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Tora sat in his car, distantly aware of the soft clicks and pops of the engine settling in for the night. A cigarette smoldered quietly between his fingers, a long trail of ash teetering dangerously off of the neon glow of the cherry as his hand trembled, the nicotine long forgotten in the throes of turmoil that raged within his thoughts. He was still bleeding, he knew, had to be; it wasn’t often he sustained this sort of injury in a scuffle, but that’s what happens when you let your thoughts wander too often, he supposed. Steep price to pay. His eyes trailed down to where the ash had finally fallen down onto the center console, crumbling from the impact, and noticed that a drop of the crimson fluid that still seeped like sinister honey from the gash on his hand had begun to meld with the soft gray snow.
Fitting, he snorted, for a man like him.
It was late. Even for him, it was an hour that would be considered impolite for anyone to show up anywhere, really, but he’d found himself on autopilot after shit had hit the fan, and now he was here, and even though he knew he shouldn’t intrude, it simply wasn’t in the cards for him to leave. The parking lot was as blissfully empty as it ever was, so he sat for a few minutes to compose himself, if nothing more than to be certain his hands would stop shaking by the time he needed to knock on the door. The lights were off in her apartment, ensconcing her in darkness while she undoubtedly slept, but ever since they’d started seeing each other with intent, he noticed that she always left some sort of night light on in case he needed to find his way.
His hands balled into fists against his thighs as he stared at the soft string of lights that dripped from the ceiling in her living room. It wasn’t enough to actually illuminate much inside, he’d made certain of that the night he’d unscrewed half of them, but it was just enough to indicate that she was there, and that he could be too, if he wanted it. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, still agitated from the earlier rush of adrenaline that had pushed him further than he’d expected necessary, then pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until sparks flew across his vision.
Balthuman was getting increasingly aggressive lately, with little explanation outside of “family affairs”, but Tora wasn’t stupid. The old man was starting to lose his edge, having grown complacent from being the alpha for so long. Now that the younger, hungrier clans that surrounded the territory had begun to sniff like starving dogs at the edge of a buffet, the boss had been forced to take action, and when action needed taken, Tora was the obvious choice. He pulled his hands away from his face and stared down at them in placid revulsion, wondering if he’d really had to break both the kid’s arms that night, but what was done was done.
He’d become a monster before he’d become a man, and he supposed that this was simply the penance he owed the universe for allowing that to happen.
Sufficiently calmed, he stepped out of the car and locked it, waiting for the sharp chirp of the security system engaging before he crammed his keys in his pocket and approached the apartment building. It was a sheer force of habit at this point to count the security cameras, the emergency lighting, the deadbolts and the blind corners and countless other little details that had been trained into him since his earliest memories. He couldn’t explain why his mind never turned off even when he wanted it to. It was never taught to him why his thoughts raced at night or why his dreams held him hostage with visions of all the people he’d killed and of all the blood he’d shed over the years. No one had ever sat him down and told him that someday he’d be tormented without warning by his own mind, one moment minding his own business and the next reliving the feeling of crushing someone’s breath from their throat, silencing their desperate pleas for mercy in a wheezing decrescendo.
He paused at the foot of the stairwell and ground his teeth together, bracing himself against the unusually powerful storm that brewed within him this evening. He was losing it. Slowly but surely, this animal that he kept caged within himself was clawing its way out, and it only served to demonstrate why you rarely saw anybody involved with the clans who boasted an age past 40. It was only a matter of time, he mused, before someone either killed him or he dissolved so completely that he took care of the task himself, but until then… He shook his head, frustrated. Until then, he had shit to do , and it would be much easier if he could just get it together long enough to walk up some fucking stairs.
Poppy’s apartment sat dead center in the hallway, much to his extreme dismay, as she felt it was a complete non-issue and wouldn’t hear anything to the contrary. He genuinely tried not to look and see if the debris on the floor had recently been disturbed around the units that surrounded hers, and he tried not to listen for indications of life from within, but to turn these rituals off would have meant to turn himself off completely, and he had long since learned to live with his old habits. He supposed at this point they were probably best described as instincts, though it was difficult to discern when the transition happened… whatever they were, they kept him alive.
