’s a massage therapist, it’s literally his job. You thought about what he’d said to you last. “Dinnae go anywhere, I’ll be right back.” But he’d taken so long and Jason seemed so nice, he really just wanted to help, he could tell you were uncomfortable.

The roaming hands ghosted over the swell of your ass and skirted right up against your panties. You began to rise from the table and say something when a familiar voice broke the silence and a hand pushed you back down onto the table with force. “What did I say, bonnie?”

“Johnny! I-“ You tried once more to rise from the table but a stubborn hand pushed you back down again. His voice came again, harsher this time, almost angry. “What did I say?” You felt a lump in your throat but swallowed it down, now seemed like the time for answers, not silence. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Aye, so ye can listen?” You lifted your head off the rest and turned it to the side, feeling a flush of shame under his heated gaze. “Johnny, wait I can explain.” You halfway hoped he’d cut you off and save you the trouble of trying to explain yourself but to your surprise he just waited to hear what you had to say.

He continued to massage you through your schpiel and it was making it hard to articulate what had happened in a way that didn’t make you sound in the wrong and pathetic all wrapped in one. You finished with Jason coaxing you into the massage room and sat unmoving but pliant under his working fingers. He hummed and seemed to consider your story for a moment and you felt it eating as your nerves in every second of silence he made you endure.

“We need tae have a talk, hen.” He flipped you over and pulled you down the table with a harsh yank and you made a surprised little yelp at the sudden movement. Now your ass was on the edge, legs dangling over the side as he slotted himself between your thighs. You stared up into his blue orbs silently, trying to read him but you couldn’t get a feel for anything other than an uneasy calmness that could potentially mean anything.

He sinks to his knees in front of you, and as his lips come level with your pussy you automatically shift to close your legs, you weren’t exactly comfortable with him nose and eye level with your sex at the moment, you didn’t feel fresh and clean after the strenuous workout he’d put you through. He tuts and slaps your thigh, it stings and you cry out as he pries them open again. “Can strip fer Jason but cannae keep yer legs open fer me.”

You gawk for a moment and start to speak but the look he gives you from between your legs demands silence. It is impossible for you to be any wetter, not a dry patch to speak of on the gusset of your cotton panties. It doesn’t help that he’s speaking directly to your soaked slit, the heat of his breath against it making gooseflesh erupt over your skin. “I leave the room fer twenty minutes and ye run off with the first man ye see.” You get a bit offended at this and try to protest which earns you another slap, this one right over your pussy, his fingers landing firmly on your clit, making you yelp and you finally decide it’s in your best interest to shut up for the moment.

“When ye became mah client ye became mine.” He reached up and settled a hand on your thigh, rubbing circles with his thumb into the soft skin, lovingly and gentle, a stark contrast from his previous slaps. “Every inch of ye is like my portfolio, the accumulation of my work and ye were gonna jus’ let him touch ye. Rub his greedy fuckin’ mits all over ye.”

You wanted to say something, express the discomfort that had plagued you, the guilt you’d felt following after him but then he leaned forward and licked up your clothed slit with the flat of his tongue and any sensible thought you may have had evaporated. He reached your clit and sucked hard, making your mouth drop open and a choked cry of his name fall from your lips, you cringe expecting more penance for the outcry but he seems to not mind your little outburst and only pulls away to keep talking.

“This body I’ve worked and toned and pushed is mine, I’m yer trainer and I’m the only one who gets tae touch ye.” You feel his hand leave your thigh and then the pads of his fingers find your clit and begin to rub it, slow firm circles that make your toes curl and his mouth latches over your hole, sucking your juices directly from the source through the fabric of your panties. Your hand finds purchase in the locks of his hair as you buck into the euphoria of his hot mouth.

The room is filled with moans, loudest of all his, vocal to the extreme as he frenches your slit with what can only be described as perfervid avarice. You feel your climax mounting and he must know because he slows down, granting you just the lightest touches over the top of your clit as he licks and sucks at pussy from over your panties like a ravenous dog.

You beg him for more, plead with him for that extra bit to push you over the edge, that last bit of friction you so desperately need but he seems not to even hear you, mumbling incoherently into your pussy while he ignores you completely.

