second chances
mob boss! lando norris x reader
part forty-three: y/n
word count: 5.5k
warnings: this chapter contains descriptions of violence and gore. reader discretion is advised.
forty-two | forty-three | forty-four
“Y/N—”
His knees hit the tile hard.
There was no time to think. There was no protocol or logic. There was just instinct — vicious, blinding instinct — as Lando dropped to his knees beside Y/N, already reaching for her, already trying to stop the bleeding with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
She was on her side, curled in on herself like her body was trying to hold in what it couldn’t. There was blood — not a lot at first, but more now. It soaked through her shirt in thick, wet patches and smeared across the floor from where she’d moved, or at least tried to. Her fingers were clumsy where they pressed against her own side, slipping and twitching with every shaky breath she tried to take.
This isn’t happening.
There was also the sound. It wasn’t a scream or a cry. Instead, it was just a wet, desperate wheeze. Her body jerked with each gasp — shallow, wet, choking sounds that made him feel like he was suffocating too.
“Hey. Hey, look a’ me.” His voice shook. He grabbed her face too quickly, too rough, trying to tilt her towards him, but he didn’t know what else to do. “Stay with me. Please.”
It hurt worse because she was trying.
He could see it in the way her mouth moved, like she was trying to say something. His name, maybe. Or help. Or hurts. But all that came out was more blood — red against her lips, down her chin, too bright.
His stomach turned.
“Fuck—what happened?” he asked, not really expecting an answer. “Who– Who did this? What the fuck happened—”
He was interrupted when her body jolted slightly and her hand clutched at his wrist and she was coughing again, harder now, the blood bubbling from her mouth and dripping down her cheek.
He froze.
Then panic ripped through him like lightning.
Somewhere in the back, the phone kept ringing.
“Help!” he screamed, his throat raw. “Somebody fucking help me! Please— please, she’s— someone call an ambulance!”
He could barely breathe. His whole body felt wired and numb all at once, like he was floating above himself watching it happen.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he noticed how her hands were still pressed against her stomach, but they were losing strength — fingers twitching, slipping, losing grip. He pressed his palms over hers, harder than he should have, trying to add pressure, to stop the leak, to fix it somehow, but the blood kept coming, dark and too much and too fast.
“You’re okay,” he said, his voice thin, breaking. “You’re alright, yeah? I’ve got you. You– You’re okay. You’re— fuck, what happened?”
In response, she could only look at him. Everything seemed to blur around the edges, including the outline of the man now holding her. Her eyes were wide and wet, dark pupils blown and drifting.
This isn’t happening.
Her lips moved but no sound came out. There was only more blood.
“No, no, no, no—fuck!”, he muttered under his breath, clearly frustrated. He grabbed her more tightly now, easing her onto her back as gently as he could. “You’re okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you. Just—just breathe, alright? I know it hurts, I know, but you have to stay awake, okay?”
Instinctively, he still looked to her for a response. Maybe it was some desperate hope that she’d do something, make a gesture of some sort – that she’d do anything that she was aware, that she was here with him now.
It was only then he noticed the way she was shivering, the tny tremors wracking her weakening form. He didn’t know if it was fear, or shock, or from the blood loss — probably all of it. Her whole body was trembling against him and her eyes were unfocused now, lashes fluttering, her gaze slipping somewhere just past his shoulder.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck–,” Lando swore loudly. His eyes darted to her side, where her hands were trembling against her stomach, barely pressing now, too weak to hold their grip. Immediately, he moved to take over, desperate to do anything to help as he pulled up her shirt just enough to see the wound.
The moment he saw it, all the oxygen escaped his lungs at once.
This isn’t happening.
Just where the cartilage met the bone of some of her ribs was a single, deep puncture wound. The incision was clean, even beneath the mess of fresh and dried blood that decorated its entrance, more blood spritzing weakly each time she attempted another shaky inhale.
Lower right lung.
Clean.
If it nicked somethin’ in there–
Lando couldn’t afford to think like that. So instead of thinking, he pressed down hard against the open flesh wound. Y/N let out a strangled cry, but at least it was sound.
She can’t do that if she’s dead, he had to remind himself. That means she’s still alive.
She’s still alive.
Keep her alive.
Soon enough, even his hands alone weren't enough to stop the never ending flow of blood. Desperately, he spun his head around, looking for anything he could use, anything that could help. Anything even remotely useful was too far for him to reach without letting go of her, to far to reach without getting up.
