Mentally Preparing Myself - Tumblr Posts
part vi: bodyguard!felix x reader
masterlist.
PART I ; PART II ; PART III ; PART IV ; PART V ; PART VI
Your father hires an inconspicuous bodyguard to accompany you at school and supervise you at home. What seems like an innocuous change in routine eventually spirals into a forbidden romance that grows more passionate over the years.
pairing: lee felix/reader content info: smut. violence. parental abuse. situations of intense peril overall. forced proximity. enemies2lovers. angst with eventual happy ending. (chapter word count; 9500 words)
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Graduation approaches. There will be a ceremony in the afternoon then a dinner and dance, hosted in a hotel ballroom. It is nothing so luxurious as your father’s soirees, but it is a milestone that should be filled with meaning and memory.
You do not go.
You close this chapter of your life while vowing to never forget a moment of it. Jisung and Hyunjin both impacted your life for the better. Though you will not put them in danger by association, you hope they will find happiness. They will both be better in the long run.
You look at Felix and wish you could grant such a freedom to everyone.
You let yourself mope for a few days and Felix does not intervene, only checking in now and again to see if you need anything. You have not talked about what transpired between you, but that was to be expected even without any distractions.
He extends comfort in a platonic sense at best, more professional than ever with how he hovers in your periphery, ensuring you are safe but never crossing a line. He will embrace you when you have a nightmare, but he is much more stiff than he used to be. He does not touch you with his gentle caresses, only holds you with a perfunctory grasp. You think if this entire ordeal with Jisung had not happened, then he would have stopped altogether by now.
The night of the graduation, you sleep restlessly and wake in an emotional fit. You stare at Felix across the bed, your tumultuous emotions flickering between sadness, anger, and longing. You don’t know what to do, and it isn’t fair, and you want him so badly.
You dig your fist into the mattress and press your face into the pillow, fighting down a scream. Your shuffling wakes Felix who whispers your name. He moves closer then reaches the rest of the way, touching the back of your head.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“No,” you say, muffled. You thump your fist against the mattress. “I hate you,” you say, because you don’t hate him at all. He’s all you have left yet it does not suffice to say there is only Felix, because even if you had a world of options you would still want him. He is singular in both charm and peculiarity. You do not hate him, but the threshold of the opposite looms with a terrifying danger for you both. What happened with Jisung would be miniscule in comparison to the consequences of this affair.
You know that, and yet.
You want to close this space for good. You want to throw caution to the wind and indulge your most romantic desires. You want him to want it too.
“Do you hate me?” you ask, turning your face but not meeting his eye.
“I—” He clears his throat. “I’m just… doing my job. I can’t have feelings one way or, uhh, another.”
“That’s not a no,” you say, lifting your gaze to his. He is propped up on one arm, staring down at you, blonde hair in a dishevelled mess around his face. His gaze drifts and you feel you are losing him. “Felix…” you say, imploringly.
“You have no idea,” he suddenly says, his tone almost vicious. “No idea… what it does to me when you—when you—when you look… at me… like that.” He falls onto his back and covers his face with both hands.
He always looks so skinny in his baggy sleep shirts, all sharp lines jutting out of the fabric. It completes his lie: the too-happy, naïve boy who is all smiles all the time, with nothing to see beyond the surface. No one would guess what he is capable of doing. Even you had not fully realized the breadth of his person until you witnessed it with your own eyes.
His mind seems to be following a similar path because he says, “You saw me kill someone.” He rubs his forehead like a migraine is settling there. “You shouldn’t look at me like you do. You shouldn’t—I don’t understand—how you’re not ever afraid—of him—of me—”
“I’m always afraid,” you whisper the admittance. You continue to look at him even while he stares up at the ceiling, his arms crossed protectively over his chest. “Just not of you,” you say.
He closes his eyes. He breathes out through his nose.
“You’re supposed to be,” he says. “That’s why I—that’s why I exist, yeah? I was raised to be this… thing. People are supposed to be afraid when they see who I am. Even your father is scared of me. And if he didn’t—if he didn’t have me on this—this fucking leash—” He sits upright, practically snarling as he speaks. Only experience in tempering his emotions brings him back down to calm, simply glaring across the room through the dark.
You wait to see if he will say more, your attention caught by what he let slip. Even your father is afraid of him, despite having him lashed to a tether of some kind. You want to know more, but you do not want to take what he does not willingly give, even though you know he will answer any question if you push. He made that promise a long time ago.
You are both almost nineteen. You have spent a quarter of your lives together. Those years, his present, and his future are all ensnared, and you cannot find it in yourself to forcibly rip his past away too.
You sit upright as well. He still does not look at you, gaze faraway. You twist the blankets in your lap, itching to reach out and smooth back a messy strand of his hair.
“You’re not just a thing to me,” you say.
“I know,” he says softly, still looking to the side. “Sometimes I wish I was just a thing.” He tips his head, staring into the distance as if he can see a memory playing out in the dark. “Sometimes I wish… it was that easy. That I could… put it all somewhere. Stop feeling. Stop being. That’s what I was supposed to be. If I could—if I did—I wouldn’t be here at all. But also…”
He trails off and his mind drifts. You tug at the blanket again.
“But also?” you ask.
His head turns to you, though his gaze is lowered, down to your fidgeting fingers.
“But…also…” he says. “I wouldn’t want that. If I had never… been someone. If I had never known…someone…”
He meets your gaze now. He has not looked at you with such direct intensity in days and it feels like basking in the sun after so much shadow. Your expression must return a similar ardor because his lips part with a deep exhale, his body instinctively tipping towards yours like it so often does. He maintains enough mental faculty not to fall all the way, holding himself back, only looking at your face. He lingers on your mouth.
