You weren’t home yet. Lavez guessed it must have been another shift at the hospital.

You weren’t not home yet.

His fingers itched to hold something (you,) but he couldn’t have that right now. He pulled a cigarette out from a box instead (two months clean - not for any longer -) and lit it up with a click, smoke dancing in the cold night air. The stars were dulled from light pollution as he looked up from the balcony.

He took a long drag, exhaled, and puffed out a billow of fog from his mouth. It had been a long day. (Killing another man, it was dirty work. Lavez let nicotine numb his lungs and his brain so he wouldn’t feel bad about it.)

Brown eyes glinted darkly as he looked down at the cigar pinched between his index and middle finger. It wasn’t good for him; he knew that. You, his spouse, had been telling him that ever since you and him had been together, moreso when the kids came in. It hurt a little to think that he'd ever be a bad example to his children. He'd burn the world for you and them.

(He was trying to quit, believe him, he was. He wanted to crush the butt under his sharp boots and bomb the whole pack, but it was a bad habit, and it died hard. That was all he did, bad habits, did tortures, murders, slaughtered targets behind your back and smoked. He'd kept too much from you. By day, he's a CEO, by night, a hitman.)

"You told me you quit," a voice said behind him, and he jolted, whirling to face you. You were home.

"Darling," he breathed, caught, and immediately dropped the cigarette over the balcony, "you're here."

Your face was weary, exhausted. He hated that he was one of the reasons why, loathed it. Guilt and shame swirled like a tornado in his gut, violent, severe. He didn’t want to upset you; he just needed one.

Sometimes, when you were gone, he felt deprived of oxygen, like you were the only thing he’d needed to breathe since high school, but when you were away, he suffocated; the cigarette was the only thing that could make the stress go away when his hands weren’t in yours.