Page 42 of The Associate
A voice, quiet but firm, cut through the static in his head.
“Look at me.”
His eyes snapped open.
Gael wasright there.In front of him. He had moved without a sound.
He stood a few inches away, his body angled towards Samuel’s. For one insane, hysterical second, he felt a bubble of wild, unhinged laughter rise in his throat. He didn’t let it out.
Thank fuck.
“You are having a panic attack.”
Gael stated it as a fact. His face was so close Samuel could see the faint, darker striations in his irises, the precise cut of each eyelash, the faint shadow of stubble along a jawline that looked carved from stone.
He could feel the warmth of Gael’s breath ghosting over his own slightly parted lips as he spoke. It sent a violent shiver through Samuel’s body, a shiver that had nothing to do with fear.
“Take a deep breath.”
Samuel’s lungs, which had been locked in spasm, expanded obediently. He dragged in a deep, shuddering pull of air, then held it, his eyes locked on Gael’s, trapped in that dark, unwavering gaze. He let it out in a slow, controlled stream, the sound of it too loud.
The thumb never stopped its circuit. A slow pass. Another. With each rotation, a little more of Samuel’s grip on the crumbling edge of reality loosened. The terror didn't vanish, but it was transformed, pushed back, and contained by that touch, that gaze. The panic became a distant storm; here, in the eye, there was only the thumb, the eyes, thebreath.
“That’s it.” Gael’s voice was lower now, a rumble that vibrated in the scant, charged space between them. His dark eyes held Samuel’s, unwavering, as Samuel breathed in and out again.
Then, a whisper. So soft it was almost a thought.“Good boy.”
The sound that escaped Samuel was raw. A tiny, broken, desperate thing, torn from a place deeper than shame or fear. In the silent, enclosed space, it echoed, a pathetic confession of a need he’d spent a lifetime burying.
He knew, in some distant corner of his mind, that he should be embarrassed. But he felt nothing of the sort. He feltnothingbut the weight of that hand and the echo of those words. He weighednothing. He was nothing but a vessel, hollowed out and waiting to be filled by that praise, held together only by the points of contact.
He was quite sure that the only reason he hadn’t dissolved into atoms, the only tether keeping him in the plane of the living, was the steady, relentless pressure of thatfuckinghand.
The low groan of machinery engaging shattered the fragile silence. A deep vibration shuddered through the floor, and with a lurch, the elevator began to descend again. The frozen11on the panel blinked and changed to10, then9.
But they didn’t move.
Samuel couldn’t have moved if the floor had given way. The descent was just noise. The truth was the dark eyes holding his, the thumbprint warmth lingering on his skin.
Gael’s voice cut through the hum, low and resonant.
“Once we reach the ground floor, you are going to exit the elevator.” A simple, inarguable directive. “You will go straight home.” Samuel’s mind, still floating in a formless haze, tried to grasp the concept of ‘home’. It seemed like a place from a story about someone else.
“You will make yourself a warm bath. Then, you will put on your pajamas and go to bed. You will not work. You will not think about anything. You will sleep.”
“Do you understand me, Samuel?”
Samuel blinked. The words reached his ears, clear and sharp, but they seemed to slide off the surface of his mind, failing to penetrate the dense, woolly static that had replaced his thoughts. He stared, blank, into Gael’s expectant face.
The hand moved.
The fingers, still resting at the base of his skull, tightened. The grip firmed, the elegant fingers pressing into the tendons of his neck.
“I asked you a question.”
The tone was harsher, a blade’s edge honed fine. The pressure of the fingers increased incrementally, a silent‘pay attention.’
The combination pierced the static. The fog in his brain burned away in an instant, leaving only crystalline, terrified clarity.