Tora knocked softly against her door using the unique pattern he’d taught her the second time she’d invited him back in. It had been a wild feeling at the time, to be invited inside, as if he were a guest and not an intruder. He couldn’t remember the last time somebody had welcomed--encouraged, even--his presence without an ulterior motive in mind, but Poppy apparently had made a habit of her own out of laying his entire life out on her little bed and dissecting everything in an orderly manner.
At first, it was uncomfortable. Now… He sighed as he listened to her gentle footsteps approaching the door. Now he supposed it was necessary. He was clearly in no condition to save himself, if this evening were any indicator. The fact that he persisted in spite of her gnawing curiosity showed him that the inspection was inevitable no matter the discomfort it caused him, and so he simply leaned against the door frame and sagged under the weight of it all, frightened of the hope that she stirred within him. It was too much to even entertain the thought that she may find something worth saving in the rubble of what was left of him, but it was impossible to kill at the same time.
Of all the enemies he’d made in his life, it had turned out that the most powerful of them all was a beautiful, strange girl who inspired him to retain a pathetic flutter of optimism. It was enough to make him laugh.
Tora had encountered a great deal of women over the years. Alice used to drone on and on about how handsome he was as a young boy, much to his extreme irritation, but he supposed there must have been some truth to it outside of her maternal wailing. People flocked to him. Women, men, everyone in between… he could scarcely walk down the street for a pack of smokes without somebody propositioning him, offering all manner of bribes in exchange for a pass at him. None of them ever ensnared him so severely as the young girl in front of him now, however, and he found it ironic that the one who had finally managed to snag the attention that countless others so desperately sought...did so looking just the way she did now.
Poppy peered up at the man who towered over her in the doorway, pawing at one eye and shivering slightly from the cool air in the apartment. Her hair was a wreck from being slept on, the curls having fallen into wild disarray, and one errant strand had been so bold as to find purchase in sticking, unnoticed, to the corner of her mouth. She boasted an old oversized t-shirt from college that had a ramen stain on the chest and just barely managed to cover her enough to prevent her from being indecent.
The sight of her made his heart ache in his chest.
Tora watched her attempt to stifle a yawn and fail miserably, then permitted himself a small smile as he reached out to brush the hair away from her mouth. “Hey, chickenshit.”
“Hi--” she yawned again, reaching up to hold his hand steady against her cheek as she rode it out, “--Tora. Late night?”
“Something like that.”
“Wanna come in?” She didn’t have to ask him, but she always did anyway. Maybe she knew it comforted him. She’d always had a knack for seeing through him as if he were completely transparent. It had deeply unsettled him at first, the notion that a naive little upstart stranger could read him as though she had a decoder ring dedicated to his deepest secrets, but as time had passed and they’d spent more time together, he found that more than anything, it was actually a huge relief. With her, there were no fearful glances or whispers from the shadows; she never flinched when he misspoke or crumbled under the cripplingly long silences as he struggled to find anything to say to her… Poppy merely watched him, as she was doing now, and figured out how to read between the lines of the battered old journal he’d become.
“...yeah.”
The sleepy girl who’d stolen his heart out from under him led him through the apartment by the hand she still cradled in her own, always gentle, nothing like the callous embrace of the city that had raised him. Out there he was a machine, a lethal catalyst of violence and cruelty apparently carved from the very concrete upon which he walked, but here he was nothing more than a man of flesh and blood. He let her guide him to her bedroom and yielded as she pressed gently against his chest, nodding to herself in quiet victory when he sat upon the comforter without protest.
“Stay there, okay?”
