A/N: Somewhat of a longer chapter. And here it all gets put out on the table. Hope you guys like it, and a reminder. The rating did get changed to M. I would greatly appreciate some feedback on this chapter! Thanks!
Shaky hands turn the key in the deadbolt, then trembling their way to the knob. He closes his eyes and takes a long, beep breath. Breathe, that's it, just breathe, Soldier. He pushes the door open and pulls the keys out of the knob and tries to toss them casually onto the table next to the door but fails when he feels the blood flood out of his arm. The keys hit the wall and clatter to the ground. He stutters out a groan of embarrassment and turns to find her closing the door behind her, back turned toward him.
With the soft click of the knob, he slowly starts toward her, drawn in by the soft, white glow of the skin on her shoulder. Her hand comes into his view when she reaches for the deadbolt, and his breath fans off her when she clicks it shut. When it does, she jumps slightly, lets out a small yelp, and spins around. Her eyes wide, but only for a second as she finds his eyes, then they soften. "I didn't meant to scare you."
She smiles and shakes her head. "It's alright." She says on a lighthearted chuckle. He reaches down and takes the straps of her purse from her hands, gently pulling it from her grasp and setting it on the table where his keys are supposed to be. Her hand finds his on it's way back and entwines their fingers. He can feel them tremble inside his grasp, which catches his attention. He looks up to her and sees her eyes looking down at their enjoined hands. He can see her shoulders rising and falling with her deep, steadily quickening breath.
He moves his other hand to her jaw, cups her cheek, and pulls her eyes to look at him. He brushes his thumb across her cheekbone softly before he decides to ask. "Is something wrong?"
Her voice cracks in her throat while her hand mewls inside his. After a moment, she shakes her head. "No." She covers the hand cradling her face with hers. "Everything's fine."
"Then you-"
"Yes." She stops him. "I want us to be together, Arnold. No matter what."
He fends off the smile he feels wanting to split his face in half and takes the last step forward they need to be pressing against each other and slowly works his lips over hers. The shiver in his spine and the cold sweat that broke out over his skin, which is suddenly making it feel as if the silk, button up dress shirt he's wearing is very constricting. Her breath is shaking as it passing into her mouth over his lips. His hands move to her waist and pull her body against his, making her hands press against his chest. With another passionate kiss, her hands fist the fabric and twist it toward her.
His mouth rebellious ventures off her lips and down her jaw line to the column of her neck, where his tongue can feel her pulse race. In his ear, he can hear her breath shake and quiver as her arms go around his shoulders. Sign of encouragement, his hands take her legs and wrap them around him. Her nails dig into his shoulders, to the point where it actually stings. "Arno-oo!" She yelps with the feeling of his teeth marking her. With a long breath out, her body still mewling uncontrollably against his, her voice vibrates in his ear. "Arnold, slow down."
The hands holding her legs around him tighten for a second and his lips return to hers. "I thought after five years..." He stops to kiss her, "we'd be done by now."
She chuckles once before returning his kiss and tightening her grip on his shirt at the shoulders. "Well," She starts again as he resumes his caressing of her jaw line, "I just think that-that... uh... that we sh-should..."
A guttural moan erupts from the back of his throat as he presses forward... sending her into an almost violent spasm.
"Alright, stop stop stop stop STOP!" Her arms are violently shoving him off her and he's left grasping at air. Shocked, he watches her speed her way through the main room of his apartment, palms pressed to her forehead, panting with a very evident shake in... god, she's shaking.
"Helga, what's wrong?" He asks, taking a step toward where she is at the sliding glass door.
"Arnold, I-I've been trying... all night to try and te... tell you something. I-I-I thought that I could just ignore it and let my self work through it in my head, but..."
He honestly doesn't know how to act, how he's supposed to act, what she wants from him, if anything. He's felt her wanting to tell him something ever since he picked her up, but he figured it was that she wanted them to be together. He tries fruitlessly to relax himself. "What is it?" Is all he can manage to muster up after a new feeling just washed over him. The feeling of guilt and shame because he felt he just assaulted her.
She turns back toward him, but doesn't look at him. Instead, looking toward the wall. "When I was kidnapped, in Ethiopia, I told you about the bandits that stormed the village I was sent to."
"Yeah, you said you hid the children in the pews of the church, but they found you and forced you outside."
