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He came through your door slowly and quietly — heavy combat boots, worn with its black leather torn in most parts, imitating the agility and control of his limbs with which he sneaked inside. An excellent hunter and an even better shot. You did not need to look up from the page you’d been reading, the hardcover held tightly against your knees, to sense every inch of his presence rearrange the air of your living room as he found you exactly where he expected to. He had been there enough times for you to have it memorized in a messy corner of your mind — how gracefully he moved through your furniture, knew exactly where you kept your favorite mugs, and could trace every inch of dust where it collected from neglect if he were blind. You paid extra attention to the small details painting a vivid picture out of your memories, because it had kept you from losing whatever was left of your mind when his absence struck you during the dead of the night, as it often did the past few weeks. If you hadn’t been keeping track of how many days it had been since the argument that left you cold and alone, it would have felt like yesterday. But it had been weeks, twenty-one days to be exact, that you had spent wasting off your remaining youth by drinking and burying your face so deeply into your pillow you could almost delude yourself into thinking it was his chest. That is, if you weren’t busy closing your eyes shut during work and reminiscing his towering over you next to your coffee table, your kitchen sink, your bathtub, and countless other places that were just as dull as your life happened to be without him. It was all colourless.
That’s what you saw now, without looking up: colour creeping its way into your rug and up your walls and inside invisible particles that had resurrected with the life leaving his lungs every second. You knew he didn’t feel the same. He hadn’t missed you, not nearly as much as you missed him — finding it unbearable to get away from the bedsheets you had drawn up your head in the mornings. He hadn’t thought of you as much as you had him. That was okay. It didn’t kill you. If merely for the possibility of a sudden image of you creeping its way into his conscious thoughts and urging him to suddenly check up on your flat across his, you wouldn’t mind if he forgot about you for a while. No matter how much the silence hurt, you didn’t want him to be as hurt by it as you were, with the ghost of what comfort and joy you had given from yourself so he could have it, replaced by the lies he uncovered with your betrayal of his trust. You hadn’t even given him a proper argument to feel deserving of his mourning of what you had taken for granted — merely told him things he already knew, unable to bring yourself to cling onto him with empty promises and apologies. It would not be fair to him, and how careful he had been with you. How honest and gentle.
You messed it all up with him.
As he turned the doorknob and slipped past your walls into the quiet living room, you wondered if that was it. He had suddenly remembered you and wondered if you were still there, at the same place he had left you twenty-one days ago. But he must have known you would be there the moment he revisited the hallway he hadn’t returned to once before, where time was frozen and neither cobwebs nor clocks could break the spell that he had put around the place that was once his home. But he had never called it that. Yes, he lived across the hall once, but he had never meant it as a steady anchor in his life, merely a functional cave before he would move on to somewhere that would be more suitable and discreet. You were an anomaly, even now, when you refused every day to leave despite it having no meaning without him. After all, hadn’t you thought the same about your residence there? Did it not only become your home once Frank had occupied every space inside it until you were certain he would always return to your couch or bed at nights? You were an unseen curve deviating from the lines of plans he had drawn for where he would go the next few months, what he would do — who he would kill. Just as he had been for you.
If you were such an anomaly, maybe he didn’t expect to see you there again. Everything about him proved he had. You listened closely, chest tightening the moment you realised that yes, it was him, and though you had anticipated it to be him to come through the door for weeks on end, it never was. It wasn’t anyone, ever. But here he came in and you noticed the same three seconds he took between his steps, with equal measure of his weight against his heels that your ears picked up as loudly as you heard cars revving below your windows. It was the only proof of life anywhere near you — he had been, and you weren’t able to shake off the emptiness it had left behind, even as you took it out on whomever you saw when you spent your nights outside. You saw the irony. The Punisher, like jumping out of a still life painting, made every object real to you again.
And he hadn’t even taken five steps through the door or uttered a word yet.
The white page in front of you became so blurred that it seemed to you wiped of all the printed ink. You wouldn’t have even noticed if you had been holding the book upside down, merely keeping on with your listening and sweating through your palms. He had something to say to you. Yes, that was it. You knew him well enough to be sure that there could be no spontaneous visits nor casual check-ups after the fight you had. He hadn’t even said anything to end it, whatever there was between you two, but he didn’t need to. You knew it as factually as anything when you had watched him turn his back on you, leaving without a single glimpse back, after which endless disappointments followed when finding him nowhere near you when you needed him. And you always needed him.
