Caught in Possession

The Hand

Hello!

This story will be a little darker than my previous works, starting out with a fair dose of angst/smut in early chapters. But as always, the characters will grow together to find their happy ending! 🌈

Hope you enjoy the story, and please do leave me any comments you have along the way! I will aim to post two short chapters per week.

You can also find me on Twitter at @Avalore_8 👋

Take care! Lore 🦋

//Disclaimers: This is an original story - any similarities to other works are unintentional. This is an alternate universe setting and entirely a work of fiction.//

Trigger Warnings:
Mention of firearms.
Major character injury.
Threat to life of major characters.

It was odd how mundane it somehow felt - the barrel of the gun pressed up against his temple.

If it were a film, the scene would have mist drifting eerily across the setting, slow motion editing - an ominous echo effect added for the cocking of the revolver.

But it wasn't a film. And although it didn't feel it, as Gulf struggled to awaken a surge of adrenaline or some expected state of hyper alertness, this was real life or real death, right in the middle of a bleak, sombre, muted grey November afternoon in South West London.

There was no glamour, just the here and now of the heaviness of the hard object against him, and loud breathing - was it his own? He was disconnected - as he knelt on the pristine cream tiles of the apartment floor.

Gulf's mind drifted aimlessly, unhelpfully, to the presentation of the scene afterwards, in the hours to come...

Would cheery, grandmother-of-three Pauline from the cleaning agency need to add bleach to her mop bucket to rinse away sticky crimson blood stains from those tiles? Would a police officer put the pint of milk that Gulf had left on the nearby kitchen counter top away in the fridge before it spoiled?

He knew what he was doing. 'Repressive compartmentalising': The perplexing habit of focusing on every unimportant matter that presented, whilst pushing and boxing away the vitally crucial issue, the crux. That was the way Mew had described the infuriating coping mechanism.

Mew...no, that word hurt. Hurt so much that Gulf emitted an unexpected, unintentional choked sob in reflex from behind his taped lips. Because that was the thing the young footballer truly couldn't think about. The furthest depth of his brain vault at that moment. Or, the very literal corner of the room that he couldn't look at - where there lay a still hand, just visible from the body that must be presumed to stretch out behind the wall of the adjacent hallway.

A hand that had held Gulf's own so tightly as they had left the Chelsea FC training ground at Cobham earlier that morning to return home through the dreary drizzle, defiant sunshine in their hearts. A hand that had tenderly cradled the back of his head when they kissed passionately, intimately, as they re-entered the apartment with damp hair - reaching for one another in hunger as they crossed the threshold and kicked the door shut behind them, Mew flinging his key card onto the nearby leather sofa as they moaned and tangled together.

But they'd forgotten the milk. So Gulf had pulled on maroon shorts and a hooded sweatshirt after they made love, Mew chuckling as he stretched out on his back, naked and sated, atop black satin bedsheets:

"Hmmm. Which thing to tease Nong about first? The ridiculousness of a stubborn Thai boy who wears shorts in the British Winter, or the ridiculousness of a cute Thai boy with an accute and troubling addiction to English tea?"

"Ohooo, careful Daddy, or I won't make you the 'cuppa' that I know you'll be activating your best pleading voice for as soon as I get back" - the younger man had leant to peck the elder affectionately on the cheek - earning a playful slap to his ass from that hand, before he turned to skip out of the room and hunt for his seasonally inappropriate sliders.

And when he'd returned a little over fifteen minutes later - calling out in stilted English, "Two teas, coming right up Mr Suppasit, Sir!", as he rested the chilled bottle of dairy on the counter, reaching to open the fridge door - the smile fell from Gulf's lips as two things happened simultaneously, instantaneously:

He saw Mew's motionless hand extended around the corner from the hallway that led to the bedroom. And there was a deadening, powerful, thud of a blow to the back of his own head, as the room began to spin - and his heart to break at the same time.

'They found us. They got him' - were Gulf's last thoughts.

Until he came groggily to - tied to, and encaged by the breakfast bar counter - as the apartment was actively ransacked around him. The familiarity of his longed for mother tongue, but the jarring discomfort at the meaning of the words the uninvited invaders barked harshly as they swarmed like fire ants about the space that wasn't theirs.

'It's our fucking place...and you won't fucking find what you're fucking looking for here' hurled the petulant, but shrinking voice in Gulf's head, just as the aggressive, repressive compartmentalising and shutdown began, and before long he cared not even about the lethal shooting device - What was it precisely? He had never held much interest in weaponry and their labels - just centimetres from his brain and oblivion.

Because: Was this really it? Had everything been for nothing, them finding each other amongst the billions on the planet? All of that, falling in love, or whatever it should be called between two such lost souls.

The world around was just muted then, unbalanced and inconsequential. A vertiginous rocking trance as colours seemed to dim and dull. As though there was no brightness left again. Like it had always, always been, before...

Then, a sudden movement luring Gulf's eyes and attentions magnetically, urgently, to the corner of the room that he had tried so hard not to look at. Breath catching sharply in his dry throat.

The hand had moved - hadn't it? And as he watched - the actions of the imposters around him an accelerating blur of whirring motion and noise, as he stared intently on, heart galloping in his ears as he willed it, willed the finger to move again - there was a minute adjustment. The owner of the hand inching just a little further along the hallway into the room, so that the top of his head and eyes were now visible to the man that looked, breath held and fists clenched.

Mew's eyes - the left darkly bruised, and pursued by a trickle of blood that ran out from beneath his hairline - but blinking. Awake. Alive.

And suddenly Gulf wasn't disassociated anymore, and he was right there in that moment, compartments unlocked as pain and fear and utter panic at last flooded his body as he trembled against his restraints, shivered desperately to be held by those shielding, muscular arms. But Mew shook his head just once, firmly, almost indiscernibly, and then was working hard to do something, straining - a vein bulging prominently across his bloodied forehead - until at last he was able to blink his right eye deliberately closed and then open again.

He winked at Gulf.

'Susu na, baby - keep fighting. I'm here, I won't leave you', the wink told wordlessly - a symbolic alphabet borrowed from their very first meeting, as the younger man ached at the searing memory.

Because somewhere along the winding, potholed road of the past ten months, Mew had become his one that always stayed - and promised that he always would.

So Gulf inhaled deeply, steadying and steeling himself, physically, mentally. Nodding to wink conspiratorially back at Mew.

They would need to be strong together now, stronger than ever before.