“I understand,” you say, tingling with the effect of his gaze, tangible as a kiss.
“Yeah?” he says, his voice rough.
You feel a bit fuzzy, distracted with the energy between you. You only loosely cling to your own train of thought but you manage to say, “Yes. Making sense of the good in the bad. Both shaping who you are. The people you know… changing you for the better.”
“Jisung,” Felix says, ruminating on your words. Then a flicker of displeasure creases his brow as a thought occurs to him. “Hyunjin,” he says. “They were both… part of your good.”
“Yes,” you say, watching him pull away into his own mind.
“You liked Hyunjin a lot,” Felix says, clearing his throat. “I didn’t—I wasn’t sure—”
You roll your eyes even while a smile breaks onto your face. There is something so charmingly childish about the clear jealously that is suddenly plaguing him. It isn’t dangerous dramatics or dark pasts – just one boy glaring at the recollection of you dating another boy.
You push the blankets off your lap and move so you are kneeling at his side. He looks away but that is fine, because you tuck his hair behind his ear and lean in to whisper, “I didn’t like Hyunjin half as much as I hate you.”
He clenches his jaw. His shoulder twitches with a little shiver. A smile tugs at his lips.
“Oh,” he says. “All right.”
“All right,” you repeat in a mockingly deep voice. “That’s his reply – all right. This is why I hate you.”
“Mmm?” He tips his head, smiling at you. “Is it?”
You feel flushed. You sit back again, poking at the covers. “Among other things,” you say.
He laughs but tries not to, the result a very low chuckle that he unsuccessfully tries to hide behind his hand. You shove his shoulder. He sways dramatically like it was a hard hit. He is still chuckling when you lay back down, arms stubbornly crossed.
He lays on his side and props his head in his hand. There is space between you but you can touch his face with a simple stretch. You trace your fingertips down his jaw and it smooths out his laughter, expression softer. Your heart is thundering when you touch his lips, just a light touch. It should be inconsequential when you consider what you have already done, but it feels substantial as anything else. You wonder if this sensation will ever lessen.
He takes your wrist and moves your hand, his breath fluttering over your fingertips. He swallows hard.
“I’m a bad person,” he says. “I’m not supposed to care about being bad. But I do.”
“You’re not a bad person,” you say. “Because of the things they make you do? How can you say that?” From the moment he walked into your life, Felix has done everything in his limited power to provide relief. You did not always appreciate it, but it did not stop his efforts.
“I am,” he says. “I’m selfish. I let myself forget… so many things… when you look at me.” He lays down on his back, curling one arm under his head. “You know, I’ve been trained to withstand torture,” he says, casually despite the ripple of horror that moves through you. “But they didn’t prepare me for, uhh, you doing that… thing with your eyelashes, when you want something. Or when you, you know, stick out your lip like this—”
He pouts and it makes you laugh despite everything.
“I don’t do that,” is all you can say.
“Sure,” he says, with a little smile and eye-roll. “It’s more effective than a bullet. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Duly noted,” you say dryly. “You know for such a well-trained whatever-you-are, you just made a pretty dumb mistake.”
“Oh?”
You roll onto your front so the lengths of your bodies are pressing along the side. You rest your chin in the cup of your hand and smile your most innocent smile.
“Yes,” you say. “It isn’t very smart to tell an enemy your weaknesses like that.”
“My enemy,” he says like the word amuses him, corners of his lips ticked up. He moves quickly, leaning into your space so surely that you can feel his breath fan your lips. “Is that what you are, then? My job. My enemy.” He laughs the word, then whispers with a teasing smirk, “And my sweetheart.”
“Sworn enemies,” you somehow manage without even a stutter. You take his teasing further and say, “You can even tell my daddy. That’s your job, isn’t it?”
“That isn’t a joke,” he says, tone serious though his soft expression betrays him.
“Who’s joking?” you say. “We’re just two enemies, sharing a bed. I hate you, and you—”
“Yes?” He has a cocky look on his face, playful as it is. “What do I do?”
You narrow your eyes in a theatrical glare, then you just smile.
“You...” Your voice comes softly, your knuckles brushing his jaw. “You know what it feels like to be inside me.”
Your heart thumps erratically at his drastic shift in expression, the laughter replaced with shock then obvious vexation, dark eyes slanting in warning. You just smile like it is of no concern to you at all.
“Don’t look at me like that,” you murmur. “I’m just saying. Sweetheart.”
You roll away, leaving space between you again. You wriggle your hips more than necessary and your shirt predictably rucks up, your shorts similarly loose and high around your thighs.
Your heart is still racing even though you got the last word in. You breathe to centre yourself.
Then he grabs you by the neck and tugs you back across the bed. It is a showy demonstration but a gasp bursts past your lips, your hand instinctively clutching his sturdy hand. It is your turn to be beyond surprised when he presses right up against you from behind.
“Don’t play games that have no winner,” he speaks into your ear.
“Who’s playing?” you reply, grinding back against him.
He exhales, an exasperated sound that has you giggling. You yelp when he rolls you onto your front, all but planting your face in a pillow before abruptly letting you go. You lift your head as he swings out of the bed.
“Where are you going?” you ask.
“The bathroom,” he says. “Don’t try to leave or I’ll tell your father, yeah?”
