"On your knees!"
Taylor's breathing had gone ragged, but he lowered himself slowly, deliberately, maintaining control even as Norman struck him a third time across the shoulders.
The man's hands stayed behind his back, the single cuff dangling from his right wrist.
He knelt on the gravel like he was at church.
His head bowed.
Norman could see the muscles in his jaw working.
"That's right," Norman panted, circling around to face him. "Not so tough now, are you?"
Taylor raised his head, and the look in his eyes made Norman take an involuntary step back.
It wasn't pain.
It wasn't fear.
It was restraint.
So absolute it looked like agony.
The expression of a man using every ounce of discipline not to do what his training screamed at him to do.
"I could end you," Taylor said quietly. "Right now, before you could draw your weapon. Do you understand that?"
Norman's hand flew to his gun.
"Is that a threat?"
"It's a fact I'm choosing not to act on."
Taylor's voice dropped to something almost gentle.
"I'm not your enemy, officer. But you need to stop hitting me."
The gentleness was worse than any threat.
Norman felt something primal and ugly surge up from his gut.
The need to make this man break.
To prove that the badge meant something.
That Norman himself meant something.
He grabbed Taylor's shoulder and shoved him forward.
"Face down. Arms out."
Taylor went down, but not from the shove.
He lowered himself with the same controlled precision, spreading his arms wide, pressing his cheek against the gravel.
His chest rose and fell with deep, measured breaths.
Norman could see his fists clenching and unclenching, the only sign that the man's control was costing him.
Norman dropped a knee into Taylor's back, grinding down.
"You feel that? That's what happens when you threaten a cop."
"I didn't threaten you."
The words came out compressed, forced through a restricted diaphragm.
"I warned you."
"Same thing."
Norman reached for the dangling cuff, trying to wrench Taylor's left arm back.
The arm moved, but slowly.
And Norman could feel the resistance.
Not active fighting, but the sheer mechanical difficulty of bending a limb that strong.
He pulled harder, his own muscles straining.
Taylor's hand twitched, fingers spreading.
And Norman saw it.
The micro-movement of someone stopping themselves from executing a technique.
Some kind of reversal or strike that would have ended the fight before Norman knew it started.
Fear spiked through the adrenaline.
Norman dropped the cuff and grabbed his taser, ripping it from his belt.
"Don't you [ __ ] move."
"I'm not moving."
Taylor's voice was barely a whisper now.
"I haven't moved."
"You were about to."
Norman pressed the taser against Taylor's ribs.