His eyes followed her as she vanished back into the apartment, his body spent, his mind apparently having exhausted itself into a sputtering drawl in the background of this new and desperately needed stimulus. He was only a little surprised when she returned with a first aid kit under one arm and a bowl of hot water in her other hand, a clean white towel draped over the side. His eyes still trailed her even as his body came up wanting, and it wasn’t until after she’d dragged a side table to her for the equipment to rest upon that he realized she intended to dress his wounds with it.
Had he had any energy, he might have scoffed at the notion.
He’d weathered far worse than this over his many trials and tribulations under the Balthuman emblem. Even as she reached out and took one of his hands between her own, he was plagued by the intrusive memories of all the terrible nights he’d wept, alone and trembling on the floor of the restaurant, paralyzed with pain and hopelessness from yet another broken set of ribs, or a cracked jaw, or concussions that left his head screaming for a bullet if only to find some relief. The wounds that Poppy dabbed at now were comically superficial, nothing more than the most minor of annoyances that would heal long before the trauma in his mind, and yet here she sat, tending to them as if they were the only thing that mattered in the world.
Tora watched blandly as Poppy cleaned his hand as though it were made from glass, her actions deliberate but careful not to cause any more discomfort than absolutely necessary. The silence in the room was warm as it enveloped him, and if he closed his eyes he could almost embrace it closely enough to drown out the constant monologue that mumbled to him. The anger that colored his thoughts was so easy to cling to, so comfortable, and there were times now that he almost wished he could explain to her that the only reason he insisted on constant rage was because the only alternative was the guilt that suffocated him in its wake.
Even now, as he allowed himself to watch the way her fingers delicately wrapped the gauze around his palm, the gratitude he desperately tried to express was drowned completely by the disgrace he felt over the fact that she was faced with this at all. Shame twisted within him like a viper, sinking its fangs into the fleshy, vulnerable need that he’d cultivated for her and throwing it at his feet in spite, silently screaming as it injected the moment with venomous whispers:
You did this to her, you know. She never would have seen this if you would have just left her be. She’s tainted now, just like you. Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?
He turned his face away from her, disgusted. She had never once chided him for showing up at odd hours, or for sporting blood on his clothing. He didn’t have it in him to explain himself to her even after all this time, and Poppy never asked. She knew by now, he was certain, that there was a much darker side to him than the mysterious savior who’d softened her fall from the tree. Full of surprises, this little slip of a woman, who nevertheless remained steadfast in the face of sinister crimson and sulfuric kisses that lingered in his hair and clothing. If it frightened her, she never said so. He wondered if she realized how brave she was.
Perhaps it was that she had finally given him the one space where he felt safe enough to show her the man under the mask of tattoos and deflection, or perhaps it was her wordless forgiveness in return for an apology he still owed her, but as she finished up with his other hand and gave it an approving swipe of her fingertips across the fresh bandage, he found it completely impossible not to attempt, as he usually did, to show her what he could never seem to say. He waited in silence as she scooted the side table away and flashed him a smile, surprising him as she always did when her face shined with compassion and affection, completely devoid of judgement or resentment or anything he’d come to accept as reality .
He didn’t earn this kindness, and yet she continued to pour it upon him as if to make up for all the years when the world had run out before he’d arrived to receive his share.
Her face fit between his hands as if built for him, her cheeks soft against his touch as he brushed his thumbs along the porcelain skin, fingers buried in the curtain of hair that smelled like sunshine. He kissed her, pressing their foreheads together in a desperate grab for closeness as his body threatened to tremble under the incursion of contrite longing and selfishness that welled within him. He knew that he didn’t deserve her, had done nothing worthy of the precious gifts of strength and clemency that she offered him time and time again, yet now that he’d had a taste of her he’d easily kill a thousand times more if it meant keeping her all to himself.
It was a balm for his soul as she kissed him in turn, deepening the contact just as soon as their lips touched. She tasted of benevolence, her tongue seeking and curious against his own, inviting him in to drown in her and all of the goodness that she offered. He indulged her greedily, pausing only long enough for her to pull his shirt up and over his head, the boldness of her actions a tangible demonstration of how she’d come to trust him despite all his warnings to the contrary. He cradled her as they fell together, her arms around his neck and pulling him into her, guiding him not just into her bed but into her indomitable light that always lured him up and out of the smothering darkness.
