Archive of Our Own

Andrew:

The handcuffs rattled against a shelf as Roland moaned. “Fuck, Andrew I-’’ Andrew pulled off with a dissatisfied look, snapping the string of saliva that still connected his lips to Roland with a flick of his finger. “I said don’t speak.’’ He didn’t wait for the man's response before lowering his head again, mouth open and cheeks hollowed.

It didn’t last long, but he didn’t expect it to. Andrew had long since learned just how much pressure to apply going down, and what spots to curl his tongue against to make Roland fall apart. He leaned back and swallowed when Roland came with a whimper, and gave himself a few seconds to breathe before standing up and detaching the handcuffs from a rusted pipe.

Roland bit his lip as he looked at Andrew before speaking. “Do you want me to-’’

“No.’’

He nodded, understanding, and flashed Andrew a handsome smirk after pulling his pants up. “I- thanks. If you change your mind tonight, you know where to find me. I’d love to return the favour.’’ He raked his eyes up Andrew’s black jeans and partially unbuttoned shirt, stopping at the hair he was trying to flatten. “You sure you’re good?’’ Andrew’s lack of response was answer enough, and after a beat the man left with a fleeting smile over his shoulder.

In the now empty room Andrew debated dealing with himself, but seeing his jeans were tight but still manageable he sighed and pulled out his cigarettes instead. The corridor breeze immediately ruined the hair he’d just flattened when he stepped out. Goosebumps rose along his arms. Andrew glanced toward the back door, then changed his mind and headed upstairs to Eden’s third-floor smoking section instead. He’d been there a few times whilst working as a bartender over the summer but not since, though he followed the corridors with ease.

He already had a cigarette lit as he pushed a big oak door, going to step in when a shout reached his ears. “Please, please I didn’t do it sir I swear plea-’’

The word made him grit his teeth and scratched at his memory like bloody nails, throwing him off balance even before a hand grabbed his arm and threw him into the room.

Andrew landed steady, one hand already resting on the knife strapped to his arm. He took in the room and forced his expression flat. It was lined with 5 beefy men clad in pristine black suits, guns holstered at their hips or poking out the front of their pants. The one that had yanked him into the room rested a hand on his gun, the other forearm blocking the door from further intrusion. Andrew tried to keep his attention on the threat against him. Instead, his gaze drifted to the center of the room.

Light reflected off dark orange hair, messy but also artfully tumbling down the forehead of a man whose presence commanded the whole room. Straight off the bat, Andrew disliked how easy the man was to look at. His jaw clenched, sharp enough to cut glass, causing the scars across his pale skin to shift and shadow. He was dressed in a slightly unbuttoned white dress shirt, which did nothing to hide the muscles of his arms as he reached into his sleeve. Andrew let his eyes linger on the black vest that cinched the man's hips in, and the black dress trousers it met for a brief second before looking up at his face.

The look he turned on Andrew was almost serene but Andrew still saw the madness in his eyes. They were the fiercest, coldest blue that could freeze someone in place. Andrew forced himself to act unbothered, finally realising the room wasn’t as quiet as it had seemed in his mind whilst he stared at the man. Because there was someone crumpled on his knees before them still pleading for his life.

“I will give it all back, please, I wasn’t thinking I-’’ The man on the floor shook, and Andrew swallowed a flicker of surprise at seeing the bald tattooed man quiver before someone that looked half his age.

“You weren’t thinking?’’ His voice was almost a whisper, but it carried easily through the room. Andrew watched the blue-eyed man smile- if it could even be called that. The expression spread slowly across his mouth without ever reaching his eyes. Too many teeth. No warmth.

Andrew had seen dogs bare their teeth like that before a bite.

The man on the floor started crying. Not loud, just wet, broken sounds that sounded like they were trying to be stifled but came out stronger for it. The man’s shoulders shook as he rocked on the floor, holding his hands clasped together. “Please, Nathaniel. It was an accident, you know I would never-’’

So that was his name.

