Hatchetfield.

Ghosted Coffee (Poisoned Food)

Paul is kneeling next to his bed and there's someone lying on it. Someone scarily familiar. He wants to run, he knows she's dangerous, but his body won't co-operate. He's stuck here.

She wakes up, then turns to look at him, bleary eyed and confused.

"Hey, Melissa," he says softly, the small yet adoring smile on his face contrasting the terror flooding through his veins – he thought he was free of her!

"Huh?"

"It's ok, you're safe. My apartment is the last place they'd look." She was the safe one? What about him? Paul felt completely trapped all over again. He was at the mercy of her and her taser.

"Melissa, I've had a lot of time to think about what you did to me." Far too much time.

"I'm locked in your house," -caged- "you call me by a different name," -different species more like- "you got me hit by a car," -tragic- "but it doesn't make you a monster."
'Actually' Paul thinks, 'yes it does, what the fuck, brain?'

"Maybe it is the bump on my head talking, or-or maybe I'm seeing things clearly for the very first time." -What?- "You were just trying to take care of me..."

Paul sees a smile grow on Melissa's face. It's lopsided due to her being horizontal to his vertical and she's still partially drugged, but it's the same one she'd give him whenever he was a good Puss. Sweet and terrifying.

"So now, I'm going to take care of you," Paul can't stop his hand from taking hold of hers, can't stop the gentle squeeze of reassurance he gives it. He can't stop himself from gazing straight into eyes that look like pools of infinite inky blackness in the half-light.

"I'm going to go to work every day and pretend to be a human," -no, not again- "then I'll come home to you...Mommy."

Alarm bells blared in Paul's head. He could feel himself wanting to stay with Melissa. To be treated like her pet. If he went along with it...he'd stay alive. He'd just be pretending to be human, after all, since cats couldn't work in offices, could they?

"I may not have been a good man, but god damn it Melissa...let me be a good cat?"

The smile widened and she reached out to him. Paul's body moved without thinking and he rested his head next to her, letting her pet him gently. It was a touch of love and care, and it made Paul melt against her just a little. This was...nice.

"You are, Puss. You are." He purrs. "Good kitty."

~~~

Paul awoke with a cry, panting and shaking, cold sweat running down his back and sticking his sleep shirt to his skin uncomfortably, but as much as it irked him it was the dream that had shaken him the most.

"Let me be a good cat," dream Paul had said. He'd wanted that, needed it even...he needed someone to guide him. To tell him what to do and how to do it. He wanted to relinquish control and let someone else lead him.

Pulling his knees up to his chest, Paul sat and stared at his bedroom wall and willed himself to not cry. He'd cried enough these past few weeks, he decided, swallowing thickly against the sob he was certainly about to release. There was a mumble of his name, muffled by sleep and the bed covers. He'd woken Emma up.

"Go back to sleep, I'm ok." Paul murmured softly, resting his head on his knees and blinking hard. He wasn't actually ok, far from it, but he didn't want Emma to worry about him. She'd worried enough.

Emma, stubborn as ever, clearly didn't believe him and sat up anyway. He could feel her watching him. It reminded him of the long, frightening hours of lying curled at the bottom of a different bed, barely allowing himself to breathe in case he was punished for nothing.