𝐑𝐮𝐧𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲 |𝟏𝟖+

28 || Tunnel Vision

I was trained to detect and eliminate any threat that could arise human emotion. But there was one minor miscalculation my benefactors failed to account for.

There was no escaping the human mind. More so, the cognitive responses and behavioral changes evoked from certain events - aka primary emotions.

Fear, joy, disgust, sadness, surprise and most importantly, anger.

I was a psychologists wet dream.

I owed a lot to that minor miscalculation, it'd gotten me my freedom. But that's not to say that it didn't come with its own set of struggles.

Primary emotions may have been a natural neurological response to most, but I hadn't been given the opportunity to properly exercise them.

Anger and fear were the worst of them.

I'd tried everything to overcome them; therapists, psychologists, doctors. But there was no escaping my own mind and I'd quickly realized that there was only one thing that could keep my emotions in check.

The goal.

Paradise.

Joy had quickly faded, leaving sadness and disgust which dulled as time went on.

But there were moments, moments like this morning that threatened to crack what I'd worked so hard to build.

The door had just clicked shut and my fingers turned the lock, locking her out as the bomb inside my mind detonated.

I threw my phone onto the counter - the ringing still loud as I turned the dial of the shower until the water was scalding hot.

But I stayed there, pacing back and forth in the bathroom as the walls slowly caved in.

My breathing was too fucking heavy and annoying in my own ears but I couldn't get it to fucking calm down.

"This." He stared down at me, using the lit cigarette between his fingers to point between us. "This is what they call love out there."

He dropped to his haunches and grabbed my face. I was certain he liked the sight of the water that leaked from my eyes. He'd called them tears. "Did you like it?"

I shook my head and he smiled, moving forward and placing a kiss atop the dirty dampened skin of my forehead. "Then there's no reason to want it."

And with that, he stood up, "I take care of you."

He adjusted the .45 caliber in his waistband. "I provide for you."

He turned away from me, "You belong to me and only me."And walked out of the room, flicking his cigarette onto the ground.

His cigarette that he never bothered to put out.

I reach behind me and dig my nails into the skin of my shoulder, while I force my mind somewhere else, anywhere else.

Fuck, I needed a cigarette-

"Nico?"

The sound echoed beyond the locked bathroom door, past the ringing of the phone and through the rainfall of the shower, unmistakably timid and sweet.