Wild eyes flitted in every direction, hoping to find a miracle. Eventually, when all else seemed to fail, Lando remembered the sweatshirt he’d been wearing.
I can use that. I can use it like a bandage and it’ll buy her time. It’ll buy her time so that she can–
So she could what?
Physically shaking the thought from his mind, Lando quickly pulled his sweatshirt over his head, before wadding it up and pushing it into the wound. As the fabric soaked up the fresh blood, rubbing up against the injury, Y/N cried out in pain again, the fabric’s brush causing her wound to burn. Her brown eyes widened with pain, her breath hitching and rattling.
“Y/N,” he called out, this time louder, hands shaking as he tried to steady her. Scrambling to find new patches of the fabric that hadn’t already been soaked in her blood, he explained, “I think– I think you’re bleedin’ into your chest. Shit—shit, I think ‘s your lung or somethin’, fuck, fuck—”
Her eyes were unfocused, her skin pale.
There was no way for him to know what was making it worse and what wasn’t, certainly not when his mind was blank and filled with static the way it was then. All he could do was hold her tighter, his palms pressed to her side as he tried to keep the warmth in. He pressed harder with little regard for her discomfort, because he would happily apologize for the rest of his life if he could just manage to keep her alive, if he could just manage to keep the cold tinge of death from creeping further up her fingertips.
“You’re okay,” he lied, smiling up at her. It was a warped, terrified quirk of his lips more than anything, but he put everything he had into making it as convincing as possible. Y/N deserved at least that much.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You’re okay, Y/N, you’re fine. ‘M right here.”
Below him, in his arms, the girl blinked slowly, like even that small action took too much effort. Her fingers twitched beneath his as blood leaked between them. Her legs twitched weakly once before going still again.
What? No, that can’t—
“Hey, hey, hey, stay with me,” Lando begged, his voice breaking completely. He’d begun to rock ever so slightly without realizing it, as if trying to soothe her to rest. “Don’t close your eyes. I swear to God, don’t fucking do that to me—”
Her eyelids fluttered anyway, as the colors only began to fade more feom view. Y/N tried desperately to focus on anything — the beaming overhead lights, the color of Lando’s eyes — but to no avail.
Oh, she realized distantly, trying to force herself to sort out her muddled thoughts. Lando’s here.
It was hard to know if she had managed to smile, since everything was so hard and Y/N was so very tired. But what she did know was that if Lando was here, he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
As if triggered by that very thought, the singing pain in her side began to lessen, an odd coolness beginning to spread in its place. It was now significantly less uncomfortable, enough that she could finally allow herself just a moment of rest—
“No, no, don’t— shit, HELP!” Lando screamed, the sound so raw it scraped up his throat. The cry seemed to reverberate in the empty of the store. “SOMEONE HELP ME— SOMEONE FUCKING HELP ME, SHE’S DYING!”
No one answered.
With shaking hands and blood-slicked fingers, Lando managed to pull out his phone and dial the emergency number, snapping at the dispatcher so fast they had to tell him to repeat himself. How could barely recall anything he’d actually said — their location, that she was stabbed.
He’d told them she was dying.
That he remembered.
By the time he ended the call, she was barely conscious.
“Hey. Hey, don’t fucking do this t’ me.”
He cupped her cheek with one hand, the other still pressing hard against her wound. His hands, his forearms, his clothes – everything was covered in her blood. His jeans were soaked through. Her breath was uneven, sharp and hitching.
It felt like hours passed before her eyes fluttered. Her lips parted in another attempt to speak, but all that came out was another choke. Blood bubbled at the base of her throat.
He nearly lost it then.
Hazel eyes met hers as he searched her face once more, looking for any sign she was in pain. But where there was once a grimace, now there was nothing. Nothing except familiar brown eyes, now wide with terror.
With his hoodie still pressed to her side in a futile attempt to put pressure on the bleeding, Lando was finally at a loss of what to do. There was no trick, no plan, no scheme that would whisk them away from this nightmare. There was only them, waiting on the faith that help would eventually arrive.
As they waited, there was nothing he could do to take that look off her face. So he did the only thing he could still do for her.
“You’re gonna be fine,” he lied, his forehead pressed to hers. He had to force himself not to flinch in response to how cold her skin was against his.
She’s not supposed to be cold. She hates being cold, always wants socks or a blanket or to lay next to me so she isn’t cold.