But he must have heard you because he finally addresses you, his voice thick with lust. “So wet, lass. Is it fer me or was it fer him?” He pulled his mouth away from you and the absence of his touch was nothing short of agonizing, you could feel your release slipping from your grasp. “You Johnny! Please! I’m sorry! You were gone for so long with her and left me all by my-“

He pulled his fingers away from your clit, leaving you with nothing and you let out a frustrated huff as he looked up at you, his mouth glistening in the soft light of the room as his lips turned up in a smirk. “Lass, were you tryin’ tae make me jealous because you were jealous of Olivia?” Your brows furrowed in confusion. “What? No I-“

He stopped you with a hearty laugh and you scowled as you found your quickly fading release far from funny. “Why did ye nae just say that, hen? All this fuss jus’ cause ye thought ye’d have tae share me, aye?” You start to correct him but then his mouth falls over your clit and his fingers push as far into your pussy as the fabric will allow and you find you don’t give a fuck what he believes so long as he doesn’t stop.

He builds you back up in earnest, driving you steadily towards release and your moans are now a constant stream of sound flowing from your lips. His head is buried between your thighs as his fingers ravage your clit relentlessly. You’re right on the edge of your climax, so close to falling apart.

“Johnny! I’m close!” He pulls back, fingers slowing their maddening pace. “I need tae hear ye say it, hen. Tell me who ye belong tae.” He leans up and suckles gently at your clit, tongue sliding over it in lazy passes as you try to clear your fuzzy head. “You Johnny! I belong to you! Please! Please let me come!”

He hums into your soaked panties, pushing vibrations against your clit as his fingers probe as deep as the fabric will allow but it must not be enough for him because he peels them away from your body and pushes them to the side, groaning as he slowly pushes two thick fingers into your pussy, raking them in and out as his tongue snakes out and finds your bare clit, circling it with the tip of his tongue.

It’s all it takes to throw you into a hard orgasm, thighs clenching around his head as you ride out the bliss, hands white knuckling the table. He kept kneeled between your thighs, lapping up every drop of your arousal that leaked out and dragging you towards a second release. “Johnny stop! I can’t take it anymore!” You tried pushing his head away futilely, but he wouldn’t budge, drunk on you and determined to stay.

After a few more protests as he stuck his tongue all the way inside you before pulling out and lapping up the entirety of your poor abused slit he finally abated and pulled back, relenting. Your legs shook as he stood and helped you redress and you only got them to a wobble on the walk to the door.

He talked as you walked, all about the progress you’d made and the few refinements he had planned to make to your regimen but as you rounded the corner to the desk Olivia spotted the pair of you and ran up, interrupting him with a new barrage of questions and chatter. He answered her questions as simply as possible and kept trying to redirect the conversation back to you but she kept chiming in, clearly frustrated but not about to give up so easily.

You reached the desk and he turned away from her and addressed you directly. “Dinnae worry about yer homework, I know yer sore and I want ye rested and well fer our session tomorrow.” He leaned forward and whispered in your ear. “Dinnae worry about her either, I’m as much yours as ye are mine.” He bit your earlobe and tugged on it, earning a shiver from you and a scowl from Olivia.

He turned away from you and walked back towards a fuming Olivia. You came up to the kiosk and signed out when a brand new screen popped up where the “See you tomorrow!” screen normally prompted. It was a mini survey on your Baliquinox experience and a little notice at the end. Your two week free trial was up.

You awoke, not to the bray of your phone alarm that you’d carefully set before climbing into bed, but to the languid pass of Johnny’s tongue. Like gentle brush strokes they covered the canvas of your inner thighs, drawing ever upward towards the apex of your sex. It was a slow and gentle rise from the depths of slumber, much more pleasant than being violently torn from your deep sleep into the waking world like you’d grown begrudgingly accustomed to.

Your hands slid down from their warm beds and under the covers where they found soft purchase in the length of his Mohawk and skimmed down the shaved sides, fingers cutting through the buzz like snakes through grass. “Johnny.”

He spoke no words, communicating solely through different pitched hums against your skin that sent tingles up your spine, lighting your nerves and slowly setting them aflame. Now that he knew you were awake he tugged at the fabric of your panties on either side of your hips, pulling down one side before the other and marking each bit of freshly gained territory with a kiss like planting his flag to claim it as his.

You slowly open your eyes as he lifts your legs up and over his strong shoulders like tying a bib on before a particularly messy meal. “Johnny, I’ve got to go to work.” You say it even as you know the light letting in through the windows isn’t quite right, it’s much too dark to be eight thirty.

