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Adrian fumbles for the phone in his suit as it rings, backing into the brush behind him.
“Hey, my sweetie.” Voice chipper, but low, measured. Quiet.
“I think he’s following me again, Adrian.” Your voice shocks his senses, and he backs away further, crouching, bringing a glove up to cover the phone speakers. He can hear music in the background; faint, 80s.
“Are you sure?”
“I think so, it’s hard to tell. I think I see him and then when I have a chance to actually check he’s gone again.” You pace your room, running a hand through your scalp.
Adrian hums into the phone, staring up at the broken streetlight to his left, the shoddily stitched suture on the thigh of his suit. It was a safety precaution, really, and it started by accident. He’d gone into your craft store, six months ago now, looking for a replacement sewing machine. You were friendly, didn’t ask too many questions, and—most importantly—had a shiny brass crow pinned to your apron.
He used to buy thread in bulk, but he found himself popping in once a week, even when he hadn’t touched the last spool.
You were the one to ask for his number, to make that external connection, to kiss him and tell him you wanted to be his girlfriend. He was eager, absolutely, but it wasn’t until you kissed him that he realized you were dating. Or, even, that you wanted to. You told him you’d found it charming, how oblivious he was. Sweet, that he never made assumptions to serve his interests.
Two months of bothering each other at work, running out the clock on your respective shifts. Movie nights at your place, pizza at his—you’d offered to help unpack, speed up the process on his new apartment, but he insisted it was his burden to bear. He was having more fun than he thought he could with someone who didn’t know anything about his real vocation, never even thought about telling you. Irrelevant, really. What could it do but put you in harm’s way? Better to keep it separate. Light, airy, casual.
And then your store got robbed at gunpoint, your coworker shot—near fatally—while you were in the stock room. The cameras didn’t catch anything, the cops were even less helpful.
So, Adrian took the charge up himself. Not all the time, of course, he’s not a crazy person. Just on your walks to work. From work. Sometimes he stumbles across you while you’re out with friends. It’s part of the job description: Vigilante, keeping Evergreen ever clean. He would have t-shirts made if he was into the whole marketing thing, great excuse to buy more from the craft store. Bump up your numbers, keep you employed.
But first and foremost was keeping you out of danger, a job he was doing quite well. The only thing you were presently scared of was him. Silly mistake a couple weeks ago, he got a little ahead of himself when the sun wasn’t quite set. So be it, he knew he was harmless, that was good enough.
“Where did you see him?” He asks, peering between leaves and just seeing you pace past the half drawn curtain.
“By that coffee shop on main, I think he was hiding behind the dumpster.”
“That’s gross.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’ve heard he only kills criminals, have you committed any crimes lately?”
“J—just your typical jaywalking and rolling through stop signs.” Your voice is still shaky, despite his joke, and he would love to say it didn’t stir up something in him, but if you took him seriously it meant other people did.
He wants to laugh at your response, but he swallows it down, “Do you know the difference between civil and criminal charges?”
“I’m not asking for a legal lesson, Adrian.”
You freeze in the open space of the curtain, and he’s dumbstruck for several seconds. You’re chewing on your thumbnail, eyebrows kicked up in worry, shoulders shaking beneath an old, loose collared t-shirt. You look like a frightened squirrel.
Adrian’s stomach churns, and he smiles into the phone, “Sorry.”
He watches your eyes flutter closed, watches you take a deep breath before you exhale, voice tiny, “It’s okay.”
“Have you seen him since?” His eyes center on your clavicle, on the way your chest rises and falls as you try to calm yourself. Your bicep tenses as you twist your wrist and cut deeper into the nail with your teeth.
The two of you have only slept together a handful of times, and for whatever fun you’re having out of bed, it hasn’t reflected yet in that respect. Still learning each other’s bodies, it hasn’t been bad, but for how much Adrian likes to look at you, he’s been clammy when you actually let him. The reality frustrates him, you frustrate him.
“No, but I haven’t gone out since.”
He hums, watching your lips fall open, dropping your hand to your side, nails chewed to hell. You want to say something, he can see it, can hear the edging of your voice on the phone, but you abandon it several times. He coaxes you into speaking by whispering your name, a tentative question at the tail end of too-long silence.
“Sorry, I just...”
You turn away from him and lean on your windowsill. The curtain opens just that much more, and he can see one of the curves of your waist, your shirt bunching at the hem of your boxer shorts.