Andrew watched as Nathaniel gently cocked his head to the side, watching the man beg and shake at his feet with an assessing gaze. “You would never?’’ He continued where baldy had cut off. “It was an accident?’’ He asked, bending down slightly towards the man on the floor. He let his silence finish for him as the man only sobbed louder.

Tense silence blanketed the room as everyone watched Nathaniel stay wordlessly crouched before the man, neither speaking for a number of seconds. It was when the beginnings of another sick smile started to spread across Nathaniel’s face that prompted him to finally rise, eyebrows barely noticeably furrowed as he swiped a hand across it.

Andrew glanced around the room from his spot at the wall but no one shifted or breathed, the guards looking unconcerned as if this happened everyday.

“I-I will never go there again.’’ The man seemingly found his voice again, albeit shaky, and Andrew felt it was the threat of having Nathaniel standing over him again that increased his desperation. “I will pay you. However much she cost I will pay you, I-I- can fix it I promise. Please Nathaniel, I have I wife and I-’’

Nathaniel held a hand out to his side, arm outstretched. “Gun.’’

“No! No! Please, Nathaniel- youknow I am loyal. It wasanaccident, b-boss, I swear. You know the type, you-’’ The man had raised to his knees now, speaking so quickly his words blurred, pleading for his life with arms raised and tears streaming. Andrew felt his own confusion rise at the jumbled words, but he didn’t let it show on his face.

A nearby guard stepped closer, placing a gun in Nathaniel’s waiting fingers, handle first. Andrew watched the wrongness of the hold as those scarred fingers closed around it, flipping it once in the air for a better grip with surprising swiftness before pointing it at the man before him. Andrew felt his shoulders tense in preparation despite trying to force them still, an unusual lump in his throat. Not at the life of the man with a gun to his head, no, Andrew couldn’t care less about him, but at the barely indecipherable shake in Nathaniel’s hand as he held it, the rigidness in the posture of someone who had seemed unmoved by violence.

One of the guards shifted near the door. “Boss-”

Nathaniel clicked off the safety without looking at him.

The room quietened. The man on the floor seemed to realize something then, because the begging stopped. His breathing sped up instead, sharp and panicked.

“Nathaniel,” the guard near Andrew tried again, quieter this time. “There’s someone-” Nathaniel ignored him. He stepped closer to the kneeling man.

“Tell me her name, and you are forgiven.’’ Andrew hated his rush of surprise when Nathaniel spoke; colder and firmer than his body looked.

The victim's eyes widened. “I-I- well, it was- you mean the prostitute?’’ He sounded shocked. When met with silence he started nodding frantically, crawling closer to Nathaniel’s boots. “Yes, yes, I-.’’ He stopped, swallowed. Andrew knew from the second his tears resurfaced that the man would not walk out of the room alive.

“I-it was the first time, boss, I can’t remember. P-please, I didn’t-’’ He spluttered to a stop as Nathaniel cut him off with a long sigh, lowering the gun to his side. He glanced down, weighing it in his palm with an assessing look, sighing again. “Her name was Jasmine.’’ He didn’t look up as he said it, keeping his gaze fixed on the weapon in his hand. The words were soft and gentle, worse than if he’d yelled them. “She was 17, but you didn’t care. You didn’t care when you raped her, or when you slit her throat afterwards. You didn’t care, but oh- until you did, when you got caught.’’

Silence gathered and held, so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Andrew tried and failed to unclench his fists or his jaw, feeling sick all of a sudden, feeling angry at how quickly his body could go from being in a cold room about to witness an execution to being a cold room, pinned to a mattress and screaming.

“I- I did, I-’’ Andrew had barely heard the man’s words through the sudden static in his ears before he registered movement. Nathaniel had fully lowered the gun to his side.

Instead, his other hand moved. Fast.

Andrew only caught a flash of metal as Nathaniel flicked his wrist.

The knife buried itself in the center of the kneeling man’s forehead with a wet, dull sound, and for half a second the man remained upright, eyes wide in surprise. Suspended in movement, his lips half open on his last words.

Then he collapsed, dead before he hit the floor.

