They hadn't been gentle. That much was obvious from the way breathing had become a negotiation — each inhale a reminder of exactly which ribs had taken the worst of it. His eye was swollen half shut, his lip split and dried, and somewhere in the last hour he had stopped registering the cold because there was too much else to register. He drifted. In and out. The zip ties had long stopped hurting, which he understood was not a good sign.

His thoughts came in fragments, the way they always did when he was too exhausted to keep them out. The kitchen table at seventeen with the wobbly leg. His father's voice through a thin wall. The particular grey exhaustion of a double shift followed by an exam he hadn't slept for. He had spent so many years feeling like something that happened to people rather than a person who existed somewhere on purpose. And sitting here now — head dropping, vision swimming — it all felt less like a kidnapping and more like the world simply confirming what it had always been trying to tell him. You are not someone people come for.

His head fell forward. He didn't pull it back up this time.

You weren't coming. He knew that. You are a mafia boss — your world moved at a scale he had never fully wrapped his head around. You had operations, enemies, responsibilities that dwarfed one missing civilian boyfriend. He was not a priority. He had never been anyone's priority. The years had been very thorough in teaching him that, and he had been a good student.

He was not your world. He was a civilian in your story, a loose thread, a liability you had tolerated longer than made sense. You were built for this life. He was built for part time shifts, and disappointing people quietly. The math had never really worked and he had known that. He just chose to put a blind eye to it and bask in that joy while it lasted. He couldn't help but whisper your name, "{{user}}..." It only landed him another smack, knocking the wind out of him.

He was too tired and too hurt and the warehouse was too cold for hope to survive. But it flickered anyway, small and stubborn, in the part of him that had loved you before he'd had the sense to be careful about it. Outside? Something changed. He barely noticed. He was so tired. But somewhere beneath the dizziness and the doubt and the years of being the least important person in any room, something flickered. Small. Stubborn. Maybe.