12. Eleven
The ketamine hit harder than I expected, turning my limbs to lead and my thoughts to static. I watched my hands pack the suitcase like they belonged to someone else, trying not to remember the way Ash's fingers had felt against my skin just hours ago. The ketamine made everything feel distant, disconnected, like I was watching a stranger try to fit themselves into shapes that were too rigid, too defined. Sometimes the drugs made it easier to exist in my own body. Sometimes they just made the dysphoria worse.
I'd started using K to quiet my mind back when the BPD diagnosis was still fresh, when every emotion felt like drowning and every rejection like dying. Papa had caught me once, tears streaming down my face as I tried to explain how sometimes existing in my own skin felt impossible. He'd listened as I struggled to articulate feelings I barely understood myself—how some days the mirror showed a stranger, how the labels others gave me felt like chains. He hadn't tried to categorize or explain; he'd just held me while I cried. But he wasn't here now, and Ash's rejection burned worse than any withdrawal.
My hands shook as I stuffed another shirt into the suitcase, the fabric blurring in front of my eyes. I couldn't stop thinking about the heat in his gaze, the possessive grip of his hands, the way he'd touched me like he owned me before pulling away. Before choosing the mission over what I needed.
Xavier leaned against my doorframe, his expression perfectly controlled as he watched me with those calculating eyes. Not worried, but analyzing. Cataloging every expression, every tremor of my hands as I stuffed another shirt into the suitcase. His fingers tapped a precise rhythm against the wood, the same pattern he used when coding. When taking things apart to see how they worked. Sometimes, Xavier’s detached stare scared the hell out of me.
"Flight's not for six hours," he said, voice clinically neutral. "You don't need to leave yet." His eyes never stopped their methodical assessment, tracking each unsteady movement like he was updating some internal database of my behaviors. "It's barely past midnight."
I wasn't sure of anything anymore. The ketamine had started to take full effect. My limbs felt like they were made of rubber, and the world around me was blurring into soft edges. But even through the haze, I could feel Xavier's focus sharpen. Could feel him categorizing my responses, filing away each detail for future reference. For future control.
Paris wasn't real to me anymore. The mission wasn't real. Nothing felt real except the ghost of Ash's touch on my skin and the crushing weight of his rejection. I kept stuffing clothes into the suitcase, but the task felt like a formality, like I was pretending to care. My phone buzzed on the bed. Probably Algerone checking to make sure I'd be there. I didn't care.
I slammed the suitcase shut with more force than necessary, nearly toppling over with the momentum. Everything felt wrong, like my skin was too tight, like I was coming apart at the seams. The ketamine wasn't enough. Nothing was enough to make this stop hurting.
"You're bleeding," Xavier said.
I looked down to find I'd caught my hand in the suitcase zipper, blood welling up from torn skin. I hadn't even felt it. I couldn't feel anything except the echoing emptiness where Ash's touch had been.
"Jesus Christ." Xavier crossed the room in two quick strides, grabbing my wrist. "That's deep, Dee. Come on." He dragged me to the bathroom, muttering under his breath about my self-destructive tendencies.
I let him clean and bandage my hand, watching with detached fascination as the white gauze slowly stained red. Xavier's hands were gentle, but his jaw was tight with worry. He'd always been like this, taking care of me when I couldn't care for myself.
"You're not okay," he said finally, taping down the last edge of the bandage. "And don't tell me it's just the drugs."
I couldn't meet his eyes. "Can we just go?"
He sighed, heavy and resigned. "Yeah. We can go."
The drive to the airport passed in a blur of streetlights and silence. I couldn't stop moving. My legs wouldn’t stop bouncing, fingers wouldn’t stop tapping, anything to keep from drowning in the memories of Ash's hands on me, his voice in my ear, the way he'd made me feel like I belonged to him before letting me go. The bandage on my hand was already starting to come loose from my constant fidgeting, but I couldn't make myself stay still.
Security was a nightmare of paranoia and forced steadiness. The TSA agent's voice echoed like it was coming from underwater as she examined my documentation. I focused on the mechanical aspects of passing through security. Shoes off. Laptop out. Smile fixed in place. The ketamine made everything feel distant, dreamlike. I caught my reflection in a window and barely recognized myself. The person staring back looked too neatly categorized, too easily defined. Nothing like the chaos screaming inside my head. Even through the ketamine haze, I felt that familiar disconnect between what others saw and who I knew myself to be. I wondered if this was what Xion felt during his schizophrenic episodes, this disconnect between inner reality and outer presentation.