He is grinning with his victorious retreat. His alleged training is good enough that he dodges the pillow you chuck at his head.
Your father returns home the next day. He never had any intention of attending your graduation, agreeing with his own late father’s assertion that a high school graduation was a juvenile joke celebrating mediocrity.
Felix already reported that you did not attend so there is nothing more to say on the matter. The subject of graduation merely broaches the topic of post-secondary education. He calls you into his office and presents you with a folder detailing the next step of your education. You will attend his alma mater, a prestigious university that did not require your application as he most certainly just paid for your admittance.
“And,” he says, “I am generously giving you one more opportunity to prove you are not the unfledged adolescent you have insisted on presenting.”
This opportunity is online summer classes to pre-emptively advance your position in the program. As if it matters where you rank in the scheme of things; your life set in stone.
“Fine,” is all you say. The wounds from the incident with Jisung are still fresh so you do not have an argument inside you. It would just be for the sake of itself anyway, as it is not like you have anything better to do with your summer.
You still complain to Felix. You find him in the gym, working up a sweat. A captive audience for your lengthy complaint session.
He runs a self-made obstacle course while you inexpertly pummel a punching bag to let out your frustrations. Eventually he takes a water break and wanders over to you. You crinkle your nose and pretend to be disgusted with his appearance, but in actuality a hot, sweaty Felix reminds you of that cramped car and all the heat between you.
He tips his head back and drinks his water and your eyes follow a drop of sweat as it licks down his neck. You look away when he stops drinking, when he swipes a hand across his forehead.
“Careful,” he says. “You should tape your hands first, yeah? You’ll hurt yourself.”
You slap the punching bag and smirk when he frowns at you.
“Not funny,” he says, and takes your hand to inspect it. He is smiling despite his words. When he catches your eye, he tries to quell it, but his gaze is tender as his touch when he massages your hand. “Just remembering,” he mumbles. “First night here. You and that… what was it? Eggplant?” He shakes his head. “I was, uhhh, not prepared.” He laughs. “I clearly didn’t know what I was getting into.”
“Yes, I’m sure I came across as a very intimidating adversary,” you say dryly.
“Yes.” He laughs, a sharp breath. His eyes flick up to you. “Like no one I’d ever met before.”
You feel bashful under his gaze. You look down at where he is rubbing your hand, so very careful with the amount pressure he applies. It is still hard to reconcile this soft-touched boy with the violence that has evidently puppetted him for all his life. It seems impossible that he could be a cog in that machine, not with hands like this, not with a touch so delicate in its gentle offer of solace.
He mentioned being trained to withstand torture, a training he must have received very young because you met him at fourteen as a fully formed soldier ready to follow orders. To this day, you remember his unblinking neutrality as he pressed the tip of that blade into the back of his hand. Yet now he holds your hand with such loving attention, so much humanity in his affection for someone else, even where people apparently tried to scrub it out of him.
It is too much to think about right now. You pull your hand away and don a faux-haughty air, flicking your wrist at him, fingers wiggling.
“Kiss it better,” you say with a supercilious tone. “Or I’ll tell my dad you let me get injured.”
He blinks at you, maybe perplexed with the sudden shift in tone, but then he just laughs and rolls his eyes.
“Mmm. Right,” he says. But he checks the door is empty then takes your hand. You realize this is a stupid ploy because it backfires the moment his lips brush your knuckles. He looks up at you, his soft bottom lip resting on your skin. Then he straightens, pats your hand, and smiles an annoyingly perfect, professional smile. “There,” he says. “Job well done?”
“As always,” you say, unsteady.
He breaks the tension by stepping away to fetch a towel. He dries his sweaty neck while asking more about your meeting with your father. You start complaining all over again, giving the punching bag another good slap. You rant about his usual tyrannical nonsense, but also complain about the graduation affair.
“They’re usually a big deal, yeah?” Felix asks. He is doing some cool-down exercises and you try to not to stare at him. “Why didn’t he want to go again?”
“Some stupid bullshit he parroted from his father, because he’s never had an original thought in his life,” you say. “It is a celebration of mediocrity. I will only attend your graduation from a valuable institution with an education that has been obtained through true work. As if he’s not paying to get me into university, and as if I won’t be walking out of there with a degree even if I sleep through every exam.”
Felix laughs in a humourless, distracted way. You look over and watch as he swings his water bottle up and catches it again.
“His father, huh?” he says. He shakes the water, absent-minded in his distraction. He walks backwards then takes a seat against the wall where he looks at you again. “This, uhhh, this everything in the family goes back far, huh?”
“Old money,” you say with an eye roll. You cross the room to join him on the floor. “Far enough.”
“Did you know him?”
“Who? My grandfather?” You slide down the wall and sit beside Felix, your shoulders touching. “Yeah, I mean, he died when I was about ten or eleven. You know him too.”
Felix looks at you in bewilderment and you laugh.
“He was the same as my father is now,” you explain. “If you know one, then you know the other.”
“That must have been…” Felix searches for the word but there is very little to sufficiently summarize that household.
“Yeah,” you say with a snort. “It was.” Your grandfather was a tyrant as sure as your father is now. You cannot say if he was worse, being so young when he ruled this household, but you remember he occupied the same untouchable sphere of power. Your grandfather looms in your memory as a grim figure as dark and intimidating as Mister Miroh. He was on the offense at all times, ambitious and striking out at whim. Your father, perhaps in response to his own father’s iron fist, has always acted on the defense, holed up in his castle and building his walls high to seal in everything of value. He attacks in retaliation or proactive defense.