They lay together for a moment, two bodies entangled in one another under the soft glow of moonlight that filtered in through the window. The sleep was gone from her eyes now as she gazed upon his face, her fingers tracing the same path down his temple as the day she’d reached out to him that first time, never knowing how badly he’d needed such a gentle chain to reality. Even in the dark he could see the concern, the fear that lingered underneath the affection--not of him, but for him. She had noticed his turmoil tonight, much as she did each and every time he tried to contain it, and although he was grateful that she never actually pried, never forced him to vocalize that which he could barely understand, himself, he still felt the need to answer her.
They had found their language some time ago, enveloped in soft cotton and city lights. As he pressed his mouth to hers once more, unhurried and soft, he remembered the way it had felt the first time to lie within her arms, shivering and gasping for air, coated in sweat that reeked of gunpowder and adrenaline. He could offer no sane explanation for why he’d gone to her that evening, showing up like a bloodstained trainwreck at her door half mad and desperate for someone, anyone to reach out and convince him that he was still human.
And reach out, she did.
It was within her life-saving embrace that he’d found his anchor, something real to tether him beneath the throes of the demons who played with his innermost thoughts. She had simply held onto him without persecution until he could finally breathe, asking nothing of him as she cleansed the fear from his body with fingertips that soothed him like raindrops against his scalp. This was no different; despite his state of mind being far from the chaotic mess it had been that first night, she was no less a pillar of calm that sang its sweet siren song to him through the coolness of her palms against his chest and the way that her eyes spoke to him in a way only his soul could hear.
Their hands roamed each other with no particular destination, lazy in the assured security of surroundings that had no way of intruding upon them. He drank from her as a man stranded in a desert of violence, and with each sigh and shuddering moan that slipped from her under his touch, he watched her oasis bloom for him. Yet another gift freely given as she tucked her head beneath his chin and allowed him to do as he pleased, this opportunity to sow pleasure instead of pain. He was no weapon here, no phantom of discourse. As he turned her away from him and pressed a kiss to the side of her head, he felt the weight of the reaper’s robes slide off of his shoulders, leaving room instead for her to be pulled against his chest as he readied himself at her entrance.
He wondered often who he really was, and how much of his identity had been fabricated from the malevolent influence of the only man who’d ever served as a twisted father figure for him. As he slid inside of the woman who writhed within his arms, he cried out for her, yearning for a closeness even greater than he could currently achieve, his mind fragile from another night filled with the coppery scent of death. To embrace her like this, to feel her body against his own as he wrapped himself around her, to feel the way she pressed back against him to draw him in further and show him that she, too, needed this connection as badly as he did… It was transcendent, simple and yet impossibly complex.
Poppy reached for him, her fingers interlacing with his own and pulling his wounded hand to her chest as he thrust inside of her, oblivious to the wounds she reopened as she clutched him in a vice-like grip. Neither of them witnessed the watercolor bloom of crimson across the bandages as they moved against one another, lost completely in the nexus of emotionally-charged bliss that encompassed them. As he raked his teeth across her shoulder and listened to his name on her lips, he shivered, defenseless against the way it sent goosebumps fluttering across his skin. From others, it was a curse, no more a name than the utterance of a legend, a mythological force that appeared only to smite those who dared call upon him.
The way it sounded when she whispered it to him, however… His name was a psalm, a prayer that she sung for him in the shadows as he showed her that there was still something underneath all the layers of hostility and scar tissue, the tattered remains of what could have been. She called to him in a way no other could, and through her innocent paean, she’d somehow found the light within him that he’d long ago thought snuffed out, clutched protectively between the trembling, bruised hands of the boy he’d left behind with it.
