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[angelhunter]

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[poleaxed]

The world comes back to her slowly. It smells like a garden; for once, the sound of trickling water doesn't remind her of leaky sinks. She sits up, rubs at her eyes, tries to move from the bed, and hits a cold wall. Glass. She's in a fishbowl.

What follows is an hour of pure, distilled rage. She feels like a beta fish smacking her head against glass because someone's put a mirror to it. She feels like an idiot. She feels trapped, and anger is so much safer than fear. Pounding on the walls, screaming at her listless companions, searching for the cameras and yelling in their direction-- she hopes. It takes time for her throat to go hoarse. Slowly, she runs out of steam. It feels like defeat. It makes her stomach churn, her blood boil. Rage curdles like milk within her, and she feels like she's choking on it.

And then the guy shows up, the almost charming, nearly interesting guy. She never should have taken his offer, never come to his house. But easy money was too much a lure, and now she's his pet. A trophy?

Her companions have tried to explain this experience. They've assured her nothing horrible has happened, nothing like she's asked. But people are never willing to admit the truth when they've been used. She doesn't believe them. They're chumps like her.

She presses herself against the glass, attempting to loom despite the wall separating them. Her height is all she has. "This is a fucking artistic sex dungeon."

[poleaxed]

She wakes from a dream of warmth-- her father, and if she just doesn't move, he'll continue to embrace her and nothing else-- to find herself restrained. Everything smells like pennies, and the wound on her face throbs. She'd like to touch it, but there's not enough slack in whatever's holding her down. Twisting to move, to look, barely works, and she feels hungover. It takes a long time-- lying there and fighting pointlessly against the restraints-- for her to realize Hap probably drugged her.

It would have been simpler if that syringe just held poison.

Her voice is hoarse when she calls. "Hap?" She tries again. "Hap!"

[angelhunter]

After returning him from the hospital and sitting down at his desk, the grey feed on his monitor like dingy glass in a mirror, Hap has time and space to think. It was outrageous, Joan's behavior. It's changed their relationship, irrevocably. But it doesn't have to adversely affect the work. Free of pretense, they can pursue it with renewed rigor.

It will mean gassing her regularly. That's the price she pays — Hap harbors no delusion that it will be a burden they share. Another opportunity for Joan to prove her strength.

For his own safety, Hap doses her before the tranquilizer is due to finish wearing off. His wrist in a cast and the purpose of the gas well-known to the others, he doesn't bother with hefting her into a wheelchair. Just walks her up the stairs as Homer and the rest jeer, invigorated by Joan's rebellion. In her bedroom, he straps each of her limbs to the bedframe. Electrodes applied, he draws the curtains closed on the window and leaves. Her readings alert him to her rousing shortly before she calls out.

Hap opens the door. Stepping through, he leaves it ajar. He looks into her eyes with his ambivalence held in check. To be cold would be showy. He has no reason to compensate for anything anymore.

"Hello, Joan."

[poleaxed]

She grins, and it hurts, but the pain is good. Pain gives you purpose. There isn't anything in the world that can't be bought with pain. She keeps grinning, even as a small part of her burns with worry: Don't make yourself uglier.

But they're bonded, now. No one else will ever see her again.

He hurt her, and she hurt him, and now they know each other. She stops struggling, because he wouldn't be here if struggling did her any good. He's afraid of her-- she has the upper hand in the best way, where he doesn't think she does.

"You look nice with a shiner." A boy said that to her once; it made her feel sick. Now, all she feels is power.

[angelhunter]

He responds with a small, disaffected scoff. Is that all she wanted? To make a mark on him where she could see? She could have run, scrounged up a weapon. She could have tried to bash his head in against the edge of the desk. Hap still doesn't believe she wouldn't bolt, presented with miles of potential freedom stretching out in all directions. There was no chance of clawing her way to the surface with the door at the top of the staircase secured. She had a little sense even in her rage, he'll give her that.

That makes the pettiness of her attack all the more idiotic. Proof of her pyrrhic victory will be gone in a few weeks.