She’s not supposed to be cold.
“You hear me? You’re okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you, promise.”
It might have just been his own wishful thinking, but Lando almost could’ve sworn he heard her try to mumble his name. But when he looked at her eyes, they began to flutter shut.
“No. No. Stop it, stop it. Don’t– Please, sweetheart—”
The phone clattered to the ground beside him, forgotten. If the dispatcher said anything else, Lando certainly didn’t hear it. Even as he gently tried to shake her awake, her eyes continued to slip closed.
“No, baby, hey—hey.”
He leaned in, voice cracking under the weight of panic and heartbreak. “Stay with me, okay? I know you hate me. I know. But don’t—please don’t leave me like this.”
She didn’t answer him.
Her lips barely parted with each dwindling breath, but that was the only sign she’d ever been breathing at all. Her lips moved, but there was no sound now. Where there once was muffled coughing or gurgling or even just weak wheezing, now there was no sound at all.
“Somebody help!” he shouted once more, one final hail mary attempt from a boy who was watching the one thing he loved fade before his very eyes. “Please— SOMEONE HELP ME!”
Nothing happened.
No one came.
There was just the sound of her ragged breathing. Just the music still playing softly in the background, some lazy instrumental track that suddenly felt cruel. There was just the blood on the floor, warm against his knees.
As he sat there, swathed in artificial lighting and surrounded by a puddle of darkening red, Lando Norris finally broke. He cried like his chest had split open, because for him, it had. He cried until his shoulders shook and his tears fell to the tiles like a sorry attempt at washing away the damage that had already been done.
Lando Norris cried like a little boy.
Even in his despair, his fingers curled tighter around her, holding her closer the way he used to as they laid on her couch not long ago. This time, however, his hands shook as he pressed harder. Her blood had now soaked through every layer of his clothing. He could feel it stain the skin of his knees, the fabric of his sleeves, could feel it dry into the crevices under his fingernails.
“You’re okay,” he continued to ramble quietly, his free hand searching frantically for some place where he wouldn’t somehow make it worse, where he wouldn’t somehow reap the soul from her body any faster than he already was. “You’re gonna be okay, I’ve got you. You’re gonna be fine.”
As her body held on to the last tendrils of consciousness, Lando finally heard a faint sound in the distance.
Sirens.
He could hear them approaching closer, growing louder as they neared. But even then, they still sounded too far away.
Brushing the hair out of her face, Lando tried to give her a watery smile. His free hand reached for one of hers, squeezing it in an attempt at reassurance as tears streamed silently down his face. The sirens continued to grow louder as he curled himself around her further, like he was putting himself between her and the rest of the world, as if he was afraid someone would take her away from him.
He leaned his forehead against hers and whispered shakily, “Don’t go where I can’t follow, okay?”
Y/N didn’t answer.
Even when the ambulance finally arrived, his hand never left hers.
Not once.
While the EMTs rushed to prepare the ambulance to take her, Lando appeared to be lost in his own world. The rest of the world faded into the background as he kept all his attention on her, nothing more important to him when every second she was in her arms could be her last.
He cupped her cheek with one hand, the other still pressing down on the gash in her side, and gently brushed his fingers against her cheek in soft strokes.
But she was so still now.
So quiet.
“You’re gonna be okay,” he whispered. “You hear me? You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna get through this, and I’m gonna tell you m’sorry a thousand fucking times, and you’re gonna roll your eyes and make fun of me for crying. You’re gonna tell me I’m being dramatic and tell me to shut up and maybe— maybe even let me kiss you again someday.”
Y/N’s eyes finally slipped closed.
Panic consumed Lando like a tidal wave inside his chest. “No. No. Y/N—open your eyes. Please.”
The ambulance lights hit the windows as they finally drove away: red, then blue, then red again.
Lando didn’t remember walking through the doors of Princess Grace Hospital.
He could only vaguely recall being in the ambulance, muttering things under his breath, his words only soft enough for Y/N to hear. He remembered being upset about something…
But about what?
It took effort to recall the details with any level of clarity. As he strained himself to remember, he was suddenly overwhelmed with the chaos of the emergency department as the main doors swung open before him.
One medic was already haunched over her, checking vitals and shouting numbers. Another was holding pressure on the wound — not his hands anymore, someone else’s hands. That shook him more than he’d expected. She was bleeding out under someone else’s hands now.