Neither ever permitted being contradicted or disobeyed.
“I see,” Felix says. He looks like he wants to say more, brow still furrowed in contemplation, but then he just sighs and rests his head against the wall. “Are you sad about your graduation?”
“I just hope Hyunjin looked out for Jisung. He’s all I’m sad about.” Picturing your best friend in a corner of a ballroom with no one paying him any attention is too devastating to think about for long, especially knowing about his home life and how alone he felt before you.
You take a steadying breath.
“He just deserved better,” you say.
“So do you,” Felix says, only just above a whisper. He pats your knee and you react predictably, all your nerves alight beneath his hand.
But he does not linger long enough for that warmth to spread. You are not alone, after all. There are footfalls overhead and your father is tucked away in his office.
That night you have a bad dream. It is nothing so terrifying as a nightmare, featuring no guns or tyrant patriarchs. It is just a miserable dream.
You are at your graduation, wearing one of your many evening gowns. There is nothing so special about dressing up given your forced lifestyle, but the party is not about the gown or a date or anything else. You are looking for your friend. That is all you want, but you can’t find Jisung anywhere. You turn many corners, passing through the lengthy shadows of hotel hallways and school corridors, but there is an eerie emptiness to all of it. Finally you find a door, beaten and weathered. You step through knowing there is nothing fancy waiting on the other side of it.
You find yourself on the roof of a ramshackle house. Jisung is perched on the edge, dressed up in a blazer and tie but with his signature backwards cap. He is gazing up at the stars. You sit beside him, filled with so many things you want to say and yet nothing comes out. Time feels warped in your dream and you feel like you sit there for days, months, years, the sky dark, the world quiet.
“I’m sorry,” you finally say.
It feels unreasonable to ask for forgiveness, even if you did not willingly abandon him. You still feel the ache of guilt for having roped him into your life in the first place, but you feel especially guilty for not regretting those years. You do not want to live in a world where you never met him. To have never been someone, to have never known someone.
You know he feels the same way. He said as much during your goodbye.
In the quiet, he hugs you, wrapped up comfortably like that last night at his house.
Somehow that is the moment you become aware it is just a dream, that this is your own mind consoling you, but it is meaningful that your subconscious summons your best friend for that much-needed hug of reassurance.
It seems ridiculous that you, of all people, should think they have the best understanding of love, but perhaps it is the long absence of it that allows you to recognize when you have it. You have witnessed every elaborate gift and gesture in the world, but you are quite certain there is no grander demonstration of love than someone holding you for an hour with no other motive than to simply be there, seeing and being seen.
When you wake, it is with such an ache that you find yourself clutching your chest. Your uneven breathing wakes Felix. The moment he touches your shoulder, you roll into his arms and let yourself cry. He doesn’t ask what it is about, drawing any number of conclusions, but he holds you until your tears turn to sniffles then stop altogether.
You get drowsy in his arms. When he thinks you are asleep, he tries to lay you down on your side of the bed, but you are conscious enough to stir and cling to him. He laughs under his breath.
“Full house,” he whispers. “You need to sleep over there.”
You look at him morosely, blinking back tears. He sighs, letting his head droop, then he gives you a pointed look. You are surprised when he flicks his thumb over your bottom lip, drawing attention to the fact you are pouting.
“Told you,” he whispers.
“Hmmph.”
He rolls away but you follow, wrapping around him like a clingy koala bear. He chuckles and shakes his head, but lays on his back and allows you to rest your head on his chest. You nuzzle under his chin, hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat under your palm. He rests a hand over yours. When he breathes, you watch the rise and fall of those hands.
It is a comforting embrace. This bed has often felt like a world away from reality. You stare at those hands, his kind touch. You cuddle closer, secure with the weight of his arm around you.
It sets your brain in motion, compiling these feelings with everything he has told you and everything he has done.
Before you can stop yourself, before the insanity of such a statement dawns, you say, “Do you think we could make it if we ran away together?”
He goes very still, even his breath slowing. His heart beats a steady staccato under your hand.
“Felix,” you whisper.
“No,” he says, sharply, like the instinctive hiss of pain when unexpectedly struck. He shakes his head, coming back to himself. “No,” he says again, softer. His voice breaks as he lowers it to a whisper. “No, I’m sorry—I’m—I told you—you know it’s not that simple—”
You know he’s right. Felix is obviously very competent but he is still just one man, and your father would not let you slip through his fingers so easily. This is disregarding all the technical logistics of running away, like money and food and a place to sleep.
But a little cabin flashes across your mind and your argumentative side rears itself even though you know better.
“Maybe it is that simple,” you say. “He’s just one man—”
“He’s not just one man,” Felix says, sitting up. You slip through his arms, laying back and watching as he pushes a hand through his hair. “He is his business, and his… his world… and all the men like him…”
“And our lives?” you say. You sit up and put your hand on his back. “You said I deserved better but so do you. You aren’t selfish just because— Stop shaking your head—”
He does but he still looks away, exhaling sharply through his nose.
“It’s not—” He chokes on the word, swallows, then speaks again softly, “It’s not just my life.” He stares across the room, as if once more ensorcelled by some memory playing in the shadows. “Life,” he says, “in pieces and only for a little bit. I always remembered that, you know. That’s how you described it. That’s what I have. Being here. It’s more than—more than what I deserve. And what I—what I get—is a life worth more than mine—”
“Stop saying things like that,” you say miserably. You reach for his face but he turns away. “Do you have any idea,” you say with as much as emotion as you can fit in a whisper, “any idea how much my life has changed because of you, because of the way you are… Felix, you’re part of the good too.”