"Try not to smile," he says, as it strains the butterfly stitches on her cheek. "You'll reopen the cut."

[poleaxed]

But if she does, he'll care for her. She thinks he likes that, either being in control or being allowed to be nurturing. She can't decide which, and bringing it up would be too petty. At the moment, she thinks she's being very magnanimous. Friendly, even. It's easy when she feels in control-- so why is it so hard for him?

"How bad is it?" She shifts her head one way, then the other, as though he hasn't seen it.

[angelhunter]

She seems hysterical, albeit mildly. Nothing in the cocktail of drugs he poured into her system over the day should have a positive effect on her mood. It must be the giddiness of having nothing left to lose. Uncertainty without responsibility is a high he's never experienced.

"Superficial. Stop that." Had she come by it accidentally, he'd have no qualms fetching a mirror to show her. "The scar should be practically invisible."

[mollified]

The process of being moved into Hap's house is not unlike being checked into prison. Bella hasn't ever been incarcerated herself, but she's familiar with the process. After the flight, and another car ride, Hap escorts her into a house, up stairs and through doorways, and finally into a room where he looses her wrists and lets her see her surroundings. A spare room with wood paneled walls that were chic before Isabella was born and dated immediately afterwards, bookcases with a thin dust that indicates disuse.

It doesn't look like a room where he kills people. It doesn't even look like a cell. It looks like a place things are put to be forgotten about.

He has her (makes her? She's still compliant, rarely doing more than pausing to indicate unhappiness with a command) unpack in front of him. She watches him sort through her toiletries, her now-useless phone charger, her clothing, her wallet. The little life she brought with her to see him. In prison, they'd bag it up and keep it for your eventual release; when Hap takes something, she expects she'll never see it again. At least he leaves all her clothes, including her belt and shoes. Two cocktail dresses, one of which she's wearing, one pair of slacks, a button-down, and three stupidly expensive lingerie sets. Wonderful.

Then there's her journals. Of course, he looks through them. Bella watches his face as he flips pages, trying to read his reactions and wondering if her own anger at the invasion is showing on her face. Both of them -- her personal daily journal and the notes she keeps for her work under Ibarra -- mention him more than once, but she can't remember everything she wrote. Hap's expression tells her nothing.

(Self-described control freak is in there, beside Regular contact so he feels exclusive. On one day she wrote, He seems like he might have been married but I can't imagine it ended well. On another day, she wrote, Thank god I have Hap to look forward to.)

It's a surprise when he lets her keep those, along with a pen. If she were less exhausted, it might even be a pleasant surprise. As is, she murmurs a "thank you" and puts them next to the pillows on the untouched bed. And with very little more than that, Hap leaves.

Bella takes off her dress, lies down in her bra and underwear, and sleeps for ten and a half hours.

The next day begins their routine. Hap must have a schedule he's keeping to, Bella realizes, with her meal times and supervised bathroom and hygiene trips carefully timed. That makes sense. There's never been a night or a weekend they spent together where it wasn't clear that Hap had a plan worked out in advance. And, of course, this isn't the first time he's kidnapped someone.

She thinks about that a lot. Not much else to do. Read the old medical journals on the shelves, keep notes on what time she thinks it is when he lets her go to the bathroom, listen to the sound of trees outside and the sound of power tools inside. Think about murder. Occasionally, frighteningly, dissociate for a while. Get mad. Get hopeless. Do it all again, with minor variations when Hap is late for a bathroom trip, or when she wakes up in the middle of the day from a bad dream of falling.

Until there's a major variation. Hap comes to the room -- she's wearing the same dress she arrived in, having been rotating through her outfits for some semblance of normalcy -- and invites her out into the house. For dinner, he says. They need to talk.

[angelhunter]

Bella dozes off in the air. Hap doesn't get to. Crossing the threshold into his home, his vigilance finally begins to wane, and by the time he's ushering her into the guest room, he's tired. Hap's had longer days but those flew by in a flurry of curiosity and pursuit. This one, every minute weighed on him. And, while they may be safe, it's not done.

