Part One

It wasn't anything personal at least she didn't see it that way but it was just that you couldn't get to her level with trust.

Balalaika released her trap cigar smoke from her mouth smoothly. This was an afternoon of leisure, she supposed. And by leisure, she meant that there were no immediate plans for 'control chaos', no one to kill (not yet) and that left her to do some surveillance work. Not her first but that didn't mean she necessarily liked it. The subject of her spying had left her stronghold only hours before and until he got his little visitor, he wasn't really doing anything she didn't expect. Again, nothing personal, Balalaika didn't trust just anyone. She had a feeling Rock wasn't the type of man to divulge information of any nature especially sensitive information but a feeling is not a fact and she wasn't one for that sort of thing anyhow. The arrangement for him to get a nice apartment was her way of keeping him in check. She watched and listened to his and Revy's exchanged via the mini cameras in the bedroom ac unit and the ones installed in the lighting in the kitchen. Admittedly, it wasn't a bad show for a leisurely afternoon.

"My, my, Rock, what will you do now?" She asked the screen crossing her legs as she puffs another cloud of smoke.


Rock...

Sitting on the side of the double bed, Rock tried not to show just how he was feeling right now. What expression does one show while experiencing the full onslaught of one's own disappointment? How do you express a ('kicking-myself-because-I-knew-that-this-would-happen-but-I-still-didn't-follow-my- instincts') face? Though that didn't stop him from getting caught up like he had when he knew what going to happen. Felt-it-in-his-bones knew it!

Plus, there was pain. Lots and lots of pain and in more than one places singing in his body; the bruises on his back, for example, are still humming from when it came in contact with the wall so hard the impact jarred his teeth!

He ran his hand through his hair willing himself to calm the hell down. He didn't like getting angry because he lost control of his emotions so easily, an uncomfortable position for any man to be in but it was more from a cultural stand-point for Rock since he's been brought up to keep a tight reign on them. Being emotionally charged will make him reckless and that is not what he was going for right now.

One deep breath followed another.

He had to resist the pull to palm his face with his hands and yell until his throat was raw and his chest was emptied of the frustration that seems to coil tighter and tighter as the agonizing seconds of silence ticked on in his apartment. Maybe he would do that later when he was alone and instead of his hands, use a pillow to muffle the long-winded screams he was saving up.

Control. Control! He commanded himself again and again but it felt like he was getting nowhere.

This wasn't the first time he's had to tell himself those exact words in so many minutes but now, the whole situation was just fucked up. Damn it! What was it about him that keeps landing him in these type of circumstances?

The scar on his right thigh throbbed and he tried to ignore it. Ignore the memory that came with it.

He'd pleasured her with his hands and mouth and it was enjoyable for both of them. He had her moaning and begging him not to stop. That was evidence enough right? That it wasn't just his opinion or male pride fooling him.

Gently, he'd stroked her until she'd asked him to make her cum then he had delivered. He took the painstaking effort to see to her needs while denying everything within himself to pin her to the damn wall and wrap her legs around his waist or to rip his clothes off, lift her into his arms, carry her to his bed then sink himself so deep within her sweet little body until he couldn't tell where he started and she began. He wasn't the one that started all of this either! He hadn't wanted this and then he did. So help him he really did! Damn her for tempting him like this! For letting him get a feel of what it would be like...

Fuck! Rock cursed himself again and again in his mind, his frustration bruising him more than his back suffered as the feeling of failure weighed down heavily on him like gravity. He hates that feeling. Especially since he went all out.

His experiences with people had left him jaded, turning him into a cautious man that didn't give his trust easily or expose himself to someone, much more letting his guard down like he had when he doesn't normally...

Calm? He felt only the opposite.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

The object of his torment came to the door, casually leaning against the frame with a cigarette in her mouth. He needed one too. Badly! But he would get his own. Right now, he didn't want anything from her. Hell, he didn't feel like being in his own space because she was here.

