Chapter 177. Forced Closeness

The grip in the dark was a treaty. A silent, desperate agreement that in the face of absolute betrayal and cold, mountain isolation, they would not also be alone. The physical connection was a lifeline thrown across the vast, cold bed.

But a lifeline is not a harbour. The tension didn't dissipate; it transformed. It simmered in the frigid air of the room, a low-grade fever beneath the skin. It was in the stiffness of their linked hands, in the careful inches of space between their bodies, in the shared, shallow breaths that seemed too loud in the howling silence.

Sabatine lay rigid, hyper-aware of every point of contact—the rough texture of Anton’s calloused palms, the cool dryness of his skin, the faint, steady tremor that ran through him like a trapped current. This wasn't the electric pull of the penthouse, the deliberate slide into intimacy. This was a raw, animal need for presence, stripped of all romance. It was humbling. It was terrifying.

Anton’s breathing refused to even out. Sabatine could feel the frantic rhythm of his heart through their joined hands, a trapped bird beating against ribs. He wasn't just awake; he was a live wire of grief and fury, vibrating with a silent scream.

Minutes bled into an hour. The wind was a constant, mournful antagonist outside the glass. Sabatine’s side ached. His mind, usually a sanctuary of analysis and order, was a shattered mirror reflecting the day's carnage: the concussive thump of the bomb, the dust-choked run, the cold blue of his mother’s eyes in the garage, the revelation of a conspiracy that dwarfed all their previous fears.

Exhaustion was a creeping tide, but every time Sabatine felt himself drift towards its pull, Anton would flinch, or his grip would tighten convulsively, yanking him back to the bleak present.

He couldn't do this. He couldn't just lie here, holding the hand of a breaking man, feeling his own fractures widen in sympathy. The operative in him needed a mission. A perimeter to walk. An enemy to dissect. But the enemy was a phantom syndicate, and the only mission here was to endure. To simply be. And for Sabatine Stalker, that was the hardest operation of all.

A particularly violent gust shook the fortress, a deep groan echoing through the stone. Anton jerked, a full-body spasm, and his hand tore from Sabatine’s as if burned. Sabatine heard him sit up, the mattress dipping, heard the ragged, choked sound that was halfway between a sob and a curse.

“Anton,” Sabatine said into the dark, his own voice gravelly.

“I can’t,” Anton gasped. “I can’t just lie here. I see it. Her face. The… the satisfaction in her eyes. She was happy to see me cornered. My own…” The sentence disintegrated.

Sabatine pushed himself up on an elbow. He couldn't see Anton’s face, but he could feel the heat of his misery radiating in the cold room. The CEO, the strategist, the unflappable billionaire—he was gone. What was left was a boy, betrayed by the first person who should have loved him, hiding in his father’s forgotten fortress.

Old instincts warred within Sabatine. The soldier said to give him space, to let the breakdown happen and then regroup. The protector said to secure the asset, to offer a calm, rational assessment. But the man… the man who loved him… knew both those responses were wrong.

He didn't speak. He moved. Slowly, giving Anton every chance to retreat, he shifted across the cold expanse of sheets. He didn't try to hug him, to offer platitudes. He simply sat beside him, their shoulders not quite touching, a solid, silent presence in the consuming dark. He mimicked Anton’s posture—back straight, facing the invisible window where the storm raged.

For a long moment, there was only the wind and Anton’s shattered breathing.

“He gave her everything but the one thing she wanted,” Anton whispered, the words torn from a deep, wounded place. “The crown. And she burned the whole kingdom to punish him. And me.”

“She’s wrong,” Sabatine said, the words simple and absolute. “About the kingdom. About you.” He paused. “About us.”

Anton turned his head, a pale blur in the darkness. “Is she? About us? Look where we are, Sabe. Hiding in a crypt. Forced into this… this proximity because the world wants us dead. This isn’t a life. This is a siege. And love isn’t supposed to feel like a last stand.”

The truth of it was a blade. He was right. This forced closeness, born of tactical necessity, was a grotesque parody of the intimacy they were trying to build. It was pressure, not choice. It was another layer of survival, not a release from it.

“Then we don’t let this be the definition,” Sabatine said, the idea forming as he spoke it. “This room, this bed… it’s geography. It’s not a treaty. The treaty is us. Right now. Choosing not to be alone in it. Even if we’re just two guys sitting in the dark, too fucked up to sleep.”

He felt, rather than saw, Anton’s gaze on him. The frantic energy around him shifted, softened into something like exhausted wonder.

“Since when did you become a philosopher?” Anton’s voice was ragged, but a thread of his old wryness was there.

“Since the only weapon I had left was words,” Sabatine replied quietly.

Another silence, but this one was different. The screaming tension had bled out, leaving a weary, shared desolation. The kind of quiet that comes after the worst has happened, and you’re still breathing.

Slowly, Anton lay back down. Not on his far side of the bed, but in the centre. An invitation. A choice.

Sabatine hesitated for only a second. Then he lay down beside him, on his back, staring at the invisible ceiling. The space between them was now measured in heartbeats, not miles. The warmth of Anton’s body was a tangible force in the cold room.

Minutes passed. The wind howled. Sabatine’s body, held taut for so long, began to relent to the deep, marrow-deep fatigue. His consciousness frayed at the edges. He was vaguely aware of his own breathing deepening, syncing unconsciously with the slower, steadier rhythm beside him.

In the liminal space between waking and sleeping, he felt a shift. Anton turned onto his side, facing him. Sabatine didn't open his eyes. He held perfectly still, a hunter in a blind.

Then he felt it—the careful, hesitant press of Anton’s forehead against his shoulder. Not a passionate embrace. A grounding. A search for an anchor in the storm of his own mind. A moment later, Anton’s hand came to rest lightly on Sabatine’s chest, over his sternum, feeling the rise and fall of his breath.

Sabatine didn't pull away. He let the weight settle there, a warm, undeniable claim. He brought his own hand up and covered Anton’s, lacing their fingers together against his heartbeat.

And then, he slept.

It wasn't a peaceful sleep. It was the shallow, vigilant rest of a soldier in a forward camp. But I slept. And as he slipped under, his last conscious sensation was the syncopated rhythm—the strong, steady thud of his own heart under their joined hands, and the slower, deeper pulse he could now feel through the point of contact at his shoulder, where Anton’s temple rested. Two separate drums, finding, in the forced closeness of the dark, a tentative, fragile harmony.

The simmering tension was gone, burned off in the confession of despair. What remained in the cold mountain air wasn't passion, but something quieter, more durable: a mutual, bone-deep recognition. They were both broken. They were both hunted. And in this stone room, at the edge of the world, they had chosen, against all instinct and reason, to let their broken pieces rest against each other. Not as a solution, but as a ceasefire. A shared breath in the long, cold night.

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