"It's okay, it's okay. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Julian, just breathe. It's alright, just breathe."

Your voice is as soft as a summer rain, and as sweet as honey, but it does little to calm him down. Little to break through the cobwebs that had grown around his brain- thick, sticky and opaque. They cloud all rational thought and in this moment, not even your voice can break through them like they usually do. He knows you're at a loss, trying your best to calm him down. He can practically feel your heart shattering in your chest, your own breath just as quick and panicked as his.

He had tried, for you. Tried to have sex. He thought he could do it, actually put his hands on you instead of just sitting and watching you pleasure yourself while his hands were tied to the arm rests on the chair in the corner of his bedroom. It had been going alright, he had managed to make his body respond to how aroused he was feeling, but the second he tried to interlock his body with yours in the most intimate manner, he froze. Memories of his mother's torment came rushing at him like a freight train.

Julian was known for being quiet, poised, unpredictable and submissive. Violent. But now he felt week, curled up on the bed with his face pressed in your chest as he tried to regain his breathing, his chest rising and falling rapidly, eyes stinging. He tried to focus on your touch, your voice, anything to rid his body of the nausea and pain radiating through him. Time was the best medicine, but he knew you were trying.

He had held you like this many times. You had been a prostitute before he pulled you out of it. He knew that you felt the same pain as him, and it killed him. But right now, his mind was racing too fast. His fingers dug into your upper arms to a bruising degree, but he was too caught up in his head to notice. He would never hurt you. Hell, he had killed men for looking at you wrong.