“You can’t—you can’t say things like that to me—”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll start to believe you.”
You touch his face and he lets you this time, eyes lifting to yours as you guide his face up. Your thumb brushes that dark constellation of freckles, your eyes searching the face you have woken to every morning for years now – the brown eyes, the dark brows, the wisps of blonde that dash across his forehead. Your thumb brushes the groove to his upper lip, then the bow of his lower lip.
You cup his jaw and tip your head, hoping your gaze reveals the words you cannot conjure. The walls close in around you again. All those nonsensical ideas make their escape, leaving you in the dark with him.
He holds your gaze, his consternation fading to a different sort of ache. Longing carves itself in his features, the disconsolate but nonetheless ardent hunger of someone starving at a table they cannot eat from. He lays his hand over yours, holding it against his face. Eventually he lowers it.
“I didn’t count them,” he says.
“What?” You blink to attention, confused by the seeming subject change. “Count what?”
“The, uhh…” His laugh is dry. He clenches his jaw and looks down at where he is holding your hand. “The people. The people I killed.” He keeps his gaze low, watching as he strokes his thumb across your knuckles. “Others counted them but I—I dunno… I didn’t need to. It comes back to me sometimes, yeah. Hair colours. Clothes. Last words. I didn’t need to… to write it down, to keep track. I just remembered. I still remember.”
Even before you saw him in action, you knew killing was in his past. It still feels different to have those suspicions confirmed, that there was that much violence in his youth, but you are not upset for the reasons he must think. You are only more sympathetic, curling your fingers around his and squeezing.
He won’t look at you.
“Felix,” you say. “You were a kid, and I don’t know where you were, I don’t know what they did to you, but that’s not your fault—”
“I was good at it,” he says. “I was the best. I thought I knew what I was, why I existed. Then things changed. Now I’m not that. I’m not anything else either. I have no right to be, yeah? Do you understand? I can’t walk away. It’s all in me and there’s nowhere to put it down. All I can do is this—this one thing. And honestly, I don’t even know if it is the right thing. I just know that if I go with you, that feels selfish. If I stay here, if I—I keep you trapped here because of me—that’s selfish too—”
“I’m not trapped because of you,” you say. “I would be here either way. If it wasn’t you here with me, it would just be someone else.” So I’m glad it’s you, you want to say, with no obfuscation and no exaggeration.
He interrupts, “I killed your grandfather.”
It is so unexpected that you freeze. You cannot help the way you lock up when truly startled, even if the fright is only momentary. Your body shuts down to protect itself.
Felix withdraws his hand immediately, sensing your coldness. You come back to yourself and look at him, though he still avoids your gaze.
“What?” you eventually manage. “You—”
“He was the target,” Felix says. “They tried to kill him before. Tried, and failed. There were casualties. Like your… like your mother.”
You look away too, chronicling everything he is describing. Your mother died when you were still in infancy and you were never told much more than that. You always thought it might have contributed to your father’s obsessive protection efforts, at least in part, but you could never be sure.
“He was…” Felix says. “He was like a monster, to me, growing up, like a… like a ghost story or something. They told us stories about him and men like him. About how some were so… so powerful… and couldn’t be killed by a regular person… Everything I did—all the killing—was—was justified to me, yeah? And he was the worst of all. And if we could get rid of him, then… then all the other bad would go away too.”
“But it didn’t,” you say, remembering the infallible creature of a man that was your grandfather, the same but different to your father. Things changed when he died, in a way. Your father’s defensive operations are contrary to the offensive strategy of your grandfather, but no less intense in application. You can see how an enemy might have looked at your father, a frightened man always on the defensive, standing in your grandfather’s shadows. You can see how they might have thought the empire might crumble without the iron fist ruling it.
“But it didn’t,” Felix says.
You have questions, so many questions. Was it all Miroh? What happened next? How did Felix end up here? Why does he stay? A million questions fly through your mind. The only one you manage to vocalize is, “Does my father know?”
Felix shakes his head.
The rest of your questions evaporate into nothing. Only a breath passes your lips. Felix is bent over, elbows on knees, shoulders hunched. He is staring at the ground.
“Felix,” you say, reaching for him. “Felix, I don’t blame you for anything.”
Grandfather, father, it’s all the same poison sloshing from the same spoiled glass. You would be here either way, only without Felix, his voice and his hands, his heartbeat under your palm. You cannot imagine the bleakness of that loneliness.
You lay a hand on Felix’s shoulder, wanting to say all this and more but at a complete loss for words.
There is a moment of quiet, then he says, “All this time.” It is barely more than a murmur, face still downturned. “You were right here. And they didn’t care, so I didn’t see you. I didn’t even look.”
You cup his face once more, guiding him upright. He comes without a fight but takes his time, like it is agony to meet your gaze. When those dark eyes locked with yours, a shaking breath leaves his lips, that aching expression returned to his face. You do not know what your own face is doing, all your masks fallen away, leaving something open and raw, wounded but wanting. You swipe your thumb over his cheek, the high point where his freckles cluster darkly, sweeping down to where they dim.
“You’re looking now,” you say.
You slide your hand around his head, into his hair, fingertips fluttering over his nape. He shivers and tips his head, naturally leaning into your touch. You remember seeing the scars that litter his chest, remember feeling the cuts on his back from your own father’s beatings. You remember all the nights he has held you. You remember every little tidbit of your life he has tried to rescue and give back to you despite his precarious position.