It was pathetic, the way he left you dependent and sorry for yourself. Maybe if he had been the one to lie to your face all these months, it would be easier. Maybe if he had been the one to be caught soaked up to his elbows with hypocrisy, leading you to end things, you wouldn’t have felt that the only thing left for you to fill this void with was the helplessness that clawed your neck and scarred you without a way to fix anything.
You were about to start begging to him, sitting while propped against your pillows like a disfigured statue, to say whatever he came to say that would end with him turning his back on you once again, when he spoke — voice naturally gruff and low.
“The door,” he said, and through the corner of your eyes you saw his absentminded gesture at the doorknob. “Thought I told you to lock that.”
Tongue twisted and throat dry, you didn’t give yourself enough time to muster up what would have been an appropriate response, whatever that looked like, given the situation, and instead replied, “About fifteen thousand times.” Needless to say, your knowledge of the English language couldn’t defy the few drinks you had knocked down and the current swirling of your head that flew pixies around your vision. They disappeared when you looked up to see him at arm’s length to the open door, shifting his weight onto one leg and setting a careful gaze over you. He hadn’t changed one bit. You could even count the times he wore the exact same outfit when he was with you — black jacket, gray sweatshirt, black cargo pants, and a stubble around his chin.
The cuts over his face, however, were new.
“Good. We can rule out amnesia.”
What followed his chipper remark was the observation of your place, fixating for a few seconds on the coffee cup on the kitchen table —which you had set for him, as you always did before and would continue to do— and the matching one placed over the desk near you, cold and half-empty. His eyes lingered a beat longer on the empty vodka bottle rolled under the same desk, some of it, unbeknownst to him, sitting at the bottom of your cup. Your muscles grew too stiff and heavy for you to even attempt hiding that as you caught a glimpse of the door, still unnervingly hanging open behind him, while he looked back at you with a questioning raise of his brow. It was only for a second, but you recognised the inquisitiveness that took place in his expression. Some part of you felt satisfied at being able to read it, like he was still visible to you. Readable, only because you took pride in being able to see what he never tried to hide with you.
Well, that was all over now.
He swayed back to close the door just as you rose from your seat to throw away the book that you were holding like some lifeboat. You needed to postpone the drowning for a little while.
You thought of offering him a cup of coffee, one better than the one that’s been sitting in your kitchen for an hour, but the thought of him shutting your offer down nearly made you freeze. Whatever you could think to say at the moment, all of it choked you with the possibility of him rejecting you and deciding he should never have come back. You had to keep him there, somehow. Even if he stood exactly as he was, never once closing the gap between you or saying anything else.
“Boy, if you’re mad at me about the door, you’ll be real pissed to see what I’ve done to my heater.”
His face instantly screwed into disdain and confusion, and you could finally breathe. A small part of you enjoyed watching the questions arise in his head the moment you said the words, a dreading curiosity clearly taking hold of his tongue.
“What on earth did you do?”
You rejected the smile threatening to appear on your lips. He hadn’t come here for a quick chat, and you wouldn’t risk his disapproval at finding it turn into one. Even though the door remained closed and trapped him a good few feet within your proximity, he could still change his mind and not stay if he saw the possibility of you wanting him to.
You shrugged, feet dangling off the couch, with hands restlessly settling on your lap.
“Broke it a little.”
A non-surprised huff left his lips as he looked around again, eyes quickly turning back into yours. They didn’t look tired, or they did, you couldn’t tell from where you stood — either way, they were complemented by bruises that were not unusual yet nonetheless concerned you.
“That why the place so goddamn cold?”
You bit your bottom lip to hold in the snarky comment you wanted to throw back at him, fingers digging into the sleeves of your cardigan as your racing heartbeat replaced your lingering headache.
“Hell’s Kitchen isn’t exactly summer-warm this season.”
As if his body language was telling you to cut the shit, Frank tilted his head, a furrow misplacing the confusion in between his brows. He tried to look stern, yet all you could think about was how annoying it was that he was so far away from your reach, and that he should get closer immediately if he really wanted to scold you.
“Nowhere is without a working heater,” he said, pausing for a second long enough to let your mind spiral — if he would finally say what he came to say, if he would abandon you so quickly, if he were wondering how to hurt you twice this time, if he had been working out while he was away. You could sure see its proof under the thin material stretched over his abs. “How’d you break it?”