I nearly walked away three times, but the thought of disappointing Ash again kept me moving forward. Even if he didn't want me, even if I wasn't enough, I could at least do this one thing right.
The terminal was too bright, too loud, too everything. I collapsed into a chair near the window, pulling my knees to my chest like I could hold myself together through sheer force of will. My phone had seventeen missed calls. Xavier, Algerone, unknown numbers that might have been Ash. I deleted them all without looking.
"You look like shit."
The voice cut through my haze like a knife, making me jerk upright. Ash stood there, looking exactly like he had in his office: dangerous and beautiful and everything I couldn't have.
His presence hit me like a physical force, all contained power and barely leashed violence. This was the Ash I'd first met in that training room, the one who could read every tell, every weakness. The one who saw past all my carefully constructed masks to the person underneath. Not the boxes others tried to put me in, but all of who I was. That recognition terrified me more than his anger ever could.
Part of me wanted to run before he could see how broken I really was. The rest of me wanted to collapse into his strength, let him put me back together however he saw fit. It was too much, too fast, too real.
His eyes narrowed as they swept over me, catching every detail I was trying to hide. "What did you take?"
No preamble, no greeting. Just that dangerous quiet that meant I was in trouble. I tried to look away, but his hand shot out, gripping my chin with bruising force.
"Answer me, Xander. What. Did. You. Take?"
"Does it matter?" His grip only tightened when I tried to pull away. "You made it pretty clear last night that what I do with my body isn't your concern."
His jaw clenched, something dark flashing in his eyes. "Last night was—" He cut himself off, thumb pressing harder against my jaw. "This isn't about that. This is about you being too high to function."
I laughed, the sound sharp and broken. "Maybe that's the point. Maybe I don't want to function. Maybe I just want to stop feeling like this for five fucking minutes."
"Like what?" His voice dropped lower, careful of the early morning travelers around us.
The concern in his voice made something crack in my chest. "Don't. Don't act like you care when you pushed me away."
His eyes darted around the terminal—checking for witnesses, I realized bitterly—before he leaned in closer, keeping a deliberate distance between our bodies even as his presence overwhelmed me. "You think I wanted to push you away?" His voice was barely above a whisper, strained with something I couldn't read. "You think I haven't spent every minute since you left my office trying to..." He cut himself off, jaw clenching as a family with children walked past.
The hesitation in his posture and the way he pulled back slightly when someone looked our direction hurt worse than outright rejection. "Right," I laughed, bitter and broken. "Wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea about us. God forbid anyone think you might actually—"
"Bathroom. Now." Ash's voice was lethal quiet as he grabbed my arm, grip tight enough to bruise. His control had snapped, and suddenly I didn't see any hesitation in his posture. There was just barely leashed violence.
I stumbled as he steered me through the terminal, my drug-addled brain struggling to keep up with the sudden shift. We passed a startled-looking businessman, and I caught a glimpse of Ash's reflection in a window. His expression was thunderous, possessive in a way that made my knees weak.
The moment we cleared the bathroom door, he slammed me against the wall, crowding close. "You want to finish that sentence?" he growled, all pretense of propriety gone. "Want to keep pushing me until I show you exactly what I might actually do to you?"
His hand on my throat felt like an anchor and a noose all at once, something to keep me grounded even as it threatened to strangle. I recognized the darkness in his eyes, the same hunger I'd glimpsed during training. He was fighting himself as much as he was fighting me, wrestling with desires that threatened everything he thought he knew about himself. The realization made me want to push harder, to force him to face what we both knew was inevitable.
Each brush of his fingers against my pulse sent electricity through my drug-addled nervous system. I could read the conflict in his micro-expressions—the way his jaw clenched when someone walked past outside, how his pupils dilated every time I shifted against him.
All that certainty about his sexuality crumbling in a dirty airport bathroom because he couldn't stop touching me. I wondered if he understood that this wasn't just about gender or desire. It was about seeing someone for exactly who they are and wanting them anyway. About reaching past all the convenient labels and finding something real.
His thumb traced the line of my throat, and I watched him catalogue every reaction, every hitched breath. The profiler in him never stopped working, even now. Especially now. He was documenting every tell, every weakness, building a case file of exactly how to take me apart. Part of me wanted to hide from that penetrating gaze, to maintain some pretense of control. But the ketamine had stripped away my defenses, leaving me raw and honest in ways I couldn't fight.
