Coffee

I knew the man's face because there was a picture of it tacked to the bulletin board in the office and another one taped to the wall of my cubicle.
Underneath both pictures were lines of small, barely readable font. With the man staring at me, I could only remember one of those lines.
Name: Gerard Arthur Way
The next line said something about drug dealing, but I didn't have to memorize the words to remember his offence. I was, after all, one of the officers assigned to his case.
And here he was, 5'9", slim build, black medium-length hair, hazel eyes, staring at me with a cup of coffee held casually in his right hand. He set it down on the table.
"Your coffee, officer."
All sound beyond the table I was seated at, beyond the criminal dressed in a waiter's uniform, seemed to fade. The chatter of customers, the sound of employees shouting orders, was drowned out by the sound of blood rushing in my ears.
I shot a nervous glance at the man behind the cash register. Ray was his name. He was the manager. I came here often enough to know that. He was talking with a customer, a fake smile plastered on his face, but I noticed the way his eyes darted between the elderly lady in front of him and the dark-haired man beside me. He was sweating through his uniform.
"How do you know who I am?" I asked, eyes returning to that pretty face. My voice was low and scratchy.
Gerard smiled a little and shrugged, as if nothing was wrong here. As if it were normal for a dangerous criminal to be serving coffee to a policeman. I wasn't even in uniform. How the hell did he know who I was?
His right hand, the one that had handed me the coffee, was now resting on his hip, stretching the fabric of the shirt in a way that revealed a bulge emerging from the waistband of his pants, to the right of his belt buckle.
"I think it's about time for my break, actually." His voice was deep and smooth, and he knew that my heart was beating fast, that I was surprised and slightly terrified. It was my night off. If I didn't run into criminals like this while I was on duty, why did it have to happen when I put my guard down?
"Why don't you come with me?" He talked to me as if talking to a scared animal, coaxing it out of its' cage, out of safety, but the way he made a discrete gesture to the weapon tucked into his pants was anything but comforting.
"I. Uh." My legs pulled themselves up, out of the booth. Gerard smiled, this weird stretch of his lips that made him look delighted, absolutely delighted that I had agreed to go with him, as if he'd asked me out on some sort of date.
Before he ushered me out the back door of the building, he stopped to whisper something in Ray's ear. The poor guy was shaking.
"The cops get called, and your whole family's dead."

"Cellphone." Gerard reached a pale hand in front of me as I clicked the seatbelt shut, his palm up, expectant.
No way in hell.
"I don't have a cellphone."
But, much to my dismay, he wasn't a total idiot. "Bullshit. Hand it over, or I'm pulling out the gun."
And that was all the convincing I really needed. I slipped my cellphone into his hand, palms sweaty. "Where are you taking me?" He pulled out of the parking lot smoothly, apparently in no kind of hurry. Speeding and making sudden turns would bring too much attention to us. There was suddenly a sharp pang in my gut. He was going to kill me, I was almost certain.
"Hotel." His voice was level, incredibly calm, and it put me a little at ease, and I couldn't figure out why.

Less than ten minutes later, Gerard pulled the car into another parking lot, taking one of the furthest spots from the hotel's entrance.
"Look. I don't know what you want, but if you'll just tell me, maybe we can make a deal and you can let me leave."
But Gerard just grinned at me a little, shaking his head and turning off the engine. "I don't want you to leave."
I was freaking out, but years of training had me pretty calm on the outside. My fingers were trembling and my palms were sweaty, but I managed to keep my voice level when I spoke. "What do you want?"
He chuckled, "I want a lot of things. You'll have to be more specific."
"What do you want from me?"
His grin disappeared, replaced with a smirk, his eyes seeming to have gone a shade darker along with the sky. "Again--a lot of things."
I was caught off guard when he was suddenly invading my space, leaning over the center console to press his nose against the side of my head, his lips brushing my ear so lightly that I may have only imagined the contact. "But for now," he whispered, "I want you." The hair on the back of my neck seemed to stand on end, "In a bed. On top of me."
And okay, that hadn't been what I expected to hear.
Without allowing me a moment to recover, he pulled himself back into his seat, expression serious. "You got a credit card on you?" He asked, and it was a few moments before his words even registered in my mind. I was replaying his previous words in my head over and over again, and every time I heard them, my entire body tensed a little bit more.
"I-uh. Yeah. Yeah, I got a credit card."
He nodded, all business. As if he hadn't expressed his desire for me moments before. "Good. Go inside, get us a room for the night. I'll follow you in at a small distance."
Before he even finished his sentence, I was nodding, pushing the door open, every muscle in my body buzzing with some kind of energy that I hadn't felt in a long, long time. I wasn't sure if it was fear or excitement. It felt like a mixture of both.
"Oh, and Frankie?" Gerard called me, just as I was about to slam the door shut. I ducked my head back inside of the car. Suddenly, I wasn't even interested in how the hell he knew my name.
He waved the gun at me, eyebrow quirked. "You try something--call the cops or whatever--and I'll shot the first person I see. Got it?"