Revy wrapped the towel around her this time, tucking the tail between her breasts securely.

Those breasts.

Damn it! His tongue was still tingling from sucking her nipples. Involuntarily, his fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, his fingers itching for the feel of them once more. The fact that he was still hard for her was helping him none.

Mistake.

Yes, this was one big mistake. The very thing he should have avoided like the plague; had known to avoid. He made an effort to control his hands by planting them into the sheet but his persistent erection was another matter entirely. He wished it would wane. Obviously, there was no more possibility of them having sex, though his raging cock-stand stubbornly refuses to believe it.

Rock turned his head to the side, the deep green of the bedroom wall suddenly became the most interesting thing in the world to him.

"So that's it?" Revy said after several moments had passed, effectively breaking the silence that hovered between them. "What now? You gonna sulk?" She scoffed disdainfully and Rock felt like he wanted to punch something. Unusual for him.

When he said nothing she continued to monologue, her arrogance growing more rambunctious by the second; grating on his nerves and jabbing him in his pride.

"Do your balls hurt or something?" She jeered as she expelled a puff of smoke.

They did fucking hurt. His ego was taking hit after hit and he was sick of it.

"What do you want me to say?" He asked finally still watching the green-wall channel. All green, all the time. No interruptions, ever. "Congratulations Revy, you got me? You...won?"

Turning away he attempted to stand and had to bit back a yell of pain as the weight of his balls hung suspended sent a jolt of punishment to his brain then back again and it fully set in that they were probably as blue as blueberries right now if the pain was any indication. Not surprising. At the time when he had her on the counter spread before him like an offering, the pressure to cum until his vision went dark grew nearly irresistible but like an idiot he resisted. Now he was paying the price for denying himself for her sake.

And This is what I crossed my line for? The mental-ass-kicking continued. Idiot! I'm such an idiot!

Again, deep breath. Control. By some miracle, he managed to stand up straight and walk a few paces to the window as if nothing was wrong just to get as far away from her as possible within the confines of his room.

Out of habit he tried to put his hands in his pockets (something he did to hide his fisted hands. The thumbs pressing into his palms so much that they numbed) - the first sign that he was becoming angrier. He didn't like being taken for a fool. No one did. No man likes to be promised sex, especially if he didn't initiate it, and just when things were getting good, he got a mule kick sending him into the wall.

Control. Control Rock!

But his chest was heaving. He was on a knife's edge. Tamp it down, Okajima. The last resort. He didn't think of his old self any more unless he backed himself in a corner mentally, a way of threatening himself to break out of a clinch then f.i.t.f.o like there's no tomorrow. Isn't that what he said he was going to do while he was in the grips of desire. Near madden with it?

After a few more breaths and thumb-numbing, he was near calm. Someone had to keep a level head here and if not him then who? There was nothing he could do about what was already done. Best to push forward.

"Can't believe I let someone like you, of all people, touch me like that." Revy murmured to herself. He almost wished that he hadn't heard that. The scorn in her tone mixed in with probably all the disgust she could muster in one breath. Her words sounded tinge with shame and it was enough to push him over the edge.

"Someone like me?" He repeated slowly, almost dumbly because that was the absolute worst thing she could have ever said to him. He turned to face her then, unable to stop the bile from surging in his throat and this time he couldn't ignore the memory of Kari. Her laughing face coming back to his mind as he clutched his bleeding thigh; the knife narrowly missing a vital artery. Blood lost making his vision swam.

"Did you really believe I could ever willingly want someone like you touching me?" She'd said standing over him.

The collective pain in his body faded to a dull hum replaced with a rage that filled him so abruptly it frightened him and before he knew what was happening, he was stomping to the top of his bed and reaching under his pillow. A heartbeat later, her gun holster was fisted in his hand.

Revy's eyes went wide then narrowed in comprehension; in preparation for what's to come next. Somewhere in her eyes, he recognized the exact moment when she decided that she was going to kill him. Saw the survivor in her awakened. But she didn't know what he was going to do. Hells, he didn't even know what he was going to do.