He decides he'll get everything over with tonight instead of dragging this out into the morning. If he rushes, he could miss something, so he has her do the unpacking while he observes. Once he's confiscated the items deemed risky (most toiletries) and useless (wallet, charger and suitcase), he flips through her notebook for an idea of its contents. His eyes catch on his name twice; he reads that he's a regular and might have been married. If there's more, he'll discover it later. It's harmless, as long as she abides by the rule that the pen she uses with it is never to be out of sight when the door is open.

His casual violation of her privacy has a point: That privacy no longer exists. She shouldn't be surprised when she takes notice of the camera in the corner of her room.

Hap would thank her or bid her goodnight, but the thanks she gives him, barely above a whisper, renders any of his own gratitude insulting. What should he thank her for, anyway? All she's done is survive.

That night, he watches a feed of her on his second monitor. On his first, he orders security glazing for the windows and over a dozen locks. He expedites the latter. The former arrives as those installations are completed. With the run of luck he's having, of course Bella's abduction coincides with Rachel's session. That day, he nearly forgets about his newest captive entirely. It's not the last time that happens. He was a younger man the last time he had to be this attentive to victim.

Two and a half weeks of work, and the house is ready. Hap spends the day cleaning up and then cooking an old favorite, penne alfredo with blackened cajun chicken. Wine is a consideration he decides against. Any rational person in her position would be forgiven for diving straight to the bottom of the bottle. Similarly, he'd understand if she refused his invitation out of spite — but he does expect better from her and she doesn't disappoint.

Retrieving her, he checks for the pen and gives a mild, approving smile upon sight. Hap leads her out with an outstretched hand, telling her the way to the kitchen. He does his engineering work in what was long ago the dining room. There's a small table tucked against the wall as one enters the kitchen, usually half-laden with cookware or tools. He's cleared it and set it for two, meals portioned and waiting.

"Have a seat." He won't go so far as to pull her chair out for her, like he would on their dates. The last thing he wants is for her to think that he thinks this is anything like that.

[mollified]

Bella catches herself moving haltingly on the way to the kitchen, like her body isn't entirely sure whether to freeze or flee, to go back to the guest room or follow the now-familiar path to the bathroom. She knows her body well -- she's no athlete or dancer, but as someone who has sex and gets hit for money, she's learned a fair amount about her own physicality. The confinement, followed by this unexpected invitation out, has put her out of touch with her own muscles. It feels strange. In the kitchen, she almost bangs her hip on the counter, and she stops dead for a moment to take a deep breath and refocus.

The breath comes with the scent of the food: garlic and cream, spices, char. Her stomach growls audibly. Glancing at Hap, she moves slowly to take one of the chairs. Once seated, she puts her hands flat on the table on either side of her dish, and watches him, rather than make any move towards the food.

(She has never felt more aware of Hap's body in relation to hers. The man has bathed with her, for Christ's sake, and she wasn't paying such close attention to how he moved through space then as she is now.)

For all her nerves, and she is very nervous, she's curious, too. This is a test, the way leaving her with the pen was a test, the way Tommy Menon leaning on her desk was a test, the way Ibarra introducing her to her first client was a test. Bella wants to pass it.

Where to even begin?

"Are we talking first?"

[angelhunter]

Shadowing her, attuned to her, he can't help but notice that the fluidity of her gait has been drained. His fingers twitch, hands ready to whip out and grab her if she makes a sudden movement. One hovers inches from her mid-back all the way. Meanwhile, Hap doesn't realize his teeth are clenched until Bella sits and his jaw relaxes. Minding her in his periphery, he fills each of their glasses from a pitcher of water, then seats himself across from her.

Hap has provided her with a fork and butter knife. He gets the same. The chicken has been served sliced into strips.

"If you want," he says. Hap sips his water and sets it down. "First I'd like to apologize for neglecting you, well, more than once or twice these past couple weeks."