He likes being here for you, like this. Watching out for you, protecting you, without having to worry about you getting in the way. He can eliminate risks before you even catch wind of them. It’s okay that the price to pay is you fearing this version of him, especially when all it seems to do is send you seeking comfort from the version of him you know. The version of him you liked first, for some reason.
His gut churns, and he reaches down to adjust the waist of his suit, cringing away from growing sensitivity.
“You just what?”
You reach underneath the hem of your shirt to scratch your back, the warm glow of your apartment lighting your skin. His eyes coast the twisted tendon of your forearm, nails impressing in short strokes across the flesh.
He settles deeper into his crouch, tucking his shoulder against a firm branch in the bush before he slips a hand past his groin. Just a test, just to see. He’ll stop before it gets serious.
You speak with hesitance, sentence punctuated with an audible gulp, “Are you sure you can’t come over tonight?”
“Ohh,” Adrian coos into the phone, his voice settling into that smooth timbre, it works to conceal him as much as it does to soothe you, “My mom has really been on my ass about helping her pack up the basement.”
He watches your shoulders fall, dejection in your body. This is a side of you he’s yet to see as well, all the visual cues that come with your anxieties. He’s heard it in your voice at work, just underneath a plastered customer service smile as some entitled piece of shit pisses his pants over a cheap set of kiddie watercolors. Adrian loves to follow up after the fact, to make sure they really were satisfied with their service. He’s heard it when he’s late to join you at the bar, wiped away with two shots and a dance, your eyes coasting to some guy or another. Guys who’ll end up on their ass in the alley the minute you go to the bathroom.
But he’s never seen it, you’ve never let him. He can’t fathom why, because, as he squeezes his palm over his suit, he can swear you’ve never looked better.
“Oh, okay.” You stand up, wringing a hand around the back of your neck, pacing once more.
Each flash of you in the curtain gap shoots sparks into his gut, seconds passing in silence, something you’ve both established you’re more than content with. Sounds choke themselves in his throat as he presses his hand firmer against himself, the pliable fabric of his suit growing taut with every glimpse he gets. The branch he’s leaning on gives way and he drops one knee to the ground, bracing himself with the other foot to keep from falling.
The foliage shuffles around him, and you spin on your heels to peer out the window, gasping.
“Are you okay?” He mutters, ducking behind a grouping of leaves.
“I just heard something outside my window.” Whatever fear had dissipated from your voice through the conversation was now back in full force, and Adrian keeled forward, clenching his abdomen.
“What?”
“It was like, rustling.” You pull one side of the curtains open, sweeping your eyes out over the house’s side yard.
“Human rustling?” He asks, and then, “Or, what even is human rustling?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Your eyes are wide, nostrils flaring, and the erection in his suit aches.
“I’m really freaking, Adrian, should I call the cops?”
“No!” Panic rises in his body, and he bites down hard on his tongue, bringing his voice back down, “No way, the cops are corrupt as fuck.”
“I know, but—”
“They’re just going to waste your time.”
“I just don’t know what to do.” Adrian watches as you run a hand over your cheek, fingertips pressing hard at your waterline. Your voice shakes, if he couldn’t see the tears he would be able to hear them, certainly.
“Hey, listen to me,” He listens to you sniffle, watches a tear slip down your face, brings his hand back down to his crotch. He flicks at the corner of a velcro strap, base of his palm just hitting his shaft underneath the fabric.
“Yeah.” You mutter.
“As long as your door is locked and you have that thing I gave you, you’re going to be fine. I promise.”
You disappear from view for a moment, and he freezes in place, listening for the sound of a door unlocking. He lets his hand brush again, lets his eyes flutter closed, listens to you breathing on the other end of the line.
“Yeah, yeah I have it.” You let out the smallest laugh, cut by a sniffle, “Very weird six month anniversary gift, by the way.”
“I want you to be able to defend yourself if anything happens.” His heart kicks, and he tugs open the two velcro straps over his crotch, reaching into the suit to feel himself up.
“Well, mace, would be good for that.”
“You had mace already.” He grunts, passing it as a scoff. The friction of his glove stings on the tender skin, and he pinches the loose fabric at the end of his middle finger underneath his knee, yanking it off to fist himself bare-handed.
