abc prompts; k+s: killers

[fishie]

"You're full of shit, Harper."

So he is awake.

She glances his way as she slides one leg into her jeans. He has the nerve to be lounging naked on his side, stretched out along the mattress like she can't (like it wouldn't simplify her life immensely, like she doesn't have a hundred thousand reasons to) end him in under five minutes. Unguarded, unconcerned, unfairly attractive. She hates him.

"You sure know how to romance a girl," she sneers, shimmying into snug denim. "Haven't even talked to you this morning and I'm already full of shit, huh?"

His eyes roll, dark and low-lidded, and they take too long to return to her. He's not even fully awake yet, the son-of-a-bitch, and he's lying there chatting with no apparent interest in self-preservation.

"You think if you never stick around to say goodbye, it'll keep meaning nothing?" He props his head on one hand.

She's still half-naked and those steady eyes on her face, drinking her in like it's not her naked body he wants, like there's something else, something more — they make her skin crawl. She can't find her bra.

He leans over the side of the bed and tosses her a flash of red satin. Now he's reading her mind. She wants to strangle him.

She clips her bra behind her back and slides the straps on, adjusting herself without looking his way. She knows he's still watching her face. Lucky for her, her training means she's giving nothing away.

Somehow, he knows anyway. "You can't be a human being in bed and a machine the next morning." The set of his jaw is audible. Good. She's getting to him. "It doesn't work like that. You can't just turn it on and off."

"Says who?" she snaps when her temper gets the better of her. They both knew it wouldn't take long.

"You think I don't get it?" He's all clipped consonants and terse tones now, too, as he sits up. The sheet pools in his lap. "Just because I quit playing before you, doesn't mean I don't remember the game. I did this, too, Harper."

She can't get dressed fast enough. "Did what? What is it you think I'm doing?" A few stitches in the hem of her shirt pop when she yanks it forcibly down over her. "Pretending this is just a good fuck? Pretending I can have sex with you and feel nothing? Don't flatter yourself."

She wants him to flinch like she's hitting him. She wants these words to take the breath out of him like they take the breath out of her, but he's unmoved as ever. He just watches her raise her voice until she's shouting from deep in her stomach, nauseous with the effort.

"I'm not pretending. You mean literally nothing to me, Thompson; you never have and you never will. Whatever you think is going on here? It's not. Whatever it is you feel for me —" she spits the words out as fast as she can, desperate to get them out of her mouth, and then she stops because she needs to breathe. She needs some fresh air. The hotel room smells like sex and his aftershave and she's never been so starved for oxygen.

And he still hasn't moved.

"Go on," he says lowly. Is that the tone he uses when he's delivering threats for his employers? Is that the last voice his victims hear? She hopes so. "Tell yourself what I do or don't feel. Tell yourself whatever you need to hear to walk out of here."

She seethes. "You're deluding yourself. There's nothing here for you."

"Keep going."

Her gun is in arm's reach. She doesn't look at it, doesn't make a move for it. She keeps going.

"I see the way you look at me." For the first time, his expression shifts. Maybe it's surprise, maybe it's something else. She's forgotten how to read a face. "You don't watch me dress, you don't look at my body — you watch my face when we fuck."

He's watching her face now, searching every inch of it. It makes something inside her clench tight, twist.

"You want something from me that I don't have," she grates. "You want —"

She's choking on the words.

He isn't.

"You. I want you," he says. His voice is as steady as the rest of him. "I want you to stay."

"I'm leaving." She nearly interrupts him, the syllables tumbling over each other in her rush to say it. "You don't want me."

She picks up her gun, then, and it's too late to use it because her hands — her expert hands, her stone-cold hands are a wreck like the rest of her. They shake as she collects her shoes, pulls them on one at a time while each leg threatens to give out under her.

Then her hand's on the doorknob and she's so close to getting out of here intact, so close to saving herself, but he's finally out of bed, zipping up his jeans as he crosses the room.

He plants a hand on the door while her focus sharpens down to his proximity, the seven different ways she could force him away from her without even turning around and the nine ways he could incapacitate her from right where he's standing.

And she's not afraid.

She's not afraid, and it's got nothing to do with years of training or acquired skill, nothing to do with her kill count or her reputation. She's not afraid because (it hits her like a blow to the ribcage, like something shattering bone, like bone puncturing lungs, like the air rushing out of her and leaving her gasping)

— he won't hurt her.

He takes his hand off the door and he gathers her hair off one shoulder, pulls it aside with the gentlest hands she swears she's ever felt. Those hands have taken countless lives, have destroyed families and fortunes and futures, and they are so, so sweet.

The shaking has infected the rest of her, from her hands to her heart, her stomach to her knees. She's running out of options.

"Stop touching me," she whispers.

He's never listened to her before. He doesn't start now. He wraps an arm around her waist and turns her to face him, settles his hands on her hips. He holds her gaze.

"Look me in the eye and tell me you don't love me," he says, and she knows she's finished.

She looks him in the eye and understands nothing she sees there. "And then what?" Her voice is still a whisper, tight and strangled. "What happens after I tell you?"

"I let you go," he answers simply.

She looks him in the eye for a long while. The shaking won't subside. His grip is as slow and sure as ever, just the way she's sure they are when he kills someone, like he's killing her now.

Slowly, she shakes her head. It feels like a long time before she finds the words that go with it. "I... can't."

"I know."

She thinks she might be sick. He pulls her in until she puts her hands up to stop him, fingertips trembling against his bare chest.

"I know," he repeats. "I know you. I knew you couldn't lie if I made you look at me."

"That's not fair," she says weakly. "You're exploiting me because you can't make me love you."

He laughs, then. She's never heard it before. The sound drags her eyes back to his face.

"I'm exploiting you because I can't make you say you love me." He's almost smiling, mostly smirking. He's smug and she wants to kiss his mouth. Nothing about the two of them makes sense. "I know you love me. If you won't say it yet, I'll make you stay until you do."

She finds something in her to push against him, break his hold on her waist. "I have a job tonight." She almost sounds normal again. "I can't stay."

"Then I'll make you come back." He's let her go now, and she's opening the door behind her back. He's still smug. "You're full of shit, Harper."

Now she laughs, incredulous and relieved. "Why would I come back to this?"

The air in the hallway is fresh and cool. She breathes again.