Forcing himself out of whatever haze threatened to cloud over his mind, Lando rushed to keep pace with the rest of the medical personnel as they transferred her from one stretcher to another.
He followed them as far as they let him.
“Sir, you can’t come past this point—”
His brows furrowed, immediately upset. “She’s my— I’m with her!”
Still, Lando wasn’t allowed past the double doors. He barely got a glimpse of her being wheeled away — her face slack, lips blue, oxygen mask pressed too hard against her skin. He tried to follow, tried to push his way after her, but someone — a nurse or a security guard, maybe both — held him back by the shoulders.
“Sir, you need to let them work.”
He nearly decked the guy, but he couldn't conjure the strength to. It was as if when she had left through those doors where he couldn’t follow, his strength had left him too. Instead, he just stood there shaking, covered in blood that wasn’t his.
Lando stood there for a moment. Just stood.
Someone said his name — maybe one of the nurses.
But the hallway started to stretch. His ears rang. His vision blurred around the edges, the sterile overhead lights casting everything in too much white.
As a nurse ushered him into a seat, his leg bounced. His fingers wouldn’t stop twitching. The front of his shirt grew stiff with her blood — and no one had asked him to change yet, probably because no one could even look him in the eyes.
Once he was seated, that was when they proceeded to ask him her full name. He gave it without hesitation. They asked her date of birth — he knew that too.
But medical history? Allergies?
He didn’t know.
He didn’t fucking know.
He’d memorized the sound of her laugh. The rhythm of her breathing when she slept. The exact way she liked her coffee down to the swirl. But he didn’t know what kind of blood ran through her veins, or whether she could take O-negative, or if she’d ever had surgery before.
Something like anger burned in his throat at the mere suggestion that Lando didn't know her. Who the hell were they to even think that? They were’nt the ones who had to know what it felt like when your heart lives outside of your chest. They weren’t the ones that had their hands stained red with her blood. They weren’t the ones who had to listen for the faintest sound of her breathing after knowing what her heartbeat sounded like when she slept. They weren’t the ones who had to watch her go still before their very eyes.
They took her into the OR, and he was left in the waiting room.
He hadn’t moved in hours.
He hadn’t taken a sip of the vending machine coffee someone handed him. He hadn’t gone to the bathroom. Hell, he hadn’t even breathed right since the EMTs took her from his hands.
Now he just sat and waited. When he got too restless, he forced himself up onto his feet and paced. Back and forth, back and forth — near the entrance, then the vending machine, then the desk. Then he sat. Then he stood again. Then he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes like that would stop the image of her from flashing over and over in his mind — her on the floor, her blood in his hands, her fingers slipping from his grasp like the whole world was tilting.
She’d been in surgery for three and a half hours.
The nurse at the desk had said they’d update him.
They hadn’t.
When it felt like time had slowed to a glacial pace, he’d gone to the front desk and asked if they could tell him anything — how deep the wound had gone, what organ had been hit — but they just kept saying they were doing everything they could. That she was in “good hands.”
Lando didn’t give a shit about good hands.
He just wanted her.
He wanted her yelling at him, telling him to go home. He wanted her brushing him off, rolling her eyes, pretending she hadn’t missed him even though he could always tell when she had. He wanted her awake. Breathing. There.
Yet as the clock ticking menacingly on the wall of the waiting room never let him forget, she was somewhere behind a wall of double doors, split open on a table, while strangers stitched her back together and tried to keep her from bleeding out entirely.
Lando pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes.
He wasn’t crying.
He refused to cry.
He’d cried enough already.
Instead, the endless hours left him with ample time to play it all over and over again in his mind, like horror film he never wanted to see. Scrunching his eyes shut, his ears echoed with the memory of when the paramedics tried to pull him away from her. He’d screamed at them.
Don’t touch her. Don’t move her. Don’t take her away from me.
They hadn’t listened.
In the ambulance, he just kept whispering to no one: “She has to be okay. She has to.”
Somewhere around hour five, his breath started catching in his chest again. His hands felt like ice. He leaned forward in the chair, elbows on knees, trying to steady himself.
One of the nurses nearby seemed to notice the way Lando was hyperventilating as if the walls were closing in on him. She tried to get him to eat, to get some rest.
Lando wordlessly waved her away without answering.
The truth was that he was stuck. He was stuck in the moment he saw her eyes start to close, in the way she’d tried to say his name but couldn’t, in the way her hands slipped away from his and her body went so, so still.