Her blank expression that still harbors nerves finally cracks and screws together as tears flow down her cheeks. "When I started to hear gunfire, I made the children get in between the pews and kneel down, while I went to go put something in front of the door. Right as I got up to it, it burst open and he knocked me to the ground."
He can feel his gut twist in anger.
She sniffles and tries to regain the strength she had in her expression before continuing. "He grabbed my hair and dragged me back inside and he..." She stops, but he knows. All he can do is ball his fists up tightly enough to where it hurts. They were human traffickers. If she wasn't American and worth so much to them as a random, she might have been sold off quickly. But all he can do now is relive every bullet he fired and every single one of those pieces of trash he killed. She breaks again and another fresh wave of tears fall down her face. "They raped me." Her words are barely understandable.
He has to close his eyes and stop himself from screaming in sheer hatred.
"I tried to fight them off, but they said they'd kill me." She says as she breaks down, clenching her gut with her arms and doubling over as her tears pull her to the ground. And when he looks over to her, how much this hurting, how much she's been hiding from him, for months, the memories of that last op vanish from her mind. Before he can figure out to decide against it, he's leaping across the room to her, wrapping his arms around her to catch her from falling to her knees in anguish. He slowly lowers her to the ground, and she shows no protest as she crawls inside his arms on the floor , hiding her face from the world in his chest.
Her body wracks with sobs, every one making his arms squeeze her tighter.
She sniffles again and moves her head against his chest. "He out his gun in my mouth, and he-"
"Helga, do you remember Little Red Riding Hood?"
"What?" She asks again, expression now conveying confusion as to why he veered so far off topic.
"The story, Little Red Riding Hood? Do you remember at the end of the story, the Huntsman comes in and cuts Little Red Riding Hood out of the Wolf's stomach?"
"Yeah, but, what does-"
"Do you remember what I told you I did after I got out of the military?"
She looks off to the side, thinking back. "Yeah, you said you did some... contracting work, why?"
"As you know, the United States government maintains a strict policy that forbids negotiating with terrorists, by any means. So when an American citizen is captured by a hostile organization, most of the time, they can't do anything. After I got rescued from being captured, I was sent to recover at Walter Reed, in DC. I was there for about two weeks before I was approached by someone in a suit, seemed important. He said he reviewed my service record and wanted me to be part of a new military initiative, code named Operation Huntsman."
"Huntsman for... Little Red Riding Hood?"
"It would be a highly classified black op. It was to be made up of two members of every elite branch of military. Two marines, two SEALS, two special forces... and two Rangers. Our job would be to use top security satellite images, surveillance MQ-1 drones, so forth, to locate US citizens being held by foreign organizations the US government deemed hostile. We would go in quietly, eliminate any threats and retrieve our target and get them home. It was all very high risk and due to the state of our operation, if we were to get captured, in most of the countries we operated in, it would be considered an open act of war."
"Why are you telling me this, Arnold?" She tries to ask.
"One of our last missions was out of the Congo. A volunteer with the Peace Corps was being held by a group of smugglers known in the area to deal in human trafficking." Her breath catches. "It was a routine mission, in and out. My partner and I, the other Ranger, were the first entry team, in charge of establishing a foothold and contact with the hostage." Her head turns up and she looks at him with stained eyes. "We hit the base at oh two hundred hours, cut the power while our sniper took out the guards in the tower, then my partner and I moved into the base, to the second floor where our recon showed the hostage was being held."
"Arnold..."
"We split up after taking out four or five of them. I went down a hall and saw someone come out from around the corner and point his gun at something. I reacted and put a bullet through his forearm, then while he clutched his arm, I put two more rounds in his back, then moved forward toward the door when I saw her." She moves out of his arms, sitting up and looking at him with a straight brow. "She was shaking like a dead leaf in a hurricane. She was so scared. I checked my rifle and moved toward her. I could hear her muffled sobbing over the gag she had in her mouth. I asked if she was okay, and pulled down her gag. All she did was scream. At the top of her lungs."
"It was you?"
"I called over my comm that I had secured the hostage, while the rest of the team secured the compound. I put her bounds around my neck and walked her outside. I got her outside and put her on our truck on the way to the nearest US embassy."
"It was you that night, wasn't it. It was you who saved me."