[mollified]

Bella's eyebrows go up at that, and stay up as her eyes flicker over Hap's face. She has the air of someone considering multiple choice answers.

She finally settles on a slow, "You didn't let me starve to death, so I think I can forgive you."

(For a moment, a mean part of her considers adding something like and I didn't go into insulin shock -- something just to see if she can make him jump. But she discards the idea. If she actually needed any medications, he would have noticed at some point previously, and lying out of sheer pettiness is unlikely to score her any points.)

"And if you were going to put anything in my food, you had plenty of opportunities," she continues, "so this is ... just dinner."

She mirrors him, picking up her water and taking a drink, then wraps both hands around the glass and holds it. It feels important that he be able to see her hands when she makes her next observation.

"And you gave me a fork."

[angelhunter]

She doesn't have to forgive him, she just has to know it's not behavior he's proud of. Regardless, he flashes a cursory half-smile. She heard him out and that's enough.

Hap watches her move. Her earlier stiltedness is under control. She must want to look all around, clock all the windows and doors, scan the counter for a knife block. She's showing remarkable restraint.

"I didn't make soup," he responds to her observation. Hap rests his hands on the table, visible to her in kind. They open towards her as he explains, "The house is locked down. You won't break the windows, you won't guess the codes to any of the locks. Or to my phone. I trust you remember what I told you in the car."

He dies, they starve. But now, she starves along with them, beneath the stench of a rotting corpse.

[Stockholm] a phone call

[mollified]

For the first time in a long time, Hap's phone lights up with the number of one Madam Ibarra, proprietress of the Bower in Iron City.

This would be unusual at the best of times. Generally, clients call her, not the other way around. But the fact that it's been a good eight months since Hap bought Bella's contract off of Ibarra makes this particularly odd.

[angelhunter]

Except for the occasional chat over dinner, Hap has forgotten entirely about Ibarra. Early on, he waited for her to call. It wouldn't have surprised him if she had an established system to ensure the safety of her former employees — to reclaim her misused assets, if nothing else. Radio silence. That doesn't appear to matter to Ibarra, or she receives buyouts so rarely it doesn't merit overextending herself, or some other reason altogether. Hap doesn't care. By the second month, he dares to believe he might be off the hook, and by the third, he's certain of it.

(That's not what he planned for, of course. He went over how Bella was to respond and inferred the consequences of going off-script in the event Ibarra wanted to talk to her.)

Now they're the better part of a year into Bella's no-longer-new position with him and out of nowhere Ibarra has scrounged up something to say. The call is one ring away from going to voicemail before he deigns to answer, smoothing the sneer off his face and out of his voice.

"Ibarra," he greets her with the familiarity of a colleague. "How long has it been?" Rhetorical. "What can I do for you?"

[mollified]

"Dr. Percy. What a pleasure to hear your voice again."

She does not sound overtly pleased. Her tone is as professional as ever: cool and refined, cordial without familiarity. A woman who deals in jewels, not flesh.

"I hope business is going well. I wanted to ask, are you still in touch with Bella?"

Neither of them are here for chit-chat.

[angelhunter]

She sounds as enthused to talk to him as he feels having to talk to her. This is something she must do, a task to be accomplished, an obligation perhaps. If he reaches back, he can recall something of the sort promised on the day he took Bella. A seed of intrigue that went unnurtured and became lost among the dirt of irrelevant memories.

Holding the phone to his ear, he exits his study and attempts to track down Bella within the house.

"I am," he says to announce his presence. "We're living together but I'm afraid she's out at the moment."

This would be part of it, if she were to speak to Ibarra: Bella surrendering financial and social control to him. An evolution of their arrangement into a complete, structured lifestyle.

[mollified]

"Oh, I see." Actual surprise bleeds through Ibarra's tone. "That's wonderful to hear."

In her bedroom, Bella hears Hap's voice, and she's out at the moment. That's a strange enough thing to hear that she closes her pen into her notebook, absently, and gets up from her bed to go to the door.