You hesitated, though the longer you took a moment to decide if you should let him know the real answer or not, the more he grew curious, and the slimmer the chances of your brushing this topic under the rug became.
“I kicked it.”
He blinked once. Twice, disbelievingly.
“You kicked…”
“The heater. I kicked it. It brought down with it a pair of heels, in case you were wondering.”
His sharp features eased into relaxation with what you thought was a slight amusement behind his eyes. Whatever it was, you couldn’t read it with the way your stomach started churning, rebelling against its emptiness and the poison you’d been feeding it.
“Huh.” His voice turned rougher, like containing whatever wanted to spill out of his throat. “'S long as it’s not a pair of ankles that’s brought down with it.”
“Haven’t broken anything,” you said quickly, swallowing the lump in your throat. You couldn’t even feel the cold anymore. “Not a bruise to show for my beating inanimate objects. You, on the other hand…”
You knew instantly that was the wrong thing to say. The corners of his lips deflated like a reaction closer to recoil than surprise, eyes trailing down to his boots. You tugged at your sleeves, wanting to scratch yourself for being stupid and thoughtless with your words after the weeks of preparation for the slight chance of his return, while at the same time, you wanted to throw your cup at his head. What did he expect, coming back battered and unannounced — that you’d just normalise it as he had done a long time ago?
Now, your curiosity took the place of his in the space that hung between you and him, its effect seen in the scrunching of your nose and narrowing of your eyes as you refused to blink in case you missed a tiny movement of his muscles. What was he expecting? For now, all he seemed to be doing was watching you, noticing patterns that you had been leaving in every corner since he left. Perhaps tracing a portrait of you, unlovely in comparison to how you looked when you were together, which could show how miserable you were really feeling. Abruptly, it became embarrassing to just keep sitting there, like he could view the past few weeks through your posture on that couch you had indented with your weight.
“Somethin’ came up,” he said, fingers easing into the pockets of his pants. You stared at his boots as he insisted on doing, the hoarse sound of his exhausted voice growing louder with what sounded like an insincere tug at the corner of his lips. “Earlier tonight. The kind you'd love to pretend to know nothing about before you got ahead of me with it.”
You exhaled slowly, trying to control the tremor of your breathing. Surely, this amount of pain from the pounding of your heart against your chest couldn't be healthy. You wondered if you'd faint. You never had in front of him, but just another remark lacking whatever emotion you knew he wasn't feeling, and it would do the trick and snap something off in your head.
“What happened?”
He gave you a low tsk, expecting the question. He knew what you were thinking before you even said it — unlike you, he hadn't lost the ability to read you in an utterly unfiltered way. But he had given up on it. There was no trace of any need in him that longed for what you would do next, what you would say to him, how you would trail your fingers over his face this time. What gave it away was the lack of care in his voice — the callousness with which he chose his words and hadn't thought about them for a single moment before he came in here.
“You can read all about it tomorrow. Would probably jump at the chance to get your hands over the thing ‘fore your coworkers can write it all down.”
He looked at you for a reaction. You didn't give him one. Hands clinging to the edges of the couch, you kept your stare at his boots until you imagined a dark, deep void in front of you, daring to swallow you whole. Maybe there was something mean in the comment about your job at The Bulletin. Maybe there was no malicious intent behind his voice at all — he simply meant it as a heedless comment you gave while doing small talk with someone you once knew very, very well. But the context behind the blunt arrangement of his words was ridden with flashbacks into the past — to a time you could picture almost instinctually. To when you would settle on his lap as he read through your articles carefully, trigger finger settled on the hook of your waist and drawing patterns as you bit your tongue to resist giving little comments to where his eyes were going over the lines you’d written. He would be attentive and humming lowly to himself, throwing the newspaper back on the table once he was ready to give you his honest opinion. Usually, they consisted of catching the dangerous remarks you had written between the lines to secretly mock the numerous task forces, vigilantes, drug dealers, the police, and heads of state who ran the city without a care to endanger innocent civilians. You thought it made him proud, even though his pride often came with warnings he would have no end of, masking his true enjoyment of your work.