You are both in a terrible situation without the tools to truly navigate your way out. There are no rules for a situation like this, every choice a dangerous one. The only thing you know for certain is you are not alone.
“I’m afraid,” you say, “but I’m not afraid of you.”
He gazes at you for a long, thoughtful moment, then reaches to touch your face. Just his thumb, tracing from temple to chin. The tremble of his touch reveals more fear than his faint smile, all of it bound tightly in the tension that holds him together, the carefully restrained yearning for something bigger than this moment.
“Yeah, but I’m afraid of you,” he says on a breath of a laugh.
“Right,” you say, infused with all the light-hearted sarcasm as you can muster. “That’s me,” you say. “Scariest of them all.”
“You have no idea,” he says, still so sincerely. It is your turn to shiver, leaning into his touch as his thumb circles your chin. He smiles again, not his exaggerated toothy grins but a sweet, fond smile. “My job. My enemy.” His thumb presses on your mouth, gently parting your lips. A breath escapes with the race of your heart. “My sweetheart.”
“You’re just being mean now,” you say. “I hate you so much.” You hold the back of his neck and tug him close to you. Your noses brush, his breath colliding with yours. A simmering warmth is tingling under every inch of your skin, gathering hotly in intimate places. You scratch up the nape of his neck and he swallows hard.
“A kiss,” he says, a rough whisper. “Just one kiss. It’s too—we can’t—”
“One kiss,” you say, brushing noses again. “For now.”
His soft laugh warms you even before your lips touch. And a touch is all it is, lacking all the rushed dramatics of your first collision. Even though you’re not truly alone, even though danger encircles this room like a poisonous fog, this little world away from everything feels momentarily invulnerable.
You let your eyes close, surrendering to the gentle give-and-take of it all. You wonder what makes a kiss so addicting, and you wonder how you went this long abstaining, and you wonder how you could ever hope to go without it again.
You run your hands into his hair and pull his face close. He sinks into the kiss, sharing a gasp before kissing you again.
You feel dizzy with breathlessness but you don’t stop. You shiver when he cups your neck to control the movement of your head. Your excitement has you bobbing forward, but he holds you and gently tips your head, then he kisses you with a long, hot pull. When his tongue brushes your lips, you make a little noise and he very softly squeezes your neck, the only place he is touching, in warning. This only tempts another sound but you restrain yourself, if only just barely.
The kiss ends with a gasping breath. You rest your forehead against his for a long moment. Then you open your eyes only to close them when he descends, kissing your nose, your eyelids, your cheeks. His sigh feathers against your lips.
“More effective than a bullet,” he murmurs.
Surely, it is meant to be joking, sweet, flirtatious. But he looks at you with that deep-set longing. He draws his thumb from your temple to chin again. He tilts your head to kiss your cheek, closing his eyes like that innocent press is the greatest pleasure of his life. Your cheek still tingles when he pulls away.
He smiles then nods towards the top of the bed. Your heart skips a beat, but then he says, “Sleep now. No more bad dreams tonight, yeah?”
You feel tipsy, breathless still, so you don’t argue. You also do not look away from him. Your eyes are locked as you slide to your side of the bed and pull back the covers. He sits on the end, watching you. Eventually he lays down and looks at the ceiling, scrubbing a hand over his forehead. His mind is so clearly going a mile a minute.
“Don’t worry,” you say with a wave of your hand. “I still hate you.”
He shoves his tongue into his cheek to hold back the laugh, looking at you out of the corner of his eye. You just smile, then shrug, then turn your back to him for the night.
-
The summer passes in euphoric bursts and tiny agonies. There are days you and Felix are alone in the house, days when a calm settles between you even if all you do is sleep entangled, and there are days your father looms with all his threat and power, when Felix sensibly withdraws and you ache with the need for an intimacy that keeps you sane and human.
Felix is clearly torn between his own desires and the duty he has assigned himself. It is also apparent that he is still struggling to consider himself worthy of honest affection. You can see it in the way he stands, the way he looks at you, the way his shoulders tense when you so much as brush his shoulder. You have laid in his arms more than once, your faces so close that you are almost kissing. You run your fingers through his hair until the tension leaves his body and he lets himself slant towards you.
Please come to me, stay with me, you think.
This is another one of those things that cannot coast on accidents, on fleeting moments of lustful tension that would ultimately fizzle if not for the emotional strength propelling them. It is in that emotional undercurrent you must plant yourself deliberately if you want to feel anything, if you want to heal, and if you truly, completely want him.
Maybe you cannot leave, maybe that kind of rescue is impossible, but you form a haven of sorts between yourselves. You try to find the words to tell him he’s a person, that you want to be a person for him, a body under his hands and a heartbeat in the dark, but you can never find the right thing to say to fully liberate you from the cage closed around that room. The words touch your tongue and burn and suddenly you see every nightmare in front of you, every reminder of why this is dangerous. So you turn your back and say you hate him, even while a kiss on the shoulder is enough to fully unravel you.
The summer is busy, a popular season for parties and events, some your father hosts and some you are invited to attend. He drags you from place to place, with the rest of your spare time filled with advanced course work. It is a distraction if nothing else.
At the end of summer, your father calls you into his home office. It could be for a lecture, a demand, an argument he is itching to start. You do not know but you appear when summoned.
Felix is already there, sitting straight-backed in a small chair across from your father’s desk. There is an empty seat beside him.