No one spoke or moved for a few seconds, processing, watching as a corpse laid where a man had just been.

Andrew exhaled slowly under his breath, forcing the action to release some tension from his arms. He was glad. If Nathaniel hadn’t done it, Andrew knew with a bone-deep certainty that it would’ve been his hand holding the knife.

Some guards shifted from foot to foot, low murmurs filling the room seconds where silence had been.

Nathaniel exhaled and turned. The movement was unhurried but the gun reappeared, except this time it was pointed directly at Andrews head.

“You.” He said.

Andrew fought the pull at the side of his mouth but raised his eyebrows. His fingers twitched for the abandoned cigarette that had been knocked to the floor on his arrival as he forced them to cock and point to himself. “Me?’’

Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed, unimpressed. “A gun pointed at your head, a dead man on the floor, and you joke?’’

Andrew dropped his hand to his side. Forced his shoulders up in an imitation of a shrug. “I just wanted a smoke.’’ He stilled, remembering. The meds would’ve made him laugh at the rhyme.

Nathaniel looked him over, noting the half burned cig on the floor and lowered the gun a few inches. Not a lot, just so it wasn’t pointing directly between Andrew’s eyes anymore. “Clean it up.” He said, still looking at the ground, and Andrew watched three guards walk to the body with calm precision, splitting up to pick up arms and legs, the last grasping hold of the knife, with efficiency that indicated they’d done this before. When he glanced back at Nathaniel, blue eyes were already on him.

“You don’t seem affected. Why?’’ He sounded curious. Andrew considered his words carefully, picking out what would reveal the least and said, “He hurt someone.’’

Nathaniel waited.

Andrew looked back at him, expression blank.

“You dealt with it.”

The corner of Nathaniel’s mouth twitched faintly.

“You make it sound very simple.”

“It is.”

“It’s not.’’ Nathaniel shook his head gently. “Who are we to decide who lives and who dies?’’ He almost sounded pained. “It can’t be simple.’’

Andrew shrugged, pulling a crumpled box out of his jeans and procuring a new cigarette. “Is to me. You probably shouldn’t be killing people if you don’t like the aftermath.’’ He gestured to the body being dragged across the room with a quiet screech. The guards in the room seemed to still at the comment and Andrew flicked a glance up while he fumbled in his pocket for his lighter, Nathaniel had gone stock still

“You speak with an awful amount of confidence for a man in your situation.” Nathaniel finally said. A guard stepped up to return his knife, handle up and wiped. Nathaniel took it with a familiarity he hadn’t had with the gun, passing said weapon back in exchange for the blade. “Almost as if you have little care for your own life.’’

Andrew lit the cigarette and slowly inhaled.

“Yep.”

“And you’re not worried about the consequences.”

Andrew exhaled smoke between them. “If you were going to kill me, you would have done it already.”

Nathaniel watched him, eyes flicking across his face and to the cigarette in his mouth. He turned his recovered knife once in his fingers, briefly glancing down to study the clean metal edge.

Then, just as suddenly as the earlier throw, the knife moved again.

Andrew didn’t flinch.

The blade buried itself in the wooden door beside Andrew’s head with a sharp crack. A few of the guards tensed, shoulders pulled back and hands straying to their guns. Andrew turned his head slightly and examined the knife now embedded in the oak barely two inches from his temple. The handle wobbled at a small flick of his finger. He looked back at Nathaniel.

“You missed.”

Nathaniel’s eyes sharpened. “Did I?”

Andrew shrugged, exhaling more smoke. He kept eye contact as he reached his free hand up beside his head and yanked the knife out, bicep flexing. He allowed himself one glance at the gleaming metal and intricate hilt, flipping the perfectly weighted knife in his hand once, twice, before forcing himself to give it back, handle first, to Nathaniel.

Nathaniel accepted the offer and tilted his head slightly, knife held loosely at his side. “Still confident.” He said it slowly, as if considering.

Andrew gestured vaguely toward the guards.

“You’ve got five witnesses already.”