To when he would find what little excuse he could to keep you with him a little longer before you had to go to work in the morning: watching the panic in your face as you struggled to find the ground coffee he hid from you, and left only the decaf pack; rearranging your shelves of CDs and vinyls until they were a mess you couldn’t wait to sort through, and letting his hands slowly run through every inch of your body as you read their titles again and again.
“I’ll make sure to tell you the headline before it goes to print,” you said. And that was all it took for his hardened shell to glitch and lower its guard for a moment of hesitation — he hadn’t expected the nostalgic remark you gave with a smile.
To when you became more than just neighbours once you let him know you knew exactly who he was and could give him the sole enjoyment of his week when you dropped in to tell him the headlines of tomorrow’s newspapers. You’d go the long mile when the article was written about him and would tease him even more profusely if you had been the one to write it, until he caved in and asked you to tell him everything about what he would be reading later. What followed was a domestic routine of some sort — at least the normal amount that could be struck between two strangers seemingly so unrelated by the lives they led. Each time you saw his bruises, he would let you treat them, and you would return his momentary submission with a kind word or two in what you would paint him as in The Bulletin. To anyone unprofessional, the traces of familiarity and warmth in between your words were veiled and impartial. Frank knew better when you gave him the relevant titles. Eventually, you started complaining of the smallest work-related issues he couldn’t care less about, but it would make you smile — the way he’d get even more worked up than you were at someone plagiarising your work or crediting your own research as theirs.
You closed your eyes, temples throbbing with a sharp pain that twisted into your head. It was too much to remember all of it, dawning on your shoulders as suddenly as the washing away of the alcohol in your bloodstream. You didn’t want to look at him to see if he remembered it, too. It was one thing to be haunted by what could never be yours again, and another thing to be haunted by what stood right in front of you. He called out to you, but you couldn’t open your eyes, gritting your teeth so the dull ache would replace the one spreading down your face and onto your back like boiling water. It only got louder like a warning when you felt his boots move closer to you against the crimson rug under your feet, your hands twitching like magnets against the possibility of being able to reach out to his. You didn’t, but he did, brushing against the edge of your chin.
“Look at me.”
You refused to. Head jerking back, you opened your eyes, fixating on anything else but his scorching gaze before jumping to your feet at the proximity. He had stridden across the gap between you in mere three steps, standing so close that you would only have to lean an inch to feel his breath on yours. Your lip trembled, pupils blown wide, before your gaze found the red staining the side of his sweatshirt underneath his jacket. Frowning, you blinked rapidly until your vision focused, observing the undercurrent of blood on him.
“Are you hurt?”
You found his eyes that gave no notice of your words, and for the sharp questioning of your intense glare, he only grunted an acknowledgement.
“No.”
You didn’t believe him for a second.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Someone else’s blood,” he said with an effortless eye roll, which you guessed was another lie so easily slipping out of his lips that it practically begged for your fingers to grasp at his sweatshirt to roll it over. But he stopped you — fingers carefully grazing over the back of your hand before gently restraining your wrists so you couldn’t get a hold of him. “Stop that.”
You couldn’t obey, but you couldn’t move, either. Where his voice could have easily failed him in exercising any power over your movements, his touch hadn’t. Even the slight but firm grip he gave your arms made you shudder when he squeezed your wrists for a beat — so light you could almost miss it if it weren’t for your senses on edge. He saw it. You didn’t have to look at his expression to know he saw it, and how weak it must have made you seem. Before your body could fall apart right in front of him, you slipped away from his grasp, stepping aside until you no longer inhaled the air that left him but fell into the void awaiting you instead. The need to do something, anything, with your hands arose, and you took the opportunity to grab the empty vodka bottle under your desk and clear it away with your coffee mug.
“Whatever you’re here to say,” you said as you made your way over to the kitchen, hurrying but still restrained in case you’d easily trip over your own weight. “Just say it.”
Throwing the bottle in the trash, you grabbed his mug too, the one you put out every night in a hopeless attempt to reanimate your routine with him, and poured the coffee inside it down the sink. What a waste. All your days lately were just a waste you’d insist on reliving.
“Why are you here?” you asked when there was nothing else to be rid of as far as you could pay attention, hands settling against the kitchen table that you watched him over. You were grateful to stand against something, finally having a solid piece to hold yourself steady. In contrast, he looked lost in the middle of your living room as he turned to you, like he had floated in and couldn’t find anything to tie him back to earth. You didn’t mind how he looked at you anymore, with that calculating yet soft expression over his wandering eyes. At least he looked at you, still.