He doesn’t even bother acknowledging your poor excuses with a response. He’s built his breakfast, now he’ll eat and instead just leans forward and lets you feel the flat of his tongue as it slowly runs up your slit, from hole to clit and you can’t help the breathy moan that leaves you, the first of many you’ll sing to give rise to the sun.

He hums against your clit and your head falls back against the pillow, giving up and giving in. It must please him because he finally speaks, though it’s unclear if he’s addressing you or your pussy.

“Sweet little thing.” You don’t so much see as you feel him lean forward and wrap his lips around your clit, gently sucking as his fingers toy at your entrance, pushing just the pad of his finger in and feeling you clench around it, not quite succeeding at pulling it in.

Your hands push his head closer and you feel him smile against you as he takes your hint, one finger slipping in to just the knuckle as he laps up the juices that seep out around it. You moan his name, a slow soft plea that makes his cock twitch as it carries sweetly to his ears.

He works his finger in and out of you slowly, nothing about what he's doing is rushed or urgent, just content to ruin you as thoroughly as he can at his own pace. You arch a little, pushing yourself closer, chasing the sensation, but any movement in the opposite direction, like when he sucked hard on your clit and you tried to scoot back away from the intense sensation was futile. His arms held you steady, no budge, like some kind of giant living Chinese finger trap.

He pulled his finger out and pulled his tongue away from you long enough for you to catch your breath. You could hear him sucking on his finger under the sheets, followed by a moment of silence. He didn’t leave you waiting for long as you felt his tongue on your clit once again followed by an even greater stretch as he pushed two digits into you, drawing out your long high pitched moan with deep, dragging thrusts of his index and middle finger.

Your hands grasped and pulled at his Mohawk as his fingers hit your sweet spot and it only spurred him on as he worked to amplify all of your little noises until you were nearly shouting. He kept on like that, fine tuning his ministrations based on the intensity and pitch of your wails until with a final piercing cry you succumbed to the pleasure. You struggled in his grasp, shaking and pulling away from the last passes of his tongue as he cleaned you up and savored the taste.

You felt the grip of his hands on your hips cease before his head poked up out of the covers on top of you as he rose from the crook of your thighs, your first sight of him grinning and glistening in the pale morning light. He unceremoniously wiped the wetness from his chin and fell like a monolith onto the bed at your side.

He pulled you close, sweeping you into the nook by his side. Cuddled there warm and sated, the tempting embrace of sleep threatened to pull you under once more. His fingers carded through your hair gently and it was beyond you to fight it anymore. You fell willingly into the open arms of morning slumber. Fools gold in the way it draws you in, shining with promise but really only skin deep, its fragile surface easily marred at the faintest sound or shift of light.

Despite this, you awoke, seemingly much later, this time like you had initially expected to. You reached for your phone on the nightstand and rubbed your eyes as you silenced the alarm and checked the time. The room was bright but the bed beside you was cold. You suddenly realized you had no idea what his schedule looked like. His little early morning snack could have been his way of saying good morning and goodbye and you suddenly felt guilty you hadn’t spoken to him more, too lost in the haze to be considerate.

It wasn’t until you got out of bed and made your way towards the door that the smell became evident. You gently pulled the door just open enough to stick your head out and see him, his back was to you as he stood in front of the stove in his boxers and nothing else. You stood watching him as he flipped something in a pan, his shoulder blades flexing and shifting, the subtle movements in the back of his triceps ascended from spry flicks of his wrist.

You caught yourself ogling him and pulled back, gently shutting the door and grabbing your bag from its place just inside the closet. You stepped into the bathroom and began to strip, pulling off your nightclothes and turning on the stream. You stepped under and began to bathe as your mind drifted towards the day ahead, as much as you’d like to ruminate in the memories of the last twenty four hours you had a day of work ahead, the vacation was over.

But it soon became less about the work and more about seeing Nancy again. Of course she’d want to know what happened, probably had a story of her own to tell, at the very least you’d get a recount of the evening's events from her point of view. You wondered how helpful it’d be in figuring out who was behind your drugging and the theft of your ID, a long shot but maybe she saw something.