He remembered thinking, This is what it looks like when someone dies in your arms.
And he hadn’t realized until just now that he was still holding her weight, even when she wasn’t there.
Physically, Lando Norris was sat in the emergency room of one of the best hospitals in the world, armed with a soft paper cup of lukewarm coffee that he wasn’t drinking, squinting every time the doors swung open just in case it was someone with news. However, in his mind, Lando was still on that café floor, still whispering to her through the blood, still begging her to hold on.
“Are you here for Y/N Y/L/N?”
Lando instantly bolted upright. “Yes. Is she—?”
“She is still in surgery,” a nurse said calmly. “We just wanted to inform you. It is… taking a while.”
“What does that mean?” he asked, voice too rough to sound like himself.
The nurse hesitated. “It means she lost quite a lot of blood. And her body isn’t responding well to the transfusions.”
That news marked the beginning of hours of pacing and stopping and pacing again, of every clock tick feeling like a needle to the back of his spine. He’d already asked the nurse’s station a second time too — no update. She was still in surgery. The damage had been extensive. The blood loss alone would’ve been enough to kill her if they’d gotten there even five minutes later.
What do you even say to that?
It was hour six when a surgeon finally emerged, just after 4 a.m. He looked middle-aged, and weary-eyed, rubbing at his face like the surgery had aged him in real time as he approached where Lando sat in the waiting room.
“She made it through surgery,” he stated first. “But it was close.”
That word didn’t leave Lando’s head.
Close.
“She lost a significant amount of blood,” the doctor went on, voice calm but firm, like this was just another case. “The stab wound punctured her lower lung, missed a major artery by about a centimeter. We had to do an emergency thoracotomy and abdominal exploration to control the internal bleeding.”
“She’s had two transfusions already,” the doctor added. “Her body’s reacting slowly. It could be the stress, could be the shock. Maybe also she was on the floor for longer than anyone realized.”
Then hee paused, as if trying to decide how much to say.
Lando only stared.
“They’ve had to go very slow with the replacement as she is rejecting some of it. It’s not uncommon. But it is dangerous. And the wound was… close. It missed her major artery by about two centimeters. We had to transfuse more than we expected — her body’s not accepting the new volume as quickly as we’d like. We’re monitoring for signs of organ stress.”
Lando’s mouth was dry. “But she’s alive?”
A beat.
“She made it through surgery,” the doctor said. “The blade missed several critical nerves by millimeters. But she’s still in critical condition. We need to see how she responds.”
Lando nodded once. Truthfully, it was about all he could manage. All the exhaustion of the day caught up with him at once, every muscle and joint aching as if he had spent the whole day sparring or running. Everything felt weaker, more fragile somehow.
“She’s being moved to ICU,” a woman came to inform him afterward. “She’ll be monitored for the next twenty-four hours. Those will be critical. If she stabilizes by tomorrow morning, her chances go up. If not…”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
She didn’t have to.
They didn’t let him see her right away. “ICU protocol,” they’d explained.
But through the small window of the door, he could see the outline of her body beneath the thin white blanket. Tubes in her arms. Wires on her chest. The hiss of a ventilator helping her lungs do what they should’ve been able to on their own.
She looked nothing like herself.
She looked… small.
He pressed a hand to the window, even as it smeared blood across the glass. He didn’t wipe it off, content with finally being able to see the steady rise and fall of her chest, if even from afar.
They let him in around 3 a.m.
The nurse didn’t say much — just nodded toward the hallway and told him to keep it quiet, and please don’t touch any of the monitors. He didn’t answer, just followed the linoleum path past doors that weren’t hers until he reached the right one.
When they finally did let him see her, he wasn’t ready.
He’d thought he was. He’d spent hours pacing that waiting room, rehearsing what he might say, bracing for the worst, calculating how many apologies he’d need to string together just to deserve breathing the same air as her again.
But when he stepped into that sterile, humming room and saw her lying there, he was startled by how pale she was. It confused him to see her, to see the girl he loved hooked up to more machines than he could count. Her skin appeared faintly clammy under the pulse monitor’s clip.
Looking at her, the words left him entirely.
He hadn’t spoken since they let him in. Instead, he just watched her, just let his eyes move over every inch of her like he was memorizing her face all over again. Her lips were chapped. Her knuckles scraped. Someone had cleaned the blood off her hairline, but he could still see the faint trace of it, like something haunting the edge of her skin.