“I know you’ve been going out,” he said calmly, shaking his head at your windows. “Out there in the streets every night.”
You shrugged.
“So what?”
You saw the immediate delay in his reaction, a refrain that made his fingertips twitch and turned his head further in your direction.
“So what?” he echoed back, eyes narrowed in raging disbelief. “I didn’t leave you so you could get yourself killed.”
You huffed, smiling to repress your irritation as you turned away. The question of what he left you for, then, crossed your mind, but you resisted the temptation, if not for the defensive boldness that came over you with his interrogation, then for the sliver of care he showed in his demeanour. The care for you that you’d love to blindly believe in — the care that had made him come back to you. But you knew better.
“Look, I stopped tracking you,” you said, carving into your wooden table until it broke your nail, and you were pulling further away into the kitchen like you could disappear there. “Stopped tracking where you were going, who you were dealing with… Like you wanted.”
His brows furrowed, appearing in that thick line you used to trace with your fingers to make disappear and replace with a soft smile of his features. Now that frown looked glued on and permanent, directed at you with intimidation that had become a part of his personality for facing most people.
“That's not what I wanted,” he said, explaining himself like you weren’t the only one he was arguing with. You didn't know what there was to be so shocked about. Of course, you'd carry on like you always had; only with him out of the picture, there was only more room to invite further recklessness from your end. “You think that's what I gave a shit about? You tracking me, that's where I drew the line?”
You swallowed, cutting the roughness edging up your throat. Maybe you really were catching a cold. He took a step closer, and you had to dig your foot firmly into the ground to stop from recoiling. You hated that he was trying to reach close enough to pull down the veil you had put up as a shield — to see you, to plead with you to understand where he was coming from. And then what? He'd help you? Leave?
“Either way, I’m done. I’m not interrogating your targets or anybody else. I’m not looking for a fucked up story I can’t put together the pieces of anyway.”
He leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, and palms gripping his biceps. He still wasn’t strict enough to project any of his rage on you, merely vexed at your attitude and confused by the behaviour that left even you dumbfounded at times.
“No. You’re only going out there to find someone to kick your ass to near death until the devil of Hell’s Kitchen restrains you somewhere.”
Your eyes snapped back at his, shoulders disarmed with the information he just casually threw at you. He enjoyed that, watching your surprise take over like he really couldn’t be expected to be so well-informed by the abandoned intimacy discarded somewhere in the distance he had kept between you.
“How do you know that?”
He shrugged like it didn’t matter, but you caught the self-restraint in his posture as he glanced away with a façade of boredom.
“He told me.”
You huffed, lowering your voice while fidgeting with the broken nail on your finger.
“You in cahoots with Red now? Great.”
He frowned, darkness sharpening his features again, with his gaze so piercing that you found it unbearable until you put your head down.
“Don’t blame him. Without him, I wouldn’t have known the type of shit you’ve been getting yourself involved in.”
“Which is?” you asked, head tilting defyingly now that his never-ending imitation of care without a point of destination started to tire you.
“Which is fucking everything. You ever think that, one of these nights, you’ll tempt the wrong people to come after you? The wrong guy shutting up your incessant nagging, and Red won’t be there to save you?”
“You go after the wrong type of people.”
“I don’t want you to become like me,” he snapped, throwing a bullet right in the middle of the coldness he’d tried to maintain in his tone. You knew it had become dangerous once he got quieter, and the fierceness of his voice tripled. And it’s exactly when you doubled down like a quitter, hiding from his open invitation into an argument by way of sarcasm and the lack of care you had for yourself.
“Good thing I’m not following after your mess anymore.”
He looked at you, jaw clenched and stare frozen as the light of your kitchen lamp shone through his pupils.
“Bullshitter,” he grunted.
The instant he turned on his heels and was out of the way of your kitchen, your heart sank in desperation that almost blinded you. Your fingers trembled, your feet swaying against the unstable ground, until they followed him as if tied to his back with an invisible string. It dawned on you that if you didn’t stop him now, there would be no chance later. He would never step foot through your threshold again. And this was worse than any argument you could have counteracted with — it was him giving up on you.
You reached out to claw at his wrist as he walked to your door, but he was quick to snap his hands away from your reach. You couldn’t even grasp onto his jacket with how quickly and deliberately he moved away from you, gluing you to your spot as your chest started to heave.