“Employees.”

Andrew shrugged again. “People talk.”

He felt a brief flash of surprise as Nathaniel scoffed a short laugh, a smile gracing his face, there and gone, quick as lightning. The guards had more varied reactions of shock, the three not dealing with the body glancing at each other before eyeing Nathaniel.

There was a loud sound of crinkling plastic and Andrew watched the two remaining guards roll the dead man onto a tarp-like plastic sheet, muttering and cursing. Turning back to Nathaniel, he forced his features to stay impassive against the shock that his attention was still fixed on Andrew. Like he’d found something unexpected and hadn’t decided what to do with it yet.

“You work here,” Nathaniel said.

It wasn’t really a question.

He had at some point, so Andrew nodded once. “Bar.”

Nathaniel’s eyes flicked briefly to Andrew’s clothes, cataloguing them the same way Andrew had catalogued the room earlier.

Black jeans, thankfully flat. Black shirt, unbuttoned. Hair, tangled. Armbands.

Not a staff uniform.

“Not tonight.” Nathaniel said, gaze stuck on Andrews arms.

Andrew followed Nathaniel’s gaze and shrugged slightly, crossing them over his chest and pinching his finished cigarette between two fingertips.

“Night off.” The lie wasn’t a lie in more ways than one.

Nathaniel hummed under his breath, like that answer filed neatly into place somewhere in his mind. His eyes dropped to Andrews fingers, which he hadn’t realised were deftly rolling the put out cigarette from thumb to pinkie. “Are you any good?’’

Andrew didn’t deem the open question worthy of a response, the corner of his lips ticking upward as he imagined what Nathaniel could’ve unknowingly asked. Are you any good? Better than you could possibly imagine, Andrew wanted to say, if Roland’s choked moans had anything to say for it.

“At bartending.’’ Nathaniel specified after a prolonged pause.

“Yes.’’ Was the unwavering response. Nathaniel’s lips upturned at Andrew’s confidence. “I didn’t take you for arrogant.”

“I thought we’d established that I’m honest.’’

Nathaniel’s smile spread. “Yet you claim to work here and I’ve never seen you before. Funny, isn’t it? I thought I kept track of who I employ.’’

Andrew shrugged. “Lots of employees. Busy club.’’ Nathaniel’s smile turned into a sneer. “Don’t take me for an idiot.’’ He took a step closer to Andrew, but it was careful, not made to threaten. “Tell me the truth, or is your supposed honesty also a lie?’’

Andrew grit his teeth, eyes narrowed at the man. “Bartended here for two years, quit 14 months ago. College shit. But I might even come back, who knows?’’ He raised his eyebrows, cocking a finger at Nathaniel. “Especially since the new management is so accommodating.’’

Nathaniel gestured to the body in the corner of the room. “You see too much to go back to bartending.”

“And you kill too many people to be hiring.”

Silence settled for a few beats before Nathaniel scoffed, and drummed his fingers against his leg, other hand absentmindedly spinning the knife. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

Andrew didn’t answer.

“You aren’t frightened of me,” Nathaniel continued. “You speak without thought or care, but I can’t decide if it makes you useful or dangerous.”

Andrew looked toward the ceiling, searching for the will to continue this new conversation. “Should I be?”

“Yes.”

The answer came too fast to be arrogant. It sounded tired instead. Andrew felt the need to study him properly then.

The expensive clothes. Polished shoes. Specks of blood spattered lightly across one shirtsleeve. The rigid set of his shoulders. The tension coiled beneath pale skin tight enough to snap. And his hands. Andrew had noticed already, but the thought came into focus as he took in everything he’d seen.

Fingers steady with knives.

But shaking with guns.

Andrew tilted his head slightly.

“You hate them.” He didn’t feel any trepidation saying the words. He knew.

The room stilled.

Nathaniel’s expression didn’t change, but every guard in the room visibly straightened, leaning away from their posts at the walls.

“Hate what?” Nathaniel asked softly.

Andrew nodded once toward the gun a man had placed on a table opposite them. “That.”