He turns his head and looks at you, reminding you of the first moment you ever saw him. Some things are the same, but most things are different. You realize how much older he looks. He is still slender, still clean-shaven, still very pretty, but he is not a child anymore. He does not look ridiculous in his black blazer and tie, a holster under his jacket, a competent professional with a job to do. Uniforms used to make him look even younger, his face too wide and sweet for such a grown-up ensemble. He looked like a little boy playing dress-up.
He is not a little boy anymore. You look into his face as you approach, your eyes locked. His hair is long enough to tie into a little stub of a ponytail. You ran your fingers through that hair this morning, fluffing the soft ends, making him smile. You have kissed that pink bow of mouth, both roughly and softly. You know what he sounds like when overcome with pleasure.
You met years ago, two peculiar children with so much humanity beaten out of you. You realize just how much has grown back thanks to the slow but tender cultivation of your relationship.
It seemed like an impossible thought at the time. Now it seems like it was inevitable.
You take the empty seat beside him. You both look at your father. His hands are steepled on his desk, his attention rapt as it often is when meting out punishment. His smile is not encouraging to the contrary, as he will sometimes smile when administering his reprimands.
But then he says, “Congratulations, I am pleased.”
He shows you the transcript for your summer courses. Your grades are more than halfway decent despite your tumultuous year.
“You’ve worked hard to win back my favour,” he says. It is the kind of comment that would usually trigger your frustration, prompting a quick rebuttal that would quickly escalate. But you temper yourself, curling your fists in your lap. You force yourself to ignore his bating, to listen with as stoic a face as you can muster. Your father smiles, though it is strained. “In my persistent generosity, I have decided to reward this behaviour in the hopes of encouraging it will continue.”
He slides a folder across the desk, every encounter a business meeting when it isn’t a brawl. You take the folder and read through it, the frustration leaving your body as it is replaced with confusion then the vaguest flicker of hope.
“We are substantially removed from the university campus,” your father says. “I have decided that for the sake of convenience and your continued academic success that it would be more prudent to move you closer to the university until your degree is completed in a timely manner.”
“Move,” you say, trying to keep your voice level despite the fact it feels like your heart is trying to leap into your throat. “All of us? What about the house?”
“Just you,” he says. “And Felix, of course, to supervise you. The penthouse is secured with a high security system, not to mention armed doormen and a plethora of staff throughout the building. Between that and your bodyguard, you should be secure and thus able to complete your studies without any obstruction.” He thumps a hand on his desk, making you jump. “And I expect your grades to reflect that.”
You nod vigorously, staring down at the real estate listing of the penthouse apartment. You have only just begun to picture the possibilities of an uninterrupted life, however brief the interim, when your father speaks again.
“Felix,” he says. “You know what I expect of you.”
“Yes, sir,” Felix says with a curt nod.
“I will have it on record now,” your father says to you, “that I give Felix complete and full control of this arrangement. You will do what he says when he says it. I also grant him permission to use his own discretion to determine when and how to discipline you if you step out of line.”
“Oh,” you say, too stunned to add more.
“If he reports that you are making things difficult in any capacity—”
“I won’t,” you say. “I’ve been good all summer!”
Other than last night when you snuggled up to Felix and started kissing his neck. It was chaste, a momentary touch, but then a sweet, low sound rumbled in his throat. Naturally, you did it again, then once more, your lips a little wetter and more open each time. He eventually had to pry you off him with a warning look, but he could not fully stamp down his smile when you giggled at him.
“Felix,” your father says, disregarding your retort. “You have my permission to do what you must to keep her in line.”
“Yes, sir,” Felix says, dropping his head in a respectful bow.
-
“So what do I have to do get disciplined around here?”
“Stop,” Felix says, even while obviously amused, a smile tugging at his lips. “They’re still here.”
You giggle and look over his shoulder where your father’s men are moving the last few things into the apartment. One of them collects Felix to show him the workings of the security system, which Felix quickly learns with his all technological skills.
You play the part of demure daughter, quietly moving from room to room as your father’s men assemble your life according to his directions. You did not get to organize much of anything, but you don’t care. A wall is a wall, a bed a bed. But these walls offer privacy. That bed is a new haven.
It is just you and Felix.
Eventually the men leave, one by one. The move began in the morning, but it is late evening by the time Felix closes the door on the last departure. You wait while he does his security check, in the sitting area, standing at the floor-to-ceiling window that boasts a beautiful city skyline view. The outside of the window is a mirror, concealing your privacy, but you get to enjoy the twinkling city lights, the bustling world below that offers so much possibility. It is very different than your view back home, of a perfectly manicured and perfectly stagnant garden, the mansion isolated on a hill with no other souls for miles.
You remember your first night alone with Felix, how empty that house felt. Now when Felix joins you, the apartment feels full. It is brimming with life.
You look at him as he turns on a lamp, brightening the dim room with a cozy golden glow. The whole room feels warm. It is not eerie and empty like that house. You were living in a mausoleum of wealth, rotting away with distractions and half-living in what little remained. You feel golden and alive, now, here, with him.
He clears his throat. He was staring back at you, his regard as intense as yours. He turns aside now, peeling off his uniform blazer. He starts talking about dinner, suggestions for this and that, something about school, about going to campus tomorrow and finding your way around. A hundred topics, more distractions.
You say nothing so he continues to fill the silence with empty chatter. He uses his friendliest voice, though your thoughts are not merely friendly when you watch him unholster his gun, when he fiddles with the harness around his chest and pulls it free. He puts everything on the coffee table and sits on the couch, pretending to be very occupied with organizing it. He checks his gun as if something could be wrong with it, nimble fingers flicking through its mechanisms as he checks its assembly.
