Page 50 of Assistant to the Assassin

“Are all of your tattoos religious?” I ask, trailing my fingers along the depiction of an angel reaching out with his hand towards a falling Lucifer; it stretches over the left side of his chest, made entirely of black ink.

He and I have been cuddling in bed for the past half an hour, making random chatter here and there, but mostly just holding one another. It’s been nice, but my curiosity has gotten the best of me, and I can’t help but ask him about his tattoos. I’ve always wanted to, but I thought he would turn me down.

He shakes his head, grabbing my fingers and placing them over a tattoo of a blue sparrow under his right collar bone. “A blue sparrow is one of the many symbols of the Navy.”

He then places my hand on a tattoo on his left arm. “This is a purple iris—my mother’s birth month flower—then here is a white water lily.” He drags my fingers to the tattoo above the iris, hidden under his bicep. As I stare at the beautiful flowers, something occurs to me: water lilies are my birth month flower.

“You got a tattoo for me?” I ask, awestruck.

He gives a shallow nod.

“When?” I whisper.

He begins circling the skin of my hand with his thumb, our hands both covering the water lily. “Do you remember last December, your pump got crimped and you couldn’t get your blood sugar down? I’ll never forget looking behind me and watching you collapse from your chair onto the ground; the panic I felt in that moment will stay with me forever. I didn’t know what to do, so I took you to the emergency room and they were able to help you.”

My site, where my pump’s tube connects to my body, crimped when I injected it and my tube into my stomach. Since it was a nine-millimeter site, it bent pretty badly inside of me. They had to remove it for me.

I nod, snuggling in closer towards his body. “Yeah, I remember.”

“It was one of the worst days of my life,” he confesses, bringing our combined hands up so he can place a kiss on my knuckles. “By that time, you and I had become friends. I knew I cared about you, but watching you pass out, seeing you in the ER, knowing I couldn’t do anything to help you…I hadn’t felt so helpless and afraid since my mother was taken. You had told me what can happen if a diabetic goes into DKA, and while I was in the waiting room, I was obsessing over the possibility that you might go into a coma or worse. When they finally let me back to see you, and you smiled at me like my presence comforted you…I knew I loved you. But if I’m honest, I was in love with you long before that. I just couldn’t admit it to myself until I thought I was going to lose you.”

I place a kiss on his chest, right below his blue sparrow. “And so, you got my birth flower tattooed next to your mom’s,” I conclude for him.

He nods once, leaning his forehead down to rest against mine. “I hadn’t felt any kind of love since my mother, and when I realized my feelings for you, I swore I would never voice how I felt. I didn’t believe you felt the way I did, which was one reason for my silence, but the main one was because I didn’t want you to be used against me by my enemies. When I got compromised, when I looked into Johnathon Harrison’s eyes after I had murdered the only family he had left, I knew that my worst fear was going to come true. All he would have to do is make any sort of threat against you and he would have me completely under his power. I saw history repeat itself, and I panicked, just like I did that night. I wasn’t able to protect my mother, and I worried I wouldn’t be able to protect you either.”

“But that wasn’t your fault.” I pull my face away from his, cupping his jaw so he keeps his gaze on me. “You were a child, Henry, a twelve-year-old boy. There wasn’t anything you could do. And when you found her, there was nothing you could have done to prevent her from overdosing. If something were to happen to me, I know it wouldn’t be because you couldn’t have helped me. None of this was your fault.”

He shakes his head, his eyes falling shut and his jaw clenching. “If it wasn’t my fault, then I have to accept that there are things out of my control, that some things are truly up to God’s will.”

I give him a melancholic laugh, brushing his cheek with my fingertips. “When I was diagnosed, I felt the same way. Back then, I still held on to some of my religious beliefs, and I desperately looked for any reason why God would have given me an illness that couldn’t be cured. My grandparents would tell me that it was all part of God’s plan, but his plan fucking sucks. Why does he get to ruin my life just because he created us? God is no different than my grandparents, people who thought like they could decide how I felt and thought just because they were blood. So, I decided I wouldn’t believe in God, and I hoped that renouncing my religion would make me immune to the things that were out of my control, but it didn’t. I am still a diabetic and my parents are still dead. I can’t control everything, but what I can control is how I live my life. I choose to look at the world with a glass half full, to use my skills and time to help others, and to leave my comfortable job to take a chance on you.”

H opens up his eyes and tears blur his vision. With a blink, a couple drops fall down onto the pillow under our heads. As another one slides down his cheek, I brush it away with the pad of my thumb, trailing water across his skin. “You can choose to forgive yourself and accept that you can’t control everything. It won’t be easy, but what kind of life are you living if you don’t?”

He licks his lips, sucking in an uneven breath. “Can you hold me?”

I smile, pecking his cheek. “Turn over.”

I spoon him from behind, like I have done every night we’ve shared a bed, and rest my cheek between his shoulder blades, loving the content sigh he gives as he settles in my embrace.

“You don’t have to bear all the weight alone, H,” I whisper, kissing his back tattoo, which is a large snake slithering along his spine. “Don’t you think it’s about time you let someone protect you?”

He grabs on to my hands, holding them against his stomach. “From what?”

“Not all enemies are sentient beings. The most cruel and unforgiving are the ones that live inside our heads. You and I can fight all of them off together.”

He pauses for a moment, soaking in my words, then I hear him give a faint murmur. “Together,” he agrees.

This Cage Was Once Just Fine

I wake up to a very insistent beeping noise behind me, one I recognize as Beth’s pump. This beep goes off if her pump is out of insulin or it’s been shut off for too long. With one peek over my shoulder, I can tell it’s the former. Beth gives me a groan, her eyebrows knit in dramatic despair.

“I don’t want to get out of bed.” She frowns down at her pump, her nostrils flaring when it goes off again.

BEEBEEBEEP BEEBEEBEEP

I kiss her cheek, nodding towards the door. “I need to check and see if I missed any calls from Ian, anyways.”

She reluctantly pushes herself out of bed, and I’m greeted with her nearly naked body. She’s wearing a bra so she has something to attach her pump to, but other than that…

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