He moves his arm out from behind her back, unbuttons the buttons on his sleeve and slowly rolls it up, revealing the tattoo down his forearm, reading 'NO EMOTION' in bold letters. She grabs it and pulls it up to her. Her fingers trace it for a second before her wide eyes shoot back to him. Words catch in her throat as her eyes turn back down to his tattoo.
"I really wish you'd say something." He says finally, feeling anxious the more her fingers trace the letters of his tattoo.
"Wha..." She sighs and the emotion still lingers in the edges of her features, flakes of anguish wanting to retake her. She closes her eyes and seems to push it away again. "I've been putting on a brave face for the world for... god, it feels like forever. But the truth is..." Her voice cracks as her pain clenches her throat. "The truth is I haven't had a decent nights sleep that isn't interrupted by nightmares in months. The one night I did was the night I stayed here a couple weeks ago. I haven't even been able to let anyone touch me... except you, really."
"Wait, but... what about Roy?"
She chuckles bitterly. "That's the real reason he grabbed me. He wasn't buying any more of my excuses."
"You had to give excuses?" She looks up to him, conveying a statement saying that she knows what she did. "You haven't told this to anyone, have you?"
"You're the first person to know what really happened to me other than my therapist." She says while pushing a strand of hair back behind her ear.
"Therapist?"
"I see him four times a week. Have been since I got rescued." She says as if it's something to be ashamed of.
"Helga, if you're telling me all this to tell me to back off, I understand."
"No, Arnold." She scolds, looking him in the eye for what feels like the first time all night. He knows it's not, but it feels like she's been hiding. "I meant what I said before. I want us to be together. I-I just... I'm afraid that-"
"That you'll have a flashback." She nods and burrows herself into his chest again. He lets out a deep breath and presses his lips to her scalp. "I have an idea." She looks up to him curiously. "Come with me."
He gently urges her off of him so he can stand up, takes her hands and pulls her toward his bedroom, removing her fingers from his soft grip only to switch on the bedroom light. He walks backward toward the edge of his bed, standing the two of them at the edge, smiling softly at her, gently holding her hands.
"I want to try something." Helga nods after a trepidation argument with herself lasting only a second. "I want you to lay down." She silently complies, situating herself so she's laying on her back in the middle of his queen sized mattress. He then moves to the other side and lays down next to her, supporting himself on one elbow, smiling down at her. "Take my hand." He says and lifts the hand with the elbow supporting him and she takes hold of it tightly with the hand closest to him. "Take a slow, deep breath." She draws in a long, slow, deep breath. "And out." Then she lets it out just as slowly as when she took it in, and he can feel her tight grip slacken as she does. "And again." She repeats the motion.
He's nervous this won't work. That it will all blow up in his face and he will end up spending the night staring at the starless sky above the city on his balcony. But the risk assessment is nothing compared to what he will gain if it does work. Most importantly, he wants to help her. The people who hurt her, who raped her are dead. For sure, they're dead. They're gone, and all that's left to deal with is the scars. But that is often the most painful part.
"Try to clear your mind. Push everything out except for this, right here, this moment, with me, okay?" She closes her eyes after taking a few audible breaths, and nods. "I want you to keep your eyes open and focused on me, okay?" She nods somewhat nervously this time. "And if at any point, you start to feel the slightest bit uncomfortable, or if you feel you just want to stop, I want you to say so and I'll stop, okay? Don't put yourself through something you don't want to for me, okay?"
She lets out a little bit of a shaky breath that evens out near the end. "Okay."
He takes his free hand and places his fingers on her abdomen, slowly fanning them out until his palm is flat against her stomach. "Do you remember the day I asked you out?" He asks, seemingly out of nowhere as he moves his palm in a slow circle against her stomach.
Her eyes close as she nods. "Yeah, I do."
"Open your eyes." Her eyes open again and instantly fall on his. "Keep them open." Her slow breathing is audible as his hand moves in a slow, gentle circle, edging lower with every motion. "Do you remember what I was wearing?" He asks, looking into her eyes.
"That was five years ago, Arnold." She says with an airy voice that somehow still harbors a bit of irritation at his ludicrous question.
"I remember you were standing at your locker after school. And you were wearing that old grey beanie you always wore."
"I loved that thing." She quips, defending her fashion choice to him.