“Right, a stun gun is kind of overkill.” He can hear your nerves settling as you come back into view, a smile on your face for the first time as you set the stun gun on the coffee table.
His stomach whirls, thumb coasting over the throbbing head of his cock, precum dribbling down the shaft and soaking into the thumb holsters of his suit’s undershirt. His gaze steadies on the tears drying over your cheeks, the nervous kick of your chin as you let out slow breaths over the phone. Letting his fingers run against the vein on his erection, he feels the thrumming heartbeat build and build even as his movement stills.
“Long range is much more effective, you know that or you wouldn’t have gotten mace.” He exhales the words, desperate for verbal relief. “Smart girl.”
You scoff at him, “Scared girl, more like it.”
“It’s okay to be scared.” He wraps his fingers around his shaft, tugging once, twice, slow, in tune with your breathing. “You’re smart to be scared, especially where that nutcase is concerned.”
He’d meant the man that robbed the store, of course. The cops never found him, never tried, really. They wouldn’t have been quick enough, anyway. Adrian was more efficient than the lot of them, more focused, more invested. One long stroke. The man made away with a hundred bucks, that was all. That was worth almost taking a human life. Worth having a target on his head. Another stroke, sweat rising at his neck.
When Adrian found him, he pleaded and cried and swore he needed the money to pay someone worse off. He’d give him up, would give anything. Deathbed confessions were always something to the dying, but to Adrian they were just noise.
He was grateful for the silence that followed.
“Yeah, I’ve heard some harrowing reports about Vigilante.”
Adrian perks up, grip tightening.
“You know I try to avoid the news.”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you nervous now.”
He smiles, his throat flexing as he swallows his groans, “No, no, I should be informed.”
His cock twitches in his hand, almost painfully stiff as you regale Adrian the most recent town gossip about Vigilante. Friend’s roommates gone missing (arms dealers,) local teachers dead in the locker room (steroid doping students,) body parts washed up on the river bed (petty theft and armed robbery.)
He feigns shock at your stories, stroking himself during each lengthy retelling, sucking his cheeks inward to chew on as he climbs closer and closer to release. Your voice is laced with fear again, but Adrian hears some level of morbid curiosity. Some vague reverence.
And if that wasn’t enough, he sees the way you fiddle with your collar, the way you tug at your ear. For whatever frustrating clamminess he has in the bedroom, he at least knows your tells. Not outright attraction, but intrigue, interest. You fiddled with your collar before you kissed him for the first time, tugged at your ear before asking if he wanted to have sex. It’s courage building, venting internal agitation.
You blink hard, shaking your head, and he huffs at the return of your regular voice, “All that to say, dude is serious.”
“And you think he’s stalking you?” He grumbles, dropping his other leg to lean back and sit on his heels, impatience pecking at his brain, “Why?”
“Fuck if I know.” You throw an arm up, circling your coffee table, “I’m not some hard criminal, but it really freaks me out.”
Adrian squeezes his cock, concentrating on the flush tip, precum slick on his hand as it glides up and over again and again. Desperation builds, and he’s just a hair too eager when he asks, “Are you scared of him?”
He watches you pause by the window, your eyes flicking around the empty yard. You wrap an arm over your stomach, fisting the fabric of your t-shirt, wrist tucked underneath the elbow of your phone holding arm. You close your eyes, taking in a full breath. His stomach jerks as you nod before speaking, expression contorting with what he can only guess is your imagination running wild.
“Yeah.” You whimper, “Who wouldn’t be?”
And that does it. Adrian turns his head to bite into his wrist as he cums, ropes of ejaculate spraying over the mulch and pumping onto the web of his hand. The climax is venerated by your words, sweeter and more satisfying than any other in his recent recollection. His cock throbs in his hand still, and he aches for you, for his mouth on your skin. Wiping his hand off on the nearby brush, he lets the silence lie for several more seconds as he tucks himself back in and gets re-situated.
“I’ll come over.” He whispers.
“Are you sure? I don’t want to be on your mom’s bad side.” He watches your face light up, watches your posture straighten like a tremendous weight has been lifted.
Adrian laughs, “Yeah, right. I’ll be there in thirty.”
You smile and cover your face, “Okay, okay. See you then. Bye.”
His stomach kicks as he hangs up, he needs to be rid of the armor now.
Sprinting from the bush and through a nearby alley, he breaks into a bout of raucous laughter.
In every way he ever wanted, you were all his.