You sit beside him on the couch, watching him fiddle with it.
He says something about something. Asks a question, maybe. He is not really looking for an answer. You think his heart might be beating just as fast as yours, even though his hands are steady and his gaze is resolute.
“It doesn’t really matter what I want,” you say in a voice, sighing dramatically. “My dad says you’re in charge of me anyway, right?”
He clips the gun shut and puts it on the table. He looks at it for a minute, then exhales.
“Are we doing that now?” he asks dryly.
“I dunno, are we?” you ask, shuffling a little closer to him. He looks at you sideways then shakes his head. He puts his hands on his knees and strums his fingers. “Are you saying I can do what I want?” you ask.
“Uhh, that depends,” he says. Another strum. “What do you want?”
“A kiss.”
He looks at you, those dark eyes narrowed, his expression one of warning.
“Just one,” you say, batting the eyelashes that are apparently more persuasive than torture. He swallows and you smile. “Just one is fine, right?”
“You said just one a few times ago now,” he says dryly.
“No, you said that,” you say with an innocent smile. “I said just one for now. But now I’m saying just one, because I’m going to be a good girl.”
“Oh.” He looks amused now, nodding. “Are you? Really? Wow.”
“No sarcasm required, thank you,” you say. “I’m trying to avoid being disciplined, after all.”
His mouth draws into a thin line. He looks away and cracks his knuckles distractedly.
“Just one,” he finally says.
“Yes.” You nod and smile sweetly. “Just one.”
That one kiss lasts forty minutes. First you are side by side on the couch, the blue evening night outside the window colliding with the golden glow within. That blue light fades to black before long, but that golden warmth stays glowing. Heat similarly rises between you, soft pecks against soft lips turning to open-mouthed kisses that beg and satisfy with each deep touch.
He holds your face in both his hands when you tremble, keeping you steady, letting you melt into him. He moves when you tug at his shoulders, mutely imploring as you lay back on the couch, though he holds himself well above you, maintaining distance.
When his arms get tired, he lays back. He lets you crawl on top of him, and sighs, giving in, holding the back of your neck as you wrap your arms around him. You kiss again, wet and hot and hungry, losing time and sense.
You kiss until it shows, when his whole mouth is pink and his skin is flushed and he can barely keep his eyes open with the dreamy intoxication of it all. You are straddling his waist, hands on his chest, his holding your waist. A breath breaks the kiss when you settle right above where he is hard, the ridge of him in his denim fitting between your open thighs. You are wearing jeans too but the thick material does nothing for true modesty.
You settle there against him, fitting like perfectly slotted halves of a whole. His brow creases, a truly tortured expression that pours into bliss when he yields to desire. He holds your hips, keeping you there against him, and goes back to kissing you with long, slow presses, eyes closed and the occasional breath gentle.
Your fingers are in his hair, stroking at his nape. Lovely low sounds slip into his sighs. You can feel how desperately turned on and wanting you are, clenching around nothing if he so much as shifts. You imagine laying here like this with him inside you, not moving much, lazily kissing and joined together like you have all the time in the world. The very thought has you clenching again, whimpering into his mouth. It sounds a little pained so he strokes your back, under your shirt, making you shiver very noticeably.
“Are you okay?” he asks, with a completely shot voice, rough and low.
“Mhm,” you say. Words take a long time to come back to you. “Just… thinking…”
“About?”
“If we were kissing…”
“We are kissing,” he says with a chuckle, tracing circles on your spine
“And,” you say, pointedly, and press your knees into his hips. “If you were inside me while we did it.”
That makes his hand pause. Then he thunks his head back hard and fast, missing the cushion and hitting the arm of the couch. His eyes close and his face scrunches, newfound pain adding to his present torture, all of it making you giggle.
“You keep doing that,” you say, remembering him hitting his head in the car too.
“That’s because you…” He can’t even finish, he just makes a pained noise and shakes his head. It makes you laugh a little more, biting your own bruised lip as you look down at him. He cracks one eye open, his cheeks dimpling with the tug of a smile. He slides his hand far up your back, thumb finding the band of your bra and skirting it, then diving back down to your spine to settle just above your ass. “If I was inside you,” he says softly, “we would not just be kissing.”
It is your turn for a pained noise, hiding your face in his neck while he laughs.
“You can’t say things like that,” you whine. “That’s just mean.”
“Mhm.” He gives your ass a pat, making you wriggle on top of him. “Okay,” he says breathlessly. “That was one kiss. Or something. I think we’re done.”
“You’re the wooorst,” you say as he sits up. “I hate you so much. You’re so evil. You’re so sick and twisted—”
He just laughs, patting your sides and shaking his head. You only stop complaining when he kisses your nose, a sweet little peck. His smile is tender. He touches your cheek.
“Say it again,” he says.
“What? I hate you? Fine. There. I hate you.”
“One more time?” he teases, cupping your jaw, kissing your neck when you try and speak again. Your words get garbled and he laughs, shaking his head. “That’s what I thought,” he says. “Now up. I’m in charge. It’s time for dinner.”
“I can give you something to eat—”
“Up.” His tone is stern but he is still smiling. “Don’t be trouble.”
“Me?” you say. “When have I ever been trouble? I’m perfect.”
“Of course you are,” he says dryly. “I don’t know why I worried.”
“Exactly,” you say, running your fingers through his hair. Your eyes are locked, your smiles soft. You kiss his nose. “And I’m just getting started.”