These rare nights where he sought her out from the void of madness were unlike their usual joinings; it wasn’t about longevity, or the thrill of exhibition, or the reciprocity of her own climax that he usually teased from her. Their bodies were incorporeal in the face of their mutual desire to simply be present, to combine two wounded, disjointed halves into a velveteen whole. As he came for her, he pressed his face to her neck, electrified from the release of all the tension and stress he could only shed when he caved to the temptation of the one person who could show him the way.
He held her closely for several moments, or perhaps eternity; he couldn’t be bothered to care. It wasn’t until her musical laughter rippled across the fog of exhaustion that threatened to claim him that he pried his eyes open, disoriented. She was attempting to extract herself, giggling at the heaviness of his arms as they encircled her possessively, further inspired into all-out laughter as he caught on and pulled her closer without effort or concern. What a blessing, to feel the grin return to his lips even as he hid from her at her back, as she playfully smacked at his forearms and halfway attempted to pry herself free. She had done it again, somehow, had tamed the beast that dangled madness above him as a guillotine blade.
He’d be damned if he was just going to let something like that just get up and leave.
Enticed by her mirth, he stretched and rolled, pointedly pinning her beneath the brunt of his weight and settling in quite comfortably with a deep sigh. The threat had passed, and with it the need for caution, prompting her to squeal with delight and squirm underneath him in a fantastic display of futility. “Tora--” she finally gave up and allowed her body to fall limp, still quaking from the giggles that persisted regardless of her loss, “--get up, I need to--the bed’s going to get wet spots--”
“I’ll buy ya a new one.” He murmured it to her dismissively even though he knew he’d eventually relent to her request. These memories were just as precious as those where she said nothing at all, and since he was feeling selfish tonight, he figured he may as well milk it. “Mattress sucks anyway.”
Poppy sighed dramatically and tried elbowing him, the heat sapped from the action as her laughter continued to trickle through the air. “You’re a bully!”
“Takes one to know one, sweetheart.”
“Excuse you! What happened to ‘playing nice’?”
“Guess a hamster can change its stripes after all.”
The groan that emerged from beneath him earned a genuine chuckle as he finally rolled backward, releasing his charge from her prison without flourish. He winked at the dirty look she tossed him over her shoulder, then got to work peeling the pants from his body while she tended to herself. It had been a long time since he’d felt this exhausted, and now that she’d acted as the antidote for the poison that had coursed through his mind when he’d arrived, he hardly believed he’d be awake by the time she came back.
Unbothered, he tidied the linens a bit before he slid underneath them, distantly relieved as he always was when he stayed with her that his feet didn’t hang off the edge. He’d teased her once by telling her the only reason he’d stuck around was because it meant he didn’t have to sleep on his couch; she’d acted offended and he’d brushed it off, but he’d be lying to himself if he tried to say that he didn’t notice the second nightstand she’d added after the fact. Truth be told, he’d have sought after her no matter the accommodations, and certainly with or without something as unnecessary as a place to put his cell phone. Like everything else she did for him, however, he knew that it was her way of inviting him in.
Surrendering slowly to the voiceless call of slumber, he found himself heavy with relief that washed over him as he realized that he’d been so focused on trying to keep her from entering his world, he hadn’t noticed that she’d been busy creating a space for him in hers. It was terrifying, that sort of optimistic thinking, to even hope that he could make it out of this alive. As she made her way back to the bed and tucked herself against him, he wondered just how much of her bravery she was willing to spare for someone so intimately acquainted with fear it was nearly impossible for him to know where his stopped and others’ began.
For her, though… For her, he could try. If he were a moth to be burned by the flame, he would go down in rapture, bathed in the bittersweet light of a woman whose only trespass was to extend her hand to a man drowning in his own insanity. It might be an impossible venture, but he had her here and now, and so he pulled her closer to him and held her in his arms, content to shield her from the impending storm. It wasn’t much, and certainly not by comparison of what he intended to do, but for now, it was something of his own he could give to her: the quiet, broken gratitude of a soul saved just in time.