You were startled from your thoughts by Johnny’s voice beyond the shower. “Morning, lass. How’d ye sleep?” It never failed to surprise you just how quiet and sneaky he could be. “Ahh! Jesus Johnny, you scared me.”

He snickered and you saw him through the frosted glass pane of the shower door as he stepped fully into the room and up to it, the outline of him becoming clearer as he drew near til it was blurry but opaque.

“Didnae mean to scare ye, ah’m cookin’ breakfast but ye already ken, heard ye peek your head out tha’ door.”

Your eyes widen behind the glass. So he had heard you, you were almost certain you hadn’t made any noise, how attuned was he? You apologize, though you aren’t really sure why or for what.

“S’ok lass, ye were only curious. Though ah am a bit disappointed ye did nae come get me before ye jumped in fer a shower. Could’ave helped ye wash yer back.” You shiver at the implications, head suddenly filled with images of him and you naked, wet and entwined.

“Johnny-“

“Still could ye know. S’not too late tae make ye late fer work.”

Your hand drifts towards the door, you could. And you have half a mind to let him but then remember he’s cooking. “Johnny, but the food.”

When he speaks next his voice is thick and strained and it sounds like the last of his self control is the only thing standing between you and him, that and the thin, frosted pane of glass and you see his own hand drift towards it, ready to rid himself of the last physical blockade. “Donnae give ah fuck. Ah’ll let it burn, let tha’ whole place go up in flames just tae have ye again.”

Maybe it’s the candid quality of his words, complete honesty and lacking any kind of filter, he’d never been bashful before that’s for sure. But while you’d known him to say things just to rile you this felt different somehow, a genuineness that felt like he was itching for you to dare him but was completely prepared to make true on the promise. As crazy and irrational as the statement was, you believed him.

The words make an almost unbearable need puddle in your stomach and you have to actively seek the will to resist it. The only thing truly stopping you is the thought of facing a crew of burly firefighters in perhaps nothing more than a bath towel. You swallow thickly and then refuse him, promising to be out in a minute. He doesn’t say anything or move for a moment and you wonder if maybe he’s considering stepping in with you anyway. An executive decision you knew you’d find mighty hard to resist if made, you find yourself considering facing the firefighters stark naked if he’d be there beside you.

Before you can fully consider the possibilities he turns and leaves making you bite your lip and curse for cockblocking yourself. Frustrated and undeniably horny, the trancelike quality of the shower had dissipated and so you quickly washed off and stepped out. Toweling yourself dry before dressing up for work and going to meet him for breakfast.

When you entered the kitchen you were momentarily glad you’d turned down his offer as the smell of breakfast wafted to your nose but when he’d come back into the kitchen out of the tucked aside pantry and his hungry eyes met yours, you realized your little escapade this morning had been all you focused and you knew he had more on his mind than food.

You made a mental note to make it up to him later and sat down at the place he’d set for you. He sat across from you, grinning and gorgeous with his elbows propped up all improper on the counter. As you both dove into your meal he asked you about work and what you had planned for the day.

You told him while you probably weren’t swamped, you still no doubt had some catching up to do and you’d wanted to make some time, maybe have lunch again, with Nancy to talk to her about what had happened. He visibly paused at Nancy’s mention and it made you look up curiously. He looked, just for a brief second, deeply troubled. But then as soon as it’d dawned it disappeared like it never had been and he changed the subject to his work.

Going into detail about what he had planned at the gym. As you cleared your plate something he said made your ears prick up. “And I’ve got a new regimen in mind fer our next session. Ah’m gonna start havin’ ye do laps ‘round the pool at the gym, work on yer cardio in a different way an’ work some of those muscles ye jus’ cannae get tae any other way. Ye can swim, can’t ye lass?”

You set your fork down and looked across the counter at him. “Johnny, I can’t do that.”

He looked up from his plate for a moment, a smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth. “Ye cannae swim?”

You shook your head and furrowed your brows. “What? No. Yes, I can swim. I meant I can’t go back to the gym.. I can’t afford it.” You had to drop his gaze on the last sentence, so he really must’ve been asleep last night when you fessed up. You had expected nothing but maybe awkward silence to fill the space behind the confession, but he just laughed instead, making you regain eye contact as you looked up at him, curiously.

“Let me worry about that hen, I’ve got-“ You immediately cut him off. “No, Johnny. You’ve done enough, I can’t possibly ask you to do that on top of everything else.”