For a second nobody moved.

Then Nathaniel smiled again, slow and sharp and wrong. The smile of children's nightmares, looking inhuman stretched across his skin. But this time Andrew saw the crack beneath it, and knew he’d hit home.

“What,” Nathaniel asked carefully, “makes you think that?”

Andrew shrugged. “You held it like it was alive. Your hands were shaking from the moment you took it.’’

A muscle jumped in Nathaniel’s jaw.

One of the guards stepped forward, hand down his pants on his own gun. “Boss, maybe we should-”

“Leave.” The command landed like shattered glass, but the men hesitated. Nathaniel looked at none of them when he repeated, quieter this time, “Out.”

The room emptied quickly after that.

Plastic dragged across wood as they pulled the body with them, boots smacking against the floor in uneven rhythms as they filed out. The last took Nathaniel’s gun off the table with him, and the confidence that Nathaniel wouldn’t use it felt meaningful in some way. The heavy door shut behind the last man with a solid click that left the room almost eerily quiet.

By being one of the only two left in the room Andrew felt a bit of tension ease from his shoulders, grateful to not be prepared against six threats but one. Though seeing the detachment in Nathaniel’s eyes he knew his chances of survival had not increased by much.

“You usually willing to clear a room for someone?” Andrew found himself saying. “Or is this a special occasion?’’

Nathaniel finally stepped away as if all of a sudden he hated the proximity, and walked towards the far wall. “No.’’

Andrew raised an eyebrow.

Nathaniel looked over his shoulder to catch Andrew’s gaze. From afar, his eyes looked almost colourless under the dim lighting. “But you noticed something nobody else would.” He turned around. “To me, that makes you a bigger threat.”

Andrew hummed softly.

“And yet,” Nathaniel continued, gaze flicking briefly to the knife Andrew had handed him earlier, “you still handed the blade back.”

Andrew gave him a look. “You threw it badly.”

Nathaniel laughed. It sounded real, the short sound brightening his face for a few seconds. It was the last thing Andrew expected, and even Nathaniel looked caught off guard by it.

Andrew hated the strange twist low in his stomach as he forced himself to look away. He pulled out his cigarettes instead. He saw Nathaniel approaching out of his peripheral, steps slow but assured, until a hand entered his space, palm up. Sighing, Andrew passed him the pack but he only shook one out with practiced ease and threw the box back at Andrew’s chest.

“You can go.’’

The words cut through the room like a whip both with the cold tone they were said in and with the absurdity of the statement. Andrew blinked once, twice, watching Nathaniel walk over to the smoking windows lining the opposite wall and perch on the table his gun had laid.

Andrew didn’t move immediately, watching Nathaniel’s shoulders tense.

He noticed. “You’re still here.”

Andrew shrugged.

“I was coming up here to smoke.”

Nathaniel assessed Andrew, body rigid and eyebrows furrowed. He looked at the cigarette between his own fingers, twisting it in rings, before glancing towards the windows lining his back.

For a moment he seemed to consider something. Then he gestured lazily toward a chair near the window.

“Stay.”

Andrew raised an eyebrow.

Nathaniel’s smile returned, thin and dangerous. “I want to see if you’re always this entertaining.”

The endearment made Andrew narrow his eyes but he moved forward, lighting his cigarette with one hand and sliding a window open with the other. He tossed the lighter in Nathaniel’s general direction, choosing to lean against his opened window rather than sit down at a height disadvantage.

He took a drag of his cigarette and let the smoke curl slowly out of his mouth. The cool air slipping through the narrow opening of the window brushed against his face as he leaned one shoulder against the frame, watching the reflection of the room in the glass: Nathaniel leaning at his side fiddling with the lighter, a dark stain on the wooden flooring towards his right, the big oak door he entered through and another small chair at the far wall.

Andrew catalogued everything quickly, more out of habit than fear. Exits. Distance. Weapons. Hands.

He didn’t realise he was being watched until Nathaniel spoke up. “You’re studying the room,” The words were quiet.