“Frank.”
He stopped. Your voice had cracked, but you couldn’t find any effort in you to be embarrassed, especially not when the trembling of your lips and the aching knot in your throat followed the unnerving panic. But he had stopped, facing the door, still, with his back remaining stiff and unsure. You wondered if he was debating it in his head to turn or leave like he had decided — as you had made him decide a moment ago and now regretted it so much that you couldn’t breathe or pretend not being able to cling to his body and plead for him to stay was not killing you. How could someone be so close and so unreachable at the same time?
He turned to face you. After one scan over your face with eyes that you couldn’t see from your senseless hysteria, he was strolling over to you, closing the gap in two steps, and wrapping his arms around you. You exhaled loudly against his denim jacket, closing your eyes and sending away the built-up tears as your hands found his arms to grip onto until it became painful. You let go completely — a release much needed for your shoulders that welcomed the relief instead of the pent-up tension you were used to. He held your entire weight steady and secure as you buried your face against his shoulder.
Warmth. He was warm — burning up, and it lit a fire inside you too, your hands travelling under his jacket to hold onto his waist. The effort you insisted on to keep your tears buried nearly choked you when you found yourself obsessively laying down apologies for him to pick up.
“I’m sorry,” you said, voice muffled. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
His arms, big enough to carry your weight twice and across his shoulders, held you a little tighter.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know,” he said quietly, the two words carrying all the vulnerability he was capable of bringing up to surface while you struggled to break down in his embrace. “I know you are.”
He knew? When did he know? You hadn’t apologised, and God knows you should have. He had enough reason to hold it over you. But somehow he knew, and you tried not to say it again so it wouldn’t turn into a burden hanging down his back. He had had his fair share of those, too. And here you were, resting all your troubles on him, and he was picking up the slack without a single complaint despite all your promises to yourself that you’d never, ever do that. All you ever wanted to do was to be there. Not to help him, or to burden him. Just there with him.
Once the silence discomforted you when you made sure you weren’t going to cry with one look at him, you pulled away slowly, keeping your palms where they softly held onto him. You must have looked more terrible than you thought, hair sticking to your lips with darkness under your eyes, because you saw the immediate softness flashing through his expression when he gazed down at you. A flush of embarrassment painted your cheeks as you looked at the bruises around his face, taking the opportunity to inspect them closer. They weren’t too bad, and given the early time on the clock, he probably hadn’t been in too much trouble tonight.
Still, you wished you were there with him. But that would mean keeping up with your lies.
“Hey,” he said softly, tracing your cheek and freeing the strand of hair across your face. “You okay?”
You nodded, knowing it wasn’t the least bit convincing.
“You’re gonna have to answer that with a yes, sweetheart.”
You couldn’t help the soft smile stretching your lips as you looked up at him, the knot in your throat easing away.
“You growing out your hair?”
He grew almost comically shy in an instant, giving you a tiny smile to match yours as he looked away. You could still feel his hands firm on your back, prepared to catch you any second if you were to break again — you almost wanted to, just so he could. It wasn’t fair of him to look like that if he didn’t want you to fall back into his arms, like the man with whom you fell in love without being able to foresee it.
“Just hadn’t the time for it.”
You gave a low hum, observing the hair that he had let defy his trademarked buzzcut by growing further down his ears. You had to bite your tongue to stop yourself from telling him how you liked it.
Then there came that urge again — that repeated nerve-wracking thud at the back of your head that reminded you to apologise again, over and over if you had to. Your breath shuddered, wiping away the smile from his features as your hands came up his arms and rested on his biceps, gentle enough to let him know he didn’t have to hold you any longer if he didn’t want to. You wouldn’t hold it over him if he didn’t.
It wasn’t what he came for.
“I’ll stop,” you said quietly, shifting your focus away from the concern that struck his eyes. “I’ll stay away from trouble. I’ll stick to being the regular old journalist, I promise. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Your name came out unguarded from his lips like a plea.
“Hey, I can keep a promise. Just… as long as you ask for it. Come back and tell me off. Just keep wanting something from me — anything.”
He sounded gentle, like he didn’t take any joy in the rejection you had been expecting from him. The expectation didn’t make it hurt any less.
“This is all I want.”
You smiled to yourself, watching your hands on his arms barely cover the muscles under layers of his winter clothes.