“Donnae worry, lass. I’ve already got it all sorted. Jus’ let Johnny handle it.” You gave him a wary look but he traded it with one firm and set, there was to be no more argument over the subject so you dropped it.

You both finish breakfast and you get up to start on dishes even though he protests, you insist upon contributing in some way and he heads into the bedroom to get dressed while you work. When he comes out he’s wearing black athletic shorts and a tight, form fitting blue tee. He looks good, real good and you curse yourself for the second time for not taking him up on his shower offer.

“Ready to go?” A good question but one that was rhetorical, it didn’t really matter, you had to go to work so you nodded and smiled as he ushered you towards the door. The ride to your office was short and sweet and when you pulled on the handle to let yourself out you found it locked. You turned towards Johnny to ask him to unlock it only to be pulled into a slow, soft kiss. It was gentle and un-urgent but melting in its intensity, he pulled away reluctantly and you realized you didn’t really want to get out of the truck, could have been just as content to let him pull away from the curb and call in sick two days in a row.

Instead you waited for him to unlock your door before stepping out onto the sidewalk and heading into the building. He waited for you to get into the elevator before pulling away and you wondered just how your life had managed to change so drastically in the last two days, hell the whole year had gone totally tits up in regards to the woman you’d been when you stepped out of the building following what should have been an ordinary Christmas party. It was like you’d slipped into someone else’s shoes, they were more like the shoes of a married woman instead of the chronically single one you’d been.

The elevator doors slid open and you walked casually to your cubicle as you always had, there were no raised heads, no hushed murmurs from your co-workers, Nancy wasn’t even at your desk like you had assumed she would be, but why would she have been? It’s not like this was the first time you’d called in sick after a disastrous night out. So you sat down and got to work and when lunch rolled around it was you who approached her and invited her out for a bite to eat.

It wasn’t until you’d been seated and your orders taken that you spilled the shorthand version of the events of the last twenty four hours to her, her eyes widening in response as your tale grew and grew in length and absurdity. When you were finished she gave her two cents.

“Oh my god. I am so sorry.” An apology hadn’t been what you were expecting and when she put her hands to her face and looked like the waterworks might start at any moment you reached a hand out to her and began to backpedal.

“Nancy, no. It’s ok. It’s not your fault!” But she was already shaking her head. “Of course it was! If I’d have been paying more attention, if I’d have been right there with you instead of preoccupied all night this never would have happened. I’m the one who convinced you to go out in the first place. Oh god, I feel so awful!”

“Nancy, please. Really, it's ok. You never could have known, and nothing bad happened to me. I’m fine, see?” You smiled at her to make your point as she wiped her eyes with her napkin. “So he found you outside? Thank god he just happened to be there, did he see anyone? Any shady guys around you?”

You shook your head no. “And they stole your wallet? Oh my god, what are you gonna do?”

“Well for the time being I’m staying with Johnny. I guess I’ll have to move out of my place, I don’t wanna have to constantly look over my shoulder all the time. I still have a half a year before the lease is up and in the meantime I’ll start looking for somewhere else to stay. I don’t know how I’m gonna afford it, but I’ll figure something out.”

Nancy reached across the table top and squeezed your hand. “I am so sorry.” You assured her it was alright and tried to lighten the mood by regaling her with your tale of yesterday, how the two of you had spent the day together and how nice it was, how courteous and attentive Johnny had been and the more you gushed the better you began to feel about the whole ordeal.

Nancy had cheered up by the end of the tale and you found yourself looking back over it fondly, even a bit in disbelief as you both regarded how lucky you had been that he’d turned up when he had. But with it all out you still had some questions. “Nancy, I need you to try and remember what happened last night. I can’t and I need to know if you saw anything out of the ordinary. Did I talk to anybody? Dance with anybody? I can’t remember a thing.”

She thought it over a minute but ultimately shook her head. She explained that you’d arrived, had a few shots together that she’d ordered, gone out on the floor to dance and then that’s where you’d met the twins. The mention of the twins rang a bell but nothing definitive came to the surface. She’d explained they’d come up to the pair of you on the dance floor and came onto both of you, you hadn’t been interested but she was rather taken by Ian, even exchanging numbers before she’d left the club that night. Then she went on to explain that it couldn’t possibly have been either of them as they’d been with her the whole rest of the night and your twin had been glued to some redhead he’d met by the bar.