Andrew flicked ash out the window with a shrug. “I’m bored.”

Nathaniel’s mouth curved slightly at the obvious lie. “No,” he said. “You’re not.”

For a few moments neither of them spoke again. The quiet hum of music from the lower floors seeped faintly through the ceiling, bass vibrating softly beneath Andrew’s feet. He recognised the song as some metallic techno, the type that would usually have him taking his shift break. Nicky loved it. Somewhere downstairs someone laughed loudly, unaware that a man had just died two floors above them.

Nathaniel finally moved.

The sound of his shoes crossing the floor was quiet but deliberate, each step measured. He stopped a few feet from Andrew, close enough now that Andrew could see the tiny freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose and the thin scars cutting pale lines through the skin of his cheek moved when his jaw flexed.

Up close, his eyes looked even colder. “You watched a man die.” The words were frustrated. “I cannot wrap my head around how you do not care. You’re standing beside me and smoking like a fucking chimney, unbothered about the fact I still have a murder weapon in my hand.’’

Andrew saw that it was Nathaniel Wesninski who stood only a few feet away now, knife still loosely balanced in his hand whilst the other dropped his barely touched cigarette to the ground to grind out. The blade caught the light when he shifted his wrist, thin flashes of silver cutting through the dim glow of the room. The casual way he held it was more unsettling than the killing throw had been- someone who could drive a knife through a man’s skull with no second thought didn’t need to grip a weapon tightly.

Andrew inhaled slowly from his cigarette and let the smoke leave his mouth in a thin stream that drifted sideways through the open window. “You keep saying that.” He was growing tired of the same questions on rewind.

The answer earned him a faint shift in Nathaniel’s posture. It wasn’t anger exactly, but the smallest tightening of something behind his eyes suggested Andrew’s indifference irritated him more than fear would have.

“Most people,” Nathaniel said slowly, “don’t stand in a room where a corpse has been and not feel anything.” His mouth was downturned, eyes filled with some misplaced emotion as he stared Anrew down.

Andrew flicked his cigarette again, scattering ash into the night air. Silence dropped back into place.

Nathaniel studied Andrew another few seconds, gaze drifting briefly over his posture, the careless way he leaned against the window frame, his armbands. There was nothing friendly about the look, he was measuring something, deciding.

“You’re very comfortable,” he said at last.

Andrew shrugged one shoulder slightly.

“Maybe I do not fear monsters that are not of my own creation.”

When Nathaniel went quiet Andrew ran his tongue over his teeth, suddenly not bothered to take care with his words.

“Or maybe,’’ Andrew smiled and he knew it was cruel, “it's difficult to be frightened of someone who looks more sickened by himself than I am.’’

The reaction was immediate.

Nathaniel moved fast enough that Andrew barely registered the shift before a hand caught the front of his shirt and slammed him hard against the wall beside the window. The glass rattled sharply from the impact and the cigarette slipped from Andrew’s fingers and dropped somewhere near his boot, scattering sparks across the polished floor. Nathaniel’s forearm pressed harshly across his chest, pinning him there with solid force while his knife came up in the same motion, its edge hovering just beneath Andrew’s jaw.

“Do not,” Nathaniel said softly, “assume you understand me.”

Andrew felt the pressure of an arm across his chest and the threat of the blade at his throat, felt his body caged against a wall. Anger flared instantly, sharp and familiar. Being grabbed without warning, pinned in place without movement, sent a flash of heat through him that had nothing to do with fear. His hands curled tightly against his sides as he forced himself to swallow.

“Get your hands off me,” Andrew said, his voice low and remarkably even but edged with something far less controlled than before.

Nathaniel’s eyes flickered at the tone, lips parting. Most men begged when they found themselves in this position, but Andrew was furious. Nathaniel didn’t move. “You walked into a private room,” he said quietly. “You watched me execute a man. Again you decide to antagonise me?”

Andrew’s jaw tightened. “You keep talking like you're dangerous,” He snarled, his voice still sharp with barely restrained violence. “But all I’ve seen is a man looking for excuses.”