He chuckles softly and feels himself smile a little brighter as he does, which makes the corners of her parted lips perk upward. His hand keeps running in a slow, steady circle, moving lower as he massages her lower abdomen. "And I remember you had on that faded pink hoodie, and you had the sleeves rolled up, and a blank yet... very contempt look on your face as you dug through your locker."
"You remember all that?" She asks, her breath catching heavily as she finishes her question when his pinky finger reaches her edge.
"I do..." He stops circling his hand and starts moving his pinky finger against her, then slowly moving his other fingers to replace it, as slow as he can. "And I also find it rather heartbreaking that you don't."
"Faded red plaid shirt with snap buttons, sleeves rolled up to the middle of your forearms with a teal blue t-shirt underneath and black denim jeans. You hadn't shaved all week, so you had a bit of scruff that made you look-" She cuts herself off, and he halts his motions. Her mouth hangs open, but her eyes remain on his, keeping to his orders that she keep her eyes focused on him.
"Made me look what?" He asked as he continues his slow, steady circles against her.
"... I don't know, scruffy?" She shrugs, raising a brow.
"Oh, come on. Rhonda made me shave every two days with a straight razor, and the military has regs on things like that. How'd I look with scruff?"
She lets out another shaky breath, "You looked really hot."
His smile breaks apart his face, and it's honest. "And here I thought you didn't care about that kind of thing."
"I don't, but..." She stops herself as the slightest squeak of a moan escapes from her throat. Her shoulders shiver and she closes her eyes as her body convulses forward.
"Open your eyes, Helga." He softly commands as he steadily increases the tempo of his motions against her slowly moistening center. Her eyes open and it isn't until then that he realizes her pupil's are dilated. "I don't suppose you remember what I said when I asked you out?"
"You said..." She lets out a breathy moan. "You asked what it would take to get me to go on a date with you."
"And what did you say?"
She lets out another shaky breath as he presses harder against her, starting to move his thumb in what seems to be just the right place. "I looked around and asked you who put you up to it and how much you were getting because I wanted a cut."
"You were still suspicious when I dropped you off."
She smiles and lets out a belt of laughter. "I still am." He laughs and presses his thumb hard against her as his fingers gently dig into her center through the fabric of her cotton underwear. "Oh, Arnold." Her eyes close and she squeeze his, while her other tugs on his bedspread, her legs rising and her chest lifting off the mattress.
"Open your eyes, Helga."
Her eyes pop open amidst heavy strain, wanting to keep them closed and ride what he's doing to her out. She lets out strained moans and with another quick flick of his thumb, her whole body convulses up against him, pressing up against his hand, her limbs digging into the bed, every muscles she has straining as she rides out the longest orgasm he's ever seen. The hand he's not holding covers the one he's using to do all this and keeps it there, want it not to be removed as her back still arches off the bed. After a few more violent aftershocks, she falls back down to the bed, sated.
With heavy breath and sluggish motions, she swings her head back to look up at him. Her hand lifts up and cups his jaw, her thumb grazing just under his eye. "That was amazing, Arnold."
"I hope you understood what I was trying to do."
She nods, her movements still slowed by her body still being flushed. "I do." Her eyes move down to his stomach, followed by her hand still being loosely held by his moving out of his soft grip and running down along his stomach. But he catches her wrist before she gets too far.
"We'll take it slow, okay?" She lets out a long breath and nods. "In the meantime, how does getting through the night without having nightmares sound?"
"You can't know for sure I won't have one, Arnold." She tells him, seeming to shrink in her own fear and insecurities in the blink of an eye.
"I'll be right here, Beautiful." He says, brushing his knuckles over her cheek.
She smiles and starts to scoot herself closer into his side, while he moves his arm under her and around her shoulders, hugging her to him. Her arm goes around his midsection and pulls him to her, her leg vines itself around his like a weed, and her breath goes through the openings of his button up silk shirt, sending rushes of cool air down his stomach. And in no time at all it feels like, she's fast asleep, yet still digging herself into his side and hugging him to her like a lifeline that he seems to be to her.
They're both still fully dressed, not under the covers and it's fairly chilly in his apartment, he even still has his ankle piece on. And he's slept in far worse situations. But right now, it feels like he would go through all those far worse situations all over again just to have what he does now.
Her.