"Will she able to call me back?" Ibarra continues to Hap. "A friend of a friend of hers is trying to get in touch."

[angelhunter]

His teeth clench in silence at Ibarra's token approval. Evidently her lack of follow-up hadn't been due to thinking Bella and Hap were a great fit. The irritation is still on his face when Bella emerges. Hap angles the phone away from his ear to hover his thumb over the button that ends the call.

Don't be stupid now.

"I'll take a message." Hap resumes a congenial tone when he offers, "No point wasting time with telephone tag."

[mollified]

Previously.

Got time for happy hour?

There's a cadence to Hap and Bella's arrangement. He comes into town every few months, and they meet, for a night or a day or a weekend as Hap's schedule permits. In between, they talk, usually with Bella initiating: long-distance flirting and phone sex interwoven with less erotic but no less intimate conversation. Tension winds back and forth between them until it sings a high, steely note when plucked. They see each other, go to bed together; the tension snaps and releases with a twang and a sigh, and the cycle begins again when Hap takes off for home.

Until last time, when Hap came to town and Bella, instead of laying herself in his hands, introduced him to Mel.

When it wasn't after midnight, and Bella was able to reread their conversation with a clearer head, she found the whole thing annoying and embarrassing and wryly amusing in about equal measure. She's fairly sure she knows where she went wrong. Hap likes being the center of her attention, and offering to make him the center of someone else's didn't please him. He called her bluff -- which wasn't a bluff, she continues to tell herself -- and now they both have to deal with that.

If he expects her to do anything less than her best by him, though, she thinks he doesn't know her at all. Mel is a very good top, serious and attentive, fairly flexible. Though, she categorically doesn't submit to men, as far as Bella knows. Still, if Hap enjoys a craftsperson, he'll like her. Bella does. And Bella will be satisfied with a job well done.

This does not stop her from finding the introduction mildly excruciating. It's the way Hap smiles at Mel, all charm and interest, genuine interest, the way he takes off his glasses to lean in and talk with Mel, as if Bella is a pretty personal assistant who can be politely ignored. As soon as handshakes have been exchanged, Bella excuses herself and goes off to be grumpy in the Bower's upstairs common room.

And over the next few weeks, she does not text Hap.

The distance does actually help, she finds. Fine. She can admit to a crush. Not the first time for someone in her line of work, and ultimately harmless as long as it doesn't go too far. Good for both of them to take a step back, probably. Make sure her other regulars feel seen to. Chip away at her debt and sock away contacts and information for a rainy day.

Yet the tension still builds. Slower, in the background, but there, a pianissimo tone rising up the octave. And when Bella gets wind that Hap is coming to town again -- to see Mel -- she decides, why not? See how he is. See how she feels, seeing him. And he'll be with Mel in the evening, so there will be a natural end to the afternoon.

This place has good specials.

The place she suggests is one where they once nearly made a scene with a customized phone app.

So her reasons aren't devoid of pettiness. Sue her.

[angelhunter]

Hap, on the other hand, cannot admit to a crush. At most, he admits to a fondness, which isn't a revelation. He is distinctly unfond of most people. Nothing changed there; he finds himself nursing no nascent fondness for Mel. Instead, he develops a quick respect for her. She is professional and exacting, the same woman in front of the door as she is behind it. He's the one who transforms. He divests himself of all the patience a decent man is expected to have for the world. He makes his experience abundantly clear and demands Mel keep up with him.

She has no problem accomplishing that.

They work well together, meeting and parting on good if not amicable terms. Hap gets his, Mel takes hers. Staggeringly. She immediately clocked how much pleasure he takes from a satisfied partner, and with every session she refines her methods of keeping him in line. Considering how his unruliness has steadily escalated, she might think that he was testing the waters at the start of their arrangement. The longer he goes without a certain notification, the more correction Mel is required to provide. No one loses.

Except Bella.