Nathaniel leaned slightly closer, the knife pressing against the soft skin beneath Andrew’s jaw hard enough to make a point.

“That can change.”

Andrew did not twitch. What he did do was glare at the arm still pressing him into the wall. “You’re still touching me,” he said flatly, the anger now unmistakable. “Fix that.”

The words seemed to catch Nathaniel off guard, repeated for the second time. For a brief moment the cold calculation in his eyes shifted into something more puzzled, as though Andrew was reacting in a way he wasn’t expecting. The hand holding a knife to his jaw slightly shifted away.

“You’re in no position to make demands,” Nathaniel said.

Andrew’s lip curled faintly. “You’re in no position to pretend you’re going to kill me,” he replied. “That’s something you do before you start explaining yourself.”

Nathaniel stilled. He held Andrew’s gaze for several long seconds, studying the stubborn anger in Andrew’s expression with renewed interest. His earlier curiosity slowly returned, his posture relaxing.

“You’re very certain,” Nathaniel murmured.

Andrew shrugged slightly against the wall despite the arm holding him there. The action made his eyes widen. “Get your hands off me.” This time, the words were panicked.

Silence filled the room again, thick and tense.

Finally Nathaniel eased the pressure of his arm just enough that Andrew was no longer pinned quite so firmly against the wall, though he did not step away completely. He started to lower the knife slowly, eyes flicking to the thin red line across Andrews throat.

It was enough.

Andrew had a knife drawn and their positions reversed before the other man could blink, slamming Nathaniel against the wall with a force that rattled his bones. His blade, he held against Nathaniel's groin, whilst gripping the man's neck in a tight chokehold. The resistance came quicker than expected as Nathaneil’s hand swiped at Andrew’s exposed throat in seconds, knife leaving another red line before Andrew knocked it out of his hand. He pressed his own harder into Nathaniel's dress pants in response. “Don’t move.’’ His voice was almost a growl.

Nathaniel stilled, blinking slowly at Andrew. A smile stretched his face, once again cruel. “Well what a surprise.’’ He licked his bottom lip, head dropping back against the wall to look at Andrew from half lidded eyes. “I knew I shouldn’t underestimate you.’’

Andrew squeezed his throat tighter, earning him a shaky inhale. “I didn’t want it to go this way. I wanted a smoke. Let me leave.’’ This time, he managed to sound unbothered.

But Nathaniel shook his head. “Haven’t you heard? Any man that threatens the butcher doesn’t live to talk about it.’’ He rasped. “You try to walk out and that knife-’’ He swallowed hard and indicated his head at the weapon on the floor. “-will end up in your spine.’’

Andrew’s eyes narrowed, assessing. “Are you not only a killer but a hypocrite too?’’

“What?’’

“You killed a man here for what he did to that girl. Is it her fault that he didn’t understand consent when neither can you?’’ Andrew fought to keep his voice even. He didn’t think Nathaniel would connect the dots so quickly but in seconds his eyes widened, inferring what Andrew hadn’t said. “You-’’ He cut himself off sharply and a moment passed before he tried again. “You don’t like to be touched?’’

Andrew felt himself tense despite knowing what was coming, because hearing the words aloud was almost worse than experiencing it. His body itched all of a sudden, his hand shaking at Nathaniel’s throat. Choosing the lesser evil, he ripped his hands away from him, stepping back a step and sheathing his knife.

Andrew kept quiet, stomach turning. Nathaniel's eyebrows furrowed. “I’m sorry.’’

The words were so startling coming out of his mouth that Andrew fought not to visibly react. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t-”

“Shut up.” His tone implied it was final, resolute.

Nathaniel nodded, seemingly defeated. He watched Andrew for a few beats, scanning him from head to toe twice, as if committing something to memory.

“You can go.” He said softly.

Andrew didn’t hesitate. He walked past the dried blood on the floorboards, fingers shaking at his sides, itching for a cigarette.

And surprisingly, he didn’t feel a knife embeded in his spine as he left the room.