It was too quiet inside.
Machines hummed softly. One beeped — slow, steady. The fluorescent lighting had been dimmed to a low twilight glow, casting shadows on the walls like ghosts that refused to leave. It only made her look more pale, highlighting the way her lips parted just enough to see the breathing tube. Her arms were tucked with wires and tape and bruises blooming beneath the skin.
Lando sat in the stiff plastic chair at her bedside, elbows on knees, head bowed like he was in prayer. He wanted to reach for her hand, but he flinched when he found that her arm was hooked to an IV line, fingers limp against the starched sheets. A compression cuff hissed softly every few minutes. The bruises on her ribs were starting to surface now — angry, blue and blooming like ink stains.
At least she’s alive.
His elbows braced against his knees. His hands folded in front of him. His eyes didn’t leave her.
“Hey,” he said quietly, because anything louder would’ve felt wrong. “You look terrible.”
He waited for a beat, but there was no laugh or eye roll or snarky comeback about his own disheveled mess. In the silence of the room, there was just the soft hiss of the ventilator, the steady beep of the heart monitor.
Something about the sounds irked him. Slowly, he rubbed a hand down his face, cleary tired beyond just what anyone from the outside could see.
Y/N would’ve been able to see.
He missed her.
“I never meant for this t’ happen,” he muttered. His voice sounded too loud, even though it was barely more than a whisper.
“I was going to let go,” he added, quieter. “I wasn’t going to bother you anymore. I just… I just wanted to see that you were okay. That you moved on. That you—”
He swallowed, jaw tightening.
“But I ruined everything,” he finished, his voice wavering.
He looked down at his hands, still tinged red no matter how hard he scrubbed them raw. He looked down at the hands that had done everything they could to try to keep her alive, only for her to end up like this.
Of course you couldn’t keep her alive.
He was The Reaper, after all. And everyone knew that Reapers could only take lives, not save them. And Lando Norris had never known how to hold anything without killing it.
He stared at her. The only part of her that moved was the slow rise and fall of her chest — mechanical, borrowed, a rhythm not her own.
“I don’t know how to make this right,” he said after a long moment, almost to himself. “I thought I could keep you separate. Like maybe if I loved you hard enough, it would cancel everything else out.”
He let out something like a laugh, but it didn’t sound quite right.
“But it doesn’t work like that. You can’t love someone enough to undo what you are.”
His eyes burned, but he didn’t cry. He never cried when it mattered most. He just sat there, with hands that didn’t know how to be empty and a silence that felt like penance.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he whispered. “I’d take it if I could. Every drop of it. Every minute.”
He reached for her hand, then hesitated, then folded his fingers around hers gently – like if he was any less careful, he might truly break her beyond repair.
Her fingers didn’t move. The machines went on ticking, reminding him that time was still passing — still moving forward, even if he didn’t know how to follow it anymore.
He didn’t let go. The thread bracelet was still around his wrist. It was half-soaked with blood, but still there. He looked at it now, turning it over between his fingers. It was proof that she would always be a part of him, long before she’d even known the truth.
“I don’t even know if you’d want me here,” he murmured, voice rough from too many hours without speaking. “If you knew I was sitting here like this.”
Out of habit, his thumb traced mindless patterns over the back of her hand. It reminded him of warmer times, of simpler ones. Lando would give anything he had to go back to then.
“I used to think the worst thing I could do was lose you. But now I’m starting to think it was letting you know who I really was. Like if I’d just stayed Liam a little longer… you might’ve never looked at me like that.”
He swallowed, hard.
“I don’t want to be the reason you stop loving anything. Not this place. Not your work. Not people.” He shook his head. “But I ruined it. I fucking ruined it. And I would trade everything I’ve ever built just to go back and not—”
He let his eyes fall shut for just a second.
That single second was just long enough to miss the sound of the door creaking open. It was just long enough not to hear the footsteps behind him.
The sound of a safety being turned off was unmistakable, the quiet click of it echoing in the silent room.
Lando didn’t even need to turn around to know what it was. The cold metal pressed to the back of his skull was confirmation enough.
He froze.
A beat passed.
Lando didn’t breathe.
“I knew I’d see you here, Norris,” the man behind him whispered. Alex Albon leaned in slightly — just enough for Lando to feel the weight behind the gun now.
“You’re so fucking predictable when it comes to the people you love.”
a/n: ...