It hasn't been as long as it feels. He won't waste energy contemplating what he'll do if she never messages him. He does waste it fantasizing about arranging an evening with Mel only for Ibarra to tell him she's booked — but his former favorite is available. He could decline but there would be no guarantee of Bella hearing about it. Accept, then, to cancel at the last minute. Pay up for the full experience anyway. And then, finally, things could go back to normal.

He's a little put out when Bella obviates those intentions. Immediately, he recovers. The stage for them never would have materialized anyway, nor would he resort to such pettiness. He's glad to hear from her. Now he can declutter his mind of pointless delusions.

"I can squeeze you in," he could say. Surely she knows his schedule for the night. In which case she's acting a bit small, herself. Easy, then, not to take that road.

I'll meet you at the bar.

[mollified]

Bella's phone chirps. When she opens it up to see Hap's name and message, her heart thuds with sudden adrenaline.

She would love it if it didn't do that. God. Okay.

Without thinking too hard about it, she taps a ♥ on his text before tucking her phone away again.

What do you want, Bella? Be honest with yourself, at least. Be specific and then build a plan. She wants to see him and talk with him, like before, to enjoy his company for its own sake. She wants to know how he likes Mel, for the Bower's sake, for Mel's sake; not for her own, God knows, because if she's honest she knows it'll sting if he's happier seeing Mel than her. That's a possibility she needs to anticipate, even if it's frustrating to accept.

She wants him to know she missed him. But not too much. And by God she wants him to miss her, as much as possible.

Bella picks an outfit with meticulous care, and asks Peter for a ride.

Gray afternoon light filters in through the big front windows of the restaurant, diffusing through the cloud cover and making every passerby's shadow into a thin, blurred smudge. Inside, the host stand is unattended; servers and hostess chat by the kitchen. The bartender moves back and forth at her station, greeting patrons when they enter -- welcome in, sit anywhere, be with you in a sec -- the busiest part of an otherwise quiet establishment.

Bella comes in wrapped in a trench coat against the day's chill, heels clicking softly, and acknowledges the bartender's greeting with a smile. Her eyes are roaming the restaurant, though, looking for Hap. If she got her timing right, she'd expect him to have gotten here a few minutes before her.

[angelhunter]

Hap dresses for Mel the same as he dresses for Bella. Comfortably refined. Dark colors with a pop of blue in his scarf, hanging with his coat on the pegs in the adjacent wall. Hap orders for them both as soon as he sits down. A gin and tonic, and an Old Fashioned. Regardless of how she feels about him, she wouldn't stand him up. His relief upon seeing her doesn't stem from that juvenile a concern. It's reprieve from longing. He wouldn't go so far as to call it an end.

Smiling, Hap slips off of his seat and offers his hands to take her coat.

"Allow me."

[mollified]

A smile breaks across her face when she spots him, warm and artless. When she comes close enough to clock that he's ordered her drink, her smile goes crooked with amusement, and she gives him a pleased look.

"Hi, Hap."

She submits to letting him take her coat, turning her back so he can slip it off her shoulders. Underneath, she's wearing a simple black dress, knee-length skirt, elbow-length sleeves. It dips in front enough to show a little décolletage, flirtatious without being scandalous; on the other hand, the neckline scoops lower in the back, to show spine and shoulder blades and bare skin under the fall of her hair.

Most importantly, to Bella, there are visible, fading bruises on her wrists, on display when she takes a seat and reaches for the G&T.

"It's really good to see you again."

[angelhunter]

Bella has dressed to kill. Hap expected nothing less. It's a privilege to unveil her, hair spilling down her back as he steps away to hang her coat up beside his. Returning to her, his gaze catches on her bruises. That privilege of his turns sharply sour. He covers with two rapid blinks as he joins her.

It's the first time she's brought evidence of another date to one of theirs, if that's even what this is. It feels as heady as one, all of a sudden.

"It's good to see you too," he tells her. Despite his disdain for it, Hap is practiced at small talk, and it comes as almost as effortlessly as ever. "I didn't realize how long it's been until I got your message."