“I can do without it if you never forgive me, but not...”
You stopped yourself, realising you were on the brink of pleading with him to stay. Neither of you wanted that. Had he agreed, you wouldn’t know what to do with it — to mend his heart that had been broken from the moment he laid it in your palms, with the certainty that you couldn’t hold onto it forever. He was a ticking bomb from the start, and one that you had unintentionally set off earlier than he meant you to.
His thumb carefully ran over your cheek, and you didn’t hesitate to lean against his touch, letting go of your endless expectations and needy justifications, only to watch him as he stood before you freely for as long as you could. As long as he’d let you — whatever he offered in the name of admiration he once showed you, you’d take it.
“Come on,” he said quietly, lowering his hand to meet yours. Your palm readily accepted his as he gave you a squeeze, eyes locked into yours. You gave him a small nod, watching the edge of his face disappear into the darkness of your hall as he led you to your bedroom.
Each step he took along your walls was deliberate; familiar, with his grip on you firm enough that it kept you from remembering just how many times you had taken a stroll to your bedroom and sometimes didn’t even make it that far. You watched your hands fit into each other perfectly, his palm covering yours large enough that it kept each fingertip warm against the frozen air of your apartment. He must have noticed it. Right after turning on the night lamp inside your bedroom, which had been his instant destination after you followed him inside, he pulled one of your drawers with his free hand. He found your wool pyjamas with ease, tucking your folded clothes back into place once he had taken them out, and closing the door shut. It was the little details he remembered that made you smile, like how he knew which drawer to find your nightwear in, or how the night lamp was always plugged in. You had no control over your face as he turned to you, watching him like the scene unfolding was an enchanting play that couldn’t possibly be happening to you; a mere spectacle that you wished would go on forever. Then he gave your hand another squeeze before letting go, and you would protest, if it weren’t for the immediate touch around your shoulders that grounded you, finally, back into your own body rather than the past and the continuous anxiety that followed your overthinking.
It took you longer than it should have to register what he intended to do. The light from your night table accentuated his jawline, the attentiveness of his face grabbing your focus. He pushed you gently on the mattress, and you refused to blink while your body seemed to obey on its own will. Compared to the swiftness of his muscles as he kneeled in front of you and pulled out a pair of winter socks from your last drawer, he was fairly slow when taking your ankles and drawing out your leg against his lap. More than simply gentle, his whole behaviour was like he had been acting on muscle memory alone, taking care of you as though he willingly made it his duty, to which he paid the utmost respect.
Even with all the blue bruises, seemingly painting his cheeks darker with every passing second, you found the beauty of his undivided attention simply breathtaking. It left you hollow, wondering when you had ever gotten used to it before things turned so upside down.
Once he replaced your daily socks —the ones he could tell belonged to which pair of heels you owned with a single glance— with the warmer ones, it was time to change into the set that made you look like a sheep when you wore it. Even that would barely be enough until you got your heater fixed, which happened to be the least of your concerns at the moment, as he slipped his hands past your thighs and stopped within an inch of your shorts. Without a trace of doubt as he looked up at you, you gave him a nod, raising your hips for his hands to quickly slide your shorts past your legs and leave you with the slightest grazing of his knuckles against your cold skin. The room had already disappeared into the blurred background, him devotedly dressing you being the sole thing your vision could focus on without faltering. You were on your feet when he slid your pyjama bottoms past your hips, hand softly gripping his shoulder to hold onto by instinct. You needed to, since you almost fell on top of him when you felt his breath weaken against the thin material covering your stomach.
His eyes traced yours as he rose from the ground, hands sliding down your shoulders and removing your polyester cardigan. You almost helped him by raising your arms, but he simply pulled the wool sweater over you without touching the tank top you were wearing. Drawing blood from the inside of your cheek, you tried to shrug off the slight disappointment washing over you along the soft material sticking to your skin.
“Sit down,” he said with deliberate care, though it still came out as a demanding groan from his lips.
You pulled the covers, obeying. In a moment, you were up against your knees on the mattress, looking at him with expectation; your hands kept neatly on your lap. He seemed too resistant to move. So were you, if all he wanted to do was tuck you in.
“Get in with me.”
You thought you could see a smile tug at his lips, but that’s where his amusement ended, his gaze drifting away to anywhere but you.
