The pulse of the gun spreads through out his entire body. He feels the barrel roll, the fire ignite, the bullet slide so elegantly out, pushed by flames, and he swears sometimes he can hear it enter other foreign bodies. The pulse comes, and heat soon follows. A body wrapped up in his arms, keeping him warm. The familiar scent of blood and smoke.
He remembers killing a man who had lived his entire life working in a cubicle. A small little man in a larger machine of an office building for a banking corporation. A tiny fragment of a monster he could not escape from, trapped in a cubicle too small to even decorate with his non-existent personality. When he died it seemed he had been patiently waiting for it all this time, he was not happy when it happened, but he was not unhappy at all.
The thunder of raining bullets takes away all other sounds. His barrel clicks in his hand, ready again to end more lives. He thinks of the cubicle. The morning sun is rising over the mountains, he notices the orange glow over their outlines, like fire is just beyond them.
She's still in the hotel bed, where he had left her. Her skin as soft as the silk pillows her hair tangles with. She had laid his head on her chest, he heard a heart beating, he rose and fell with her breathing. She scraped her fingers along his back, tracing every scar in her reach, gently, caringly, in the ways only women seemed to be able to do. She had figured out the origin of each wound without ever asking, and even though she knew she could not, she tried to heal each. He laid on her chest, afraid his bulk would somehow crush her fragile frame. But she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, lips so wonderful to see them frown could make any man want only to only kiss them, and please them. He looked up at her, but she pushed him back down again, as if not wanting to look at him. She returned to healing the scars.
For a moment the smoke smells like her hair.
He fires, hears a scream, and a thud, and one is gone like that. Fire fills him, her warmth is there in his hands. He'll take out two more before the target runs, and he'll chase him, and he will kill him.
He'll leave her at the hotel, he left her money so that she may go anywhere she wanted without any trouble. She'll get dressed, disguise her infinite beauty with normal clothes. She'll move on.
She knew all along she'd be left. She knew all along that try as she might, she could never heal all those bullet holes and stabbing scars. She knew she only had one night with him.
He dresses in such fine black and white, somehow noticeable in a room of other finely dressed men. His blacks are blacker, his white is whiter, and his eyes stare them down asking for satisfaction. He moves like the devil, his steps make no noise, his walk is smooth, his posture perfect, he could sneak behind you and break your neck. But for them he comes closer to them, he speaks little words, but they all know what is to come.
He moves through them like they're nothing, just a means for some sort of gratification. This is his reputation built up on misconceptions. They love him, they'd do anything he said. And he the same.
He worships them, each and every one.
For they have in their capacity to love unconditionally even for a passing moment. They live lifetimes with love in a single night. Their fingertips hold more love than his entire body. They have the power to strip him bare, to take off the suit, to take away the gun. They see him for what he is, complete with all those scars.
He thanks them for it, takes them to bed and tries his best for them. And sometimes they'll lay his head on their chests so for once every so often at night, it almost feels safe.
They fill for only a few seconds that empty hole of a younger man's heart. Where he is naïve again, and he remembers what passion is like.
He touches them lightly, his hands can kill, and if he pressed hard enough he'd shatter them, he knows it. But they are stronger than he ever recalls, they push his hands closer, harder. They stand so tall, so strong, but their touch is so soft. They rise him up to his knees, they have him lean on them, they kiss his neck and his chest, until he's left staring at the wall in front of him, his body tingling from their doings.
Like the gun they are warm, they curl up for him to hold, radiating heat back into him. Like the gun they are elegant in their form, common, but different at the same time. He takes moments to memorize their shape and shade and features. He notes the birthmarks, the freckles, their own little scars hopefully made from childhood scrapings and nothing more. He sees the pattern in their lips, the color of their eyes. How their hair shines in the sun. Like the gun they are deadly, deadlier than he is.
He calls for them, begging for their housing, pleading for their gift, knowing he cannot give much of anything back. If he could he'd live in life in bed with all the beautiful women of his life, tending to them individually, making sure each and every one was as happy as he was. He calls for them, he wants to be vulnerable, he wants to feel those fingers on his back, just for a moment. A passing and fleeting moment, an echo of things past, trying so hard to remember the one he truly loved when the younger man's heart was full and alive.
The gun clicks once more, the moment is coming. The passion rises, the heat in through out him, burning him inside.
She screams on the bed, gripping at sheets, twisting in his arms, she screams until he screams, the heat inside burns.
These are moments that pass us so quickly, these are the ones that last forever in memory.
He loves them, each and every one. His own tailored love, what is left of the younger man's heart from the day she died.
They know him in those moments unlike anyone else. And if they are smart, and he never doubts that they are, they can see him for what he really is. Empty and vacant, with scars that he doesn't want healed, but to carry them, always, forever, reminders of what has passed and can never get again. In those moments when they're screaming and she looks up at him, and she can feel the hollowness, and she knows by morning he'll be gone. It was always supposed to be this way.
She can smell and taste the other countless women that have come before her, and the women that will come after her. His is a hunger that can't be satisfied, his wounds can't be healed. The love is fleeting and brief, but it sustains him, it defines him, reminds him.
He thanks them, he worships them, he memorizes them, and they live on in his memory. The target is running, he stands on the roofs watching the man barely make it across the towers. He shoots a single shot, it punctures the calf muscle, the target falls, blood streams down the roof like rain.
He takes his time getting to the target.
She's on a plane.
The gun is hot when he tucks it away in his jacket, heat spreads over the chest like her fine lips. Her body consumes his, she devours him up, giving life to what one could call the soul.
They get a glimpse, they each get a glimpse.
He returns to the familiar places time and time again. At the party, staring across the room, on the bed where only women can see the truth, and bloody and deep in the flames of war.
It never stops. It's not supposed to.
She scrapes her fingers across his face, rubbing out the lines of age and stress and sleepless nights. She traces his features, cheeks and lips and brow. She pulls him closer for a kiss, his hands hold her, but her body holds him. She presses against him, legs wrapped around, she holds his hand, and looks at him.