"Get. Out!" He whispered menacingly through very clenched teeth but loud enough for the words to carry between them.

A corner of her mouth broaden for a split second- not a smile- more like a barring of her teeth. A challenge. "Rocky-boy angry?" She said mockingly, tilting her head at him, seizing him up. Her eyes were focusing on his limbs- mostly his shoulders and shifting at times to his feet. To his credit, Rock didn't rise to the bait though on his free hand his thumb did get some play. He did his best to keep her in sight as one does with any unpredictable dangerous beast.

How the hell did they move from where they were ten minutes ago to this? They could have been in his bed right now enjoying each other, pleasuring one another. He hated that they were like this. He hated that his indelible memory will recall every detail of this evening, of her skin from this day forward. The taste of her will never fade from his mind- great, now I'll have scent and taste memory. Neither will it allow him to forget how she reacted to him just minutes before, melting for him in abandon...

The leather of the holster prevented the guns from scraping against the tile floor; instead, the sound of a thud was produced when Rock tossed the weapons at her feet. A few feelings played out across her face when he did; surprise, confusion, anger, before it settled on cocky-malice. Victory in the depths of those dead-eyes.

"You're a fucking idiot." She told him time matter-of-factly as she bends and picks up her weapons. Her eyes locked on him like prey.

"No, you are." Rock quipped softly earning him a nasty stare.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" She asked, one gun already out of its cradle. The safety was still on but he knew that was relative.

"I asked you to leave," Rock's monotone was dismissive,"

"Are you...? " She spluttered for a moment before she collected herself. As if what he said before had just registered she asked in a disbelieving tone. "Are you seriously kicking me out like I'm some two-dollar- hour whore on the corner after finger-fucking me and licking my pussy?" Revy said in the coldest, most foreboding tone he's ever heard. That should have warned him, and it did but he just didn't care anymore.

"You have everything you want, right? Your guns. And they are all you need in this world, aren't they?" Sarcasm laced his hard voice.

To say the tension was thick in the room would be seriously understating the potency.

After an endless moment of silence, Rock sat on the edge of the bed once more, opposite from where Revy stood in the doorway seething. The pain winning out, he was unable to fake it any longer. There was no bedhead so he rested his back against the wall at a ninety-degree angle; the cool concrete soaked through the thin cotton of the marina- then he fixed her with his own stare.

"Personally, I pity you, Revy."

Her eyes widen to the size of saucers and a growl emanated from her throat. Yes, she actually fucking growled at him like a goddamn animal; her tattooed arm shot up before the word 'Pity' completely left his tongue- gun cocked and aimed. Her voice halting pushed the words out as if with difficulty. "You... fucking...cock sucker."

As if he didn't hear her or notice the gun aiming at him, Rock continued seamlessly, "That's right, someone like me," He emphasized each word slowly, deliberately, "Feels sorry for you."

A few inches from the left side of his head, bits of green paint and plaster erupted from the new hole that opened up in the wall; her gun smoking. Rock didn't even flinch. He expected her reaction even to the point that she will shoot him. He was so pissed.

"You motherfucking-son-of-a-bitch!" Her violent tone was barely above a whisper. "I'll fucking kill you, Rock, don't think that I won't! " She spat vehemently, fire flashing in her eyes making them more alive than he's ever seen them.

The sound of a gunshot didn't leave the other occupants of his apartment building unperturbed. Muffled voices filled with alarm sounded from the hallway. Doors opened and closed as nosy neighbors were either poking their head out in curiosity or shutting themselves in, in fear.

"You would, wouldn't you." He stated resolutely, "You would kill the only person who is trying to understand you. The man and possibly the only man, if given the chance, wants to genuinely make you happy." He leaned in before looking deep into her eyes then asking in that same slowly uncaring soft tone "How is that not pitiably?"

"Shut your fucking mouth!" She screamed before another shot pierced the silence of the room.