“You know I can’t.”
You weren’t about to give up so easily, not when he handed you this one opening that could be your last. Rising on your knees, you reached out for his jacket, tugging at the end of his denim.
“It’s the quickest way to get me to shut up, you know,” you said, burying your needy heart under the readied sarcasm of your tongue as you pulled him closer — only an inch to your bed. “I’ll stop nagging your head off. Won’t even be such a nuisance to you anymore. Just get in.”
He hummed under his breath, watching your hands play with the ends of his jacket the way you were used to playing with your food.
“That a fact?”
You bit your bottom lip to cut short the smile that lit up your entire face, nodding as you hung over the edge of the mattress. He neither agreed nor objected, remaining silent as he let you take off his jacket as slowly as you could, like one wrong move from your end would make him pull away. But he kept his proximity, and here was your turn to tug at his clothes, albeit more impatiently as you threw his jacket on the floor and he pulled his sweatshirt over his head before you had the chance. He was far bolder than he had been with you, discarding it to where his jacket lay forgotten and staring down at you like he wanted to ask you why you hadn’t been doing this all along — why you hadn’t let him know how desperately you wanted him closer. But his hands grasped yours and stopped you from reaching for his belt, covering the slight tremor of your fingers.
The quick panic with which you looked up at him had his jaw clenched and his head tilting until he dropped his forehead against yours, softening his touch around your wrists and leaving them to rest at your sides. You weren’t even aware how loud your breathing had gotten until it left your lips and warmed his. He nodded his chin to your bed; your gaze transparently fixated on his mouth, and tracing its curve as he ran his tongue over his lips.
“Go on.”
You did as he asked. Properly, this time. He pulled away to make it easier for you, letting go of your wrists as you got inside your bedsheets and shifted closer to the edge to make room for him — God knew your bed was never big enough to fit in the two of you, and it seemed always to make him fonder of it.
Despite standing half-naked next to your nightstand, he still looked unsure of whether to stay or to leave, pondering over this turn of events in his mind to track how deviated it had become from his initial stand of seeing you. You tried to make it easier a little, shifting on your mattress and turning your back on him with your legs tucked under your chest, and hands perched below your neck. You heard him take off his belt only when you settled comfortably. Closing your eyes, you decided to count how many fresh scars on his chest you had caught a glimpse of just a moment ago, when your eyes fell down his lips and trailed to his stomach. Not even one was new enough to cause alarm, as far as you could see, and he was telling the truth before; it was somebody else’s blood that had stained the side of his torso.
Then he dropped beside you, and your eyelids snapped open. He took his time growing comfortable underneath the sheets he drew over himself, thigh grazing the back of yours, until, finally, his body pressed into yours and his arm came shooting across your chest. The same warmth spread all over you — burning hot and numbing your senses until all you focused on was the pleasing relaxation of your limbs against his. He found your hand, intertwining your fingers against his chest. You were sure he could feel your heartbeat, loud and unyieldingly pounding. He almost shook with suppressed laughter at the sigh he drew out of you as he stroked your knuckles.
You held onto his arm tighter than anything you ever held onto in your life as confirmation that you dearly, very much so, had missed him in your bed.
He was resting completely still near you, besides the occasional brushing of the back of your hand that made the hairs on your arm stand, when you heard his soft groan.
“You have to let this thing go,” he said, shifting his head and pressing his lips on the top of your head — there was no defence you had left, then. He kissed your temple like it was his second nature to do so every now and then, and there was no shielding or mocking or any way to get yourself out of how this hurt so good, or at least nothing left for you to throw at him in the paradoxical hopes that he would see right through it. “You have to let us go.”
You were too tired and too comfortably warm to react to that immediately, but it lingered in the small space between his gaze and yours that you fixated on your hands, drawing out his fingers and comparing their size to yours before drawing patterns around his knuckles.
“I know.”
You wished it were louder so your voice could have gotten lost among the motorcycles and car crashes that were a weekly occurrence in your neighbourhood. But no matter how quietly the confession came out, he would hear it, and he would always hear you, with only his refusal to listen being able to tear you apart. There was no other force that you would let stand between you and him, though you were sure he hardly believed in it anymore.
Closing your eyes when you couldn’t resist the drowsiness anymore, the last thing you felt as you drifted into sleep was his chest steadily rising against your back and his chin coming down to rest on your shoulder.