The distant part of my brain that still functioned recognized this for what it was: just another self-destructive spiral, another way to prove I wasn't worth keeping. The BPD made everything feel like too much or not enough, loved or abandoned, seen or invisible. Some days, I couldn't tell if I was running from others' expectations or my own inability to meet them. The ketamine at least made the questions quieter, even if it couldn't make them disappear.
But Ash's grip was steady even as his control frayed, like he knew exactly what demons drove me and was ready to fight them all.
Heat flooded my body even as tears burned behind my eyes. "Stop it. You can't—you don't get to do this. You don't get to touch me like that and then push me away and then act like—"
"Like what?" His thumb stroked over my pulse point. "Like you're mine? Like I want to take you apart piece by piece until you're begging for it?" His other hand caught my wrist, grip tightening when he felt how fast my pulse was racing. "Because I do. God help me, I shouldn't, but I do."
"Then why did you let me leave?" The words came out raw, honest in a way the ketamine wouldn't let me control. "Why didn't you stop me?"
"Because I needed time to think." His grip flexed against my throat. "Because you deserve better than some straight guy's sexual crisis. Because I couldn't trust myself not to take everything you were offering right there on my desk."
I pressed into his touch, desperate for more contact. "I wanted you to. Still want you to."
"I know, baby. I know." His voice went soft, almost gentle. "But not like this. Not when you're too high to remember it." He pulled back slightly, eyes searching my face. "Where's your bag? We need to get you somewhere safe."
"The flight—"
"I'll deal with it." He cut me off, voice brooking no argument. "You're more important than the mission right now."
I shook my head, the motion making the room spin. "No, I'm not. I'm not important at all. I'm just—I'm nothing. I can't even do this right. Can't even make it through one day without fucking everything up and now you're going to hate me and—"
"Hey." His grip tightened, forcing me to focus on him. "Look at me. You are not nothing. You're mine. My partner. My responsibility." His thumb stroked over my racing pulse. "And when you're sober, when you can think straight again, I'm going to show you exactly what that means."
The promise in his voice made heat pool low in my gut even as anxiety clawed at my chest. "How do I know you mean it this time? How do I know you won't change your mind again?"
"Because I need you functional." He pressed closer, using his body to cage me against the wall, but I could see the tension in his jaw, the way he held himself slightly back. "I'm not watching you spiral just because I..." He cut himself off, something complicated flashing across his face before his expression hardened into familiar control. "You want my attention? Fine. But we do this my way."
I wanted to say no, to push back against the manipulation I could hear in his voice. But God help me, I'd take whatever scraps he was willing to offer.
"I don't know how to trust anyone anymore," I whispered, voice cracking. “I don't know how to stop feeling like this. Like I'm coming apart. Like I'm not real unless you're touching me. Even then, I'm never sure which version of me you're seeing. Which parts you want to keep and which parts you'll ask me to hide away.”
His expression flickered, the mask slipping for just a second before he caught himself. He knew exactly what he was doing when he brought his thumb up to brush over my bottom lip. "Then be good for me," he murmured, voice pitched low in that way he knew made me shiver. "Let me take care of you. And when you're sober, when you can think straight again?" His voice dropped to a growl. "Maybe I'll show you exactly how real I can make you feel."
I laughed, bitter and wanting. "Using sex to control me now? That's low, even for you."
"Is it working?" His eyes were dark, knowing.
"Yes," I admitted, the word scraping raw in my throat. "Fuck, yes. I hate that it is, but yes."
His answering smile was all predator, and something in me wanted to push back against that confidence, to make him work for it. The ketamine made me reckless, made me want to see how far I could push before he snapped completely.
"And what if I don't want to be good for you?"
His grip tightened fractionally. "Then I'll make you be good. One way or another." He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes. "Your choice, baby. We can do this the easy way, or I can show you exactly how far I'm willing to go to keep you in line."
I should have been scared. Should have fought harder against the way he was trying to control me. Instead, I felt myself going pliant under his hands, craving the steel in his voice more than my next breath.
"There you go," he murmured, satisfaction threading through his tone even as he glanced nervously at the bathroom door. "Now come on. Let's get you somewhere private before you make me do something we'll both regret."
I let him lead me away, knowing this was probably just another manipulation, another way to keep me under control. But with the ketamine singing in my veins and his promises echoing in my head, I couldn't bring myself to care. I'd take the pain when it came. For now, I'd let myself pretend this was real.