You still couldn’t remember any of it but she offered to text Ian and see if he or Andrew remembered anything that could help. You declined, you doubted they’d seen anything anyway, especially if you’d turned down your twins advances like she said you had and moved onto another girl. It was probably a hopeless situation you’d never find the answers for. Your lunch break was over and you both headed back to the office to finish the day's work.

You spent the rest of it kind of doddling around at your desk, starting reports but leaving them half finished and thinking about your situation. Your watch pinged and you looked down to see a text from Johnny saying he’d be there to pick you up in five and realized the day was over. With a sigh of relief you began to shut your computer down for the evening and cleaning up your desk. You stepped out of the elevator minutes later and saw Johnny’s truck parked on the curb. He got out and opened the passenger door for you again, stopping you before you could climb in to wrap you up in his arms in a crushing bear hug, the strength of which there was no escape until he finally relented and released his hold, catching curious glances from some of your coworkers to your embarrassment.

You shuffled into the passenger seat and waited for him to climb in and pull away from the building before breathing out a sigh of relief. “How was yer day, bonnie?” You set your purse down at your feet.

“Un-productive. Both work and situation wise. He looked interested but not surprised. “Yeah? I’m sorry, hen. Nancy didnae see anythin’ then?”

You stared out the window and missed the long curious gaze he threw your way before averting his eyes back to the road, after a minute you spoke. “I don’t know what to do, Johnny. I don’t think I’ll ever truly know what happened to me that night and I don’t think I’ll ever know who did it. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

His hand settled on your thigh and you turned away from the window to meet his gaze. “Dinnae worry, lass. I’ll keep ye safe, I swear it. Ye can stay with me as long as ye’d like, ye’ll never ever have tae go home again, I’ve already got it alllll figured out hen.”

And the way he says it, the total confidence in his voice has alarm bells ringing in the back of your brain. “Johnny, what are you talking about?”

“S’already taken care of. I’ve hired a few movers tae pack her stuff and bring it over tae my place tomorrow afternoon. Ye’ll never have tae set foot in yer apartment ever again.” Your eyes widen, he’d arranged to have all your stuff moved to his place? Without talking to you about it? At all?

“Johnny, what the fuck?!” He doesn’t even look the least bit stunned. “S’fine, lass. I ken ye couldnae jus’ leave all yer belongings behind, Ye’ll be all settled in in no time an’ there’s plenty of space fer ye tae put yer stuff where ever ye’d like. We’ll make a whole day of it, jus’ you an’ me. Donnae be fashed, hen. Johnny’s got it all taken care of. Ye wouldnae want tae let this guy see ye movin yer stuff out, he’d jus’ follow ye tae mah place and ken yer livin’ there an’ then he could follow us tae yer work an’ get ya while I’m nae there tae stop him. S’better this way.”

Before you can register any of it fully he’s pulling the truck off the road and coming to a stop. You look out the window and realize you’re not back at his place, you’re currently parked in front of the gym.

“Johnny, what are we doing?” He pulls your gym bag out of the backseat and sets it down on your lap. “I told ye I’d find a way tae get yer subscription reinstated an’ ah did. Come on.” For once he doesn’t open the door for you and you step out, gym bag in hand and follow him into the building. It looks the same, the lobby still packed with people coming and going. He has you go up to the kiosk to sign in while he walks further into the building for something.

You can hardly believe you’re back here, signing in and getting ready to work out again, you thought when you left that it’d be the last time. You type your info into the tablet but no matches come up. You double check the spelling of your name but it’s all there correctly, you figure they must have deleted your profile when your trial ran out and you’d have to make a new one. You were about to start the process when Johnny came back. “What are ye doin’ hen?”

“My names not in the system, they must’ve deleted my profile, I’m just gonna make a new one.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Lemme see tha’.” You hand him the little stylus and he checks back over your work before tapping a few buttons and typing something in. You lean over to see what he’s done.

“What’d you do?” He just flashes you a sly smile and explains. “Had tae change yer name tae get ye reinstated. Yer good tae go now, lass. Jus’ remember yer under this name when ye sign in from now on.”

You take a peek at the screen as it flashes the words you’ve seen a couple dozen times before, only this time slightly different.

“Thank you for signing in! We hope you have a very productive workout Mrs. MacTavish!”