Breathless

GodDAMN it here I go again. You'd think that after years...a lifetime, even, of running and scamming and scheming for my life, stealing and cheating, and yes even killing, that something so simple wouldn't have to power to send my heart racing.

But it happens every time, and it's really beginning to piss me off. I'm so in control the rest of the time. I'm known for cold, calm stoicism and heartlessness. It's not a bad rep to have in my vocation. So why is my heart pounding painfully in my throat, and why can't I seem to draw enough breath?

The panting is embarassing, for Christ's sake. He's going to think it's fear, and fear is a weakness, and weakness just invites more pain from him. Not that I don't welcome that, but I hate feeling so spacey around anybody. Good thing he's the only one I have to worry about seeing it.

I heave and pant and swallow, hands shaking (FUCK!), palms sweating, lips dry, eyes stinging with unshed tears. It's not the gun in my ribs that's stealing my breath, and it's not the blinding pain glancing through my head where he smacked it with the phone, or even the dull, deep ache in my forehead where he impacted it with his own. THAT was unexpected. I'll be replaying that one, I can tell you. Slow motion, of course, so that I can take advantage of his face's proximity.

It took me awhile to figure it out. I didn't know it when I was partnered with him. Now, I didn't say I didn't experience it. I just said I didn't know why. I was green back then, and getting in over my head very quickly, and I attributed my out of character reactions to my own self-doubt and fears of failure.

Then when he nearly shot me, I was really thrown. And not just down on the hood of that car. More fantasy fodder, but I'll get into that later, if you don't mind. See, I'd been working some pretty nasty jobs between my exit from the FBI and my most important assassination assignment. And I'd never lost my cool. Hardly broke a sweat, really. Sometimes it even scared me how easily I could remove myself from my own peril and just deal with it like any other situation. But mostly it kept me alive and I was grateful for it.

Which brings us back to that night. I remember the back of my head and the back of my hand both impacting painfully with the cold, red brick of his building, and the dizzy feeling of confusion as, unbelievably, I allowed myself to be divested of my gun. Then I was being thrown down on the car and in the seconds between hitting the metal and feeling his fist crack into my jaw several times in rapid succession, I had the time to anticipate the feeling of his hot, hard, lean body laying itself out on mine.

God, I remember being terrified because I didn't know what the fuck was wrong with me! Why couldn't I just take him down and get the hell out of there? But my body didn't obey my mind's orders to defend and flee. It was traitorous and fuzzy and warm and languorous and really, really heavy. And I couldn't seem to catch my fucking breath.

Then I was picked up and shoved in front of him and he was going to do it. I saw his finger tighten on the trigger, despite his partner's presence and pleas to stop. Then his body jolted as the bullet sank into him and the spell was broken. I ran so fast that I didn't even realize where I was until several minutes later, and even then, I wasn't nearly as breathless as I had been when I was there.

My voice gets fucked up, too. That *really* bugs me because it's kind of breathy anyway, and the last thing I need is more phone sex jokes. But I'm admitting to you now that my voice nearly disappears around him. Carried away with all of the oxygen *not* getting to my brain as I pant and tremble and try to keep it together.

So I have a really big problem, and I don't know what to do about it. I can't afford to have this kind of weakness in my line of work, and especially when the object of my focus is always trying to beat me up and threatening to kill me. But somebody up there has a weird, sick sense of humor, because it has nothing to do with choice or thinking or even wanting. My body simply...reacts.

Do you know that you own my breath? Do you know that you're the only one who's ever seen me struggle for composure or tremble with fear? The only one. Do you know much I hate it that my body betrays me like this? Do you? You can't possibly know what it's like to have your body take a course of action that your mind is screaming at you is wrong, dangerous, stupid, and crazy.

Can you?