Redemption (Midas x Reader)

• XXIV •

"Don't...don't touch m...me..." I managed to eke out, just barely. I was clumsily attempting to get the car door open, frantically feeling for the handle with my fingers in the dim light from the dash.

"Oh, God, I'm...I'm so sorry, I just...I just lost it...of course it's not your fault, if anything it's mine, I dragged you to that restaurant. Please Y/N, I didn't mean to upset you so badly, I should never have spoken to you that way...please forgive me..."

I heard him remove his seat belt before I felt him gently prodding at my back again, testing to see if I'd allow it. His honeyed words, dripping sweetly through that accent, had begun to calm me, and I ceased my escape attempts as I leaned back into his hand.

"May I hold you?" he asked softly, rubbing my shoulder.

"Y...yes," I answered him, my voice nothing more than a raspy whisper.

He unbuckled me, disentangling my limbs from the seat belt, before pulling me over into his lap, my legs trailing across the gearshift. I nuzzled my moist face into his neck as he squeezed me against his chest with one arm, the other hand soothingly rubbing back and forth across the outside of my bare thigh.

"I need to know that you're ok," he whispered in my ear, head rested atop mine. "That's the only thing that's important to me. I love you, Y/N...the thought of him putting his hands on you just...it just made me crazy. I'll take care of him later, right now my only concern is you."

I leaned back to look at him, sniffling slightly as my tears began to slow. The lights from the dash were reflected in his glasses, obscuring his eyes, and I reached up and slipped them off so that I could see him, setting them aside.

He'd turned the headlights off when he'd pulled over, and I couldn't see a thing outside of the car in the pitch black, no street lights, no soft glow of a house light through a distant window. We were in the middle of nowhere, Midas having driven us out of the way to lose the paparazzi. We hadn't even seen a single car since we'd left Lazy Lake.

"He didn't hurt me, Midas," I said reassuringly, making an effort to try to temper his worry. "I felt like he was...warning me almost, like he came there just to prove that he could. To let me know that I'd never be safe."

And to tell me to be wary of YOU.

I'd left out that part of the story, neglecting to mention the real warning I'd received. Because it had to be bullshit, just a scare tactic to make up for the fact that he couldn't outright kill me anymore. Midas was a lot of things, but a monster was most assuredly not one of them.

"I...I want to still tell you you'll be safe with me but..." Midas said, hesitating briefly with his eyes downcast, as though he'd read my mind, "...if I'm being honest, the first thought I had when...when I came back and saw you lying on that balcony...was that I had hurt you. It scared the hell out of me."

His hand had moved from my thigh to my face, caressing my cheek, as his eyes lifted to meet mine. There was an almost hopeless despondency in them, and I felt the sudden need to prove that I trusted him, reaching up to grab his hand and beginning to pull off his glove, one finger at a time.

He opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off by tenderly placing my lips on his, feeling him relax as he gave in. I didn't pull away until the glove was off, and I had placed his gilded hand on my chest over my heart, over my scar.

"I know you'd never hurt me intentionally, Midas. You're nothing like them," I spoke, as I pressed his hand harder into the S. I was feeling emboldened, and trying to convince myself, just as much as him, that I believed it.