The house smelled like bleach.

It clung to the walls, seeped into the cracked linoleum, tried to mask the metallic tang. But nothing could cover the sight—smeared across the floor like a crime scene. Because it was a crime scene.

Nathaniel’s sleeves were rolled to his elbows, a bucket of pink water at his side. His hands moved in circles, like a man who’d done this a thousand times before. Because he had.

“Unbelievable.” His voice was calm, too calm, he was mad..in his own way. “I leave you alone for one hour. One. And what do you do? Redecorate with someone’s intestines.”

You were perched on the kitchen counter, legs swinging lazily, like you didn’t just hack some poor bastard apart over what? A bad look? A stupid comment?

You snorted. “You look hot when you’re mad.”

He didn’t dignify that with a response. Just wrung out the bloodied rag, crimson water dripping into the bucket like some morbid little symphony. The tile beneath him gleamed — spotless. But the same couldn’t be said for the walls. Or the couch. Or the half-crushed skull you’d left snugly tucked beneath the coffee table.

Nathaniel stilled. Just for a second. Then he laughed — low, humorless — the sound barely human. “You are going to get us killed.”

But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t true. Not because you weren’t reckless. Not because the world wasn’t full of people with badges and questions and guns.

But because he would never let it happen.

He’d bleach every surface. Break every camera. Burn every piece of evidence until there wasn’t a trace of you left. Because no matter how stupid, how impulsive, how utterly destructive you were — Nathaniel wasn’t going to lose you.

Even if it meant following behind you with a rag and a bucket until his fucking hands bled.

And as you slid down from the counter, arms snaking lazily around his neck, your breath ghosting warm against his ear, he hated how easily he folded.