The Boy Movie Brahms Heelshire x reader FanFic

Part 7 - The Fight

This chapter is dedicated to @DeadMagenta

It's a Mexican standoff.  Brahms versus you.   It's late afternoon and outside it's humid, hot.  Thunderstorm weather.   The inside of the house is cool, but stuffy.  You can't open any of the windows as they're all painted shut; an anomaly that just makes the place feel even more like a prison.

You're trying to not to raise your voice.   Trying to stay calm.

"Brahms, I'll only be gone an hour or so!"

"No."

"There's no internet connection here and I need to get on line to purchase clothing.   I know your size.  I know what to buy."

"Don't leave me, Y/N."

"I'm not leaving!   I'm just nipping to the village library to use the  wifi!"

He's breathing heavily behind that mask and you feel like ripping it off his face.   

"I don't need any clothes!"

"Yes, you do.   You need them for me.   It's freaking me out watching you parade around in your dead father's cast offs!"

His breathing is getting more erratic, and you fear that if you push him too hard, he'll snap.  

"Brahms, please..."

He shakes his head in that determined way he has, eyeballing you relentlessly.   You can imagine him setting his jaw and grinding his teeth.   His beard, clipped now into long stubble, moves when he speaks.   "You won't come back."

"I will.  I promise."    You move to leave the room but he steps into the doorway.  "Goddammit, Brahms!"

You hold your forehead with one hand, trying not to lose your temper.   "Come with me," you say.  "We can walk there together."

"You're not leaving!"   He's threatening now, pacing back and forth in the doorway.   You remember his words the day you were discussing his burns and his parents.  "I made their life hell when I could."   

"You," you yell, pointing a finger at him.  "Are not going to make my life a misery.  Nor will you cage me like one of your fucking stuffed birds!"

Brahms storms over to you.  He's shifting his weight from foot to foot in that pugilistic way men have when their tempers  reach boiling point.   You stand your ground, giving him the diamond drill eye.    He circles like a shark, bringing that ghastly mask so close you can smell the peppermint mouthwash he's used.    Each time he comes into your line of sight, you stare into his one good eye so intently you can see the striations of purest green in it.   You long to slap him, good and hard.   

At last, he stops in front of you.   In a low, shaking voice he snarls, "If you try to leave... I'll kill you like I killed the others."

Time seems to stand still and the room feels like a vacuum.  You don't flinch, you don't scream, you don't cringe.   In that moment you despise him, utterly,  and if not for that face covering, you'd spit at him.    He's hyperventilating now,  but you're calm as the eye of the storm.   With almost psychopathic deliberation, you raise your right arm and crack him a smack across his left ear. 

The blow snaps his head to the side, and nearly dislodges the mask.  So swiftly it appears part of the same movement,  you repeat the manoeuvre  to his right ear.    The double blow stops Brahms in his tracks, and you suspect nobody has had the audacity to hit him like this for a very long time.   Then you remember Emily, and your courage sinks into a pit of fear.  For a split second, you both make eye contact; but he's seen the chink in your armour and lunges, grabbing you.  

You flail, kicking and elbowing, but he swings you round and puts you in a headlock.   Not to be outdone, you stamp down on his bare feet then hear him hiss as the heel of your boot crunches on his toes.   Then he's swinging you round, backwards, out of the room.   You have long nails so reach behind to claw at his neck.   Your fingers scrabble on the mask as you aim for the eye holes.    Brahms yanks his head back and out of your reach.   He has you halfway up the stairs now, and your boots drum on the stair carpet.   You wrench and buck and jack knife but can't break free.   Neither of you speak, it takes too much energy to battle each other.

On the upper landing, you're being dragged to your own room.   You wonder crazily why he's decided to kill you there and not downstairs.   At the doorway something like  madness takes you as you dig your nails viciously into his forearms and start wriggling like a fish on a hook.  Exhaustion kicks in and you stop struggling.  He's too strong, and you're crying now, thoroughly afraid, all fight gone.  Then suddenly, he gives you a powerful shove that has you bouncing onto the bed face down.  

In a tangle of bedding you struggle round to face him.   He's clearly furious, glaring down at you, his body slick with perspiration.  You see blood streaming from his neck and hands, but it gives you little satisfaction.   Your throat hurts where he's gripped you so tightly, but you can't stop the storm rising again.   Like a cornered cat you hiss at him, "You bastard!"

Warily,  you watch him move  towards you.   Instinct makes you cower back against the wooden bedstead.   You hear that hateful breathing.   Watch the rise and fall of his sweaty chest.  The dark curls fall across the front of that boyish mask as he leans down.   With a kind of morbid fascination your eyes never once disconnect with his.  He'll slaughter me now, you think with dreaded certainty.   Strangle me.   Bludgeon me.  Kill me like all the others...

Brahms is so close now you can see the double row of his dark eyelashes.   That damaged right eye is red and bloodshot, the reptilian pupil as large and dark as a dead man's eye.  The other is the clear mottled green.   Both are possessed of a terrible intelligence, and equally awesome rage.   You can hear your own breath, rasping in and out in unison with his.    Closer still and you catch the wink of scar tissue just on the edge of the mask eye hole to the right, pink and twisted.  

Now, he's so close you can't focus on that pale face anymore.  You wait for his hands around your throat.  For the beating.   Bite back the whimper dancing behind your lips.   Close your eyes because you can't bear  his intensity anymore.

But he doesn't attack you.   He doesn't lay his hands on you.   No blow comes.   No strangling grip.  You open your eyes just as the cold, hard lips of the mask touch your own.   

Brahms holds the kiss, gently, tenderly.  You don't pull away.  

Then he's gone.  Locking the door behind him.