fletcherhargrave:
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Cigarette smoke breezes from between lips, white mist that emanates an unpleasant staleness about the air in front of Fletcher when he pads along the concrete pavement. It’s thick in places, where tar clings to the back of his throat and forms lumps of stickiness that can only be forced down with hashed swallows. The expert motion of the mercenary’s lips roll the straight along, let it nestle in the corner, for just a moment to allow his next exhaled wave of pollution into the atmosphere. Then, two fingers slide it between, and he taps grey ash off the end; butterflies to the ground to become near invisible against the same grate of colour on the ground. There’s no actual direction he’s looking, near absent is his attention, other than the awareness for his surroundings to keep him moving forward. Boots crunch down carelessly, the falter is so fast; almost missed when inattentive hues suddenly pay attention to a face he cannot forget.
Iliana.
Fuck this. Hargrave refuses to succumb to the feelings that somehow find their way past bricked barriers; walls cemented with so many layers that a fucking jackhammer shouldn’t be able to make a dent in them. A chip in the blocks built so securely that Iliana Acosta shouldn’t be able to leave even a scratch on it.
And she does that and more from halfway across the street.
It’s a coldness he finds underneath each broken layers that starts to rot away like she’s a kind of acid that melts his skin, incites the urge to scratch the discomfort away where he knows it’s his own doing; the divorce. A ridiculous notion to begin with – Fletcher fucking Hargrave, married to anyone had been a joke nobody believed, until they met her and realised that she balanced the psychotic with another kind of it; alternative breed of insanity that complimented his own; Bonnie and Clyde didn’t have shit all on them.
Where the thoughts inside his mind deteriorate into something else, a newfound amusement as she clocks him like the briefest of shared gaze stirs the same sensation it always has. And she’s out of his reach. Cannot ghost fingers along soft skin, warm blood heats the epithelium and reminds him how satisfying it is to press metal deep and open up another kind of feeling; a reminder that nobody else can play the game of knives nearly as well as Lia can.
Along with that comes the reason why she isn’t his wife any longer, the way the inexplicable job went awry. Fletcher shouldn’t admit he can remember the moment of another woman’s hands on him, the sickest of requests fulfilled when a married man somewhat willingly takes up an offer when the upper hand is lost; when Iliana’s life had been threatened and the only option seemed so understandable; fucking is hardly the crime of the century when that’s all it is. And it hadn’t been standard; a complicated lie that had been buried beneath manipulation; a price paid in order to secure his wife’s life. Something, Lia didn’t believe then and consequently ruined for them now.
But he remembers all of that, can bring the memories to surface vividly, just as he can recall the blood and knives of his wife in their car fucks; ruined interiors of so many fucking nice cars, a deep cleaning request that always earned lifted brows and a shaky agreement only secured by green in hands. Silence promised. It’s not a wrongdoing to cut a woman apart if she likes it; just as the roles reversed feed into the masochistic, sadistic kind of lifestyle the Hargrave’s both shared.
Did share.
Fletcher doesn’t chase, never has. But where he’s not running like some desperate ex that begins calling out apologies down the street like some shamed weak thing. He does find himself still walking closer, flicks his cigarette away automatically, the neutral expression that is only broken when a tick of lips lift in one corner; hooked up in a near false way that looks too unbelievable to be real.
But it is, and somehow, it’s a hurt the mercenary declines to accept.
Iliana, you fucking bitch. Waste of breath to continue attempting to justify his actions of the past when she signed the same documents he did and fought him at every turn to disprove all reasonable elucidations that he presented her. But he misses that hands on him; the way she carves that knife and leaves scars that every time he fucking sees them reminds him of her. It’s a twisted hate; something that is rooted deep in his pit, a fist near tempted to punch the post when he passes it, if only to feel that hurt physically – he understands that better than the type that he can’t stop when it’s a consequence of neurons, cells in a body acting on their own; without any of his say so.
He doesn’t even know the name of the fucking woman that he had pressed up against a dank wall, armed and screwing for Iliana in some tasteless spiral of fate that put them there on that job together in the first place. A lie you believed and you rammed your cock in her because it was easier than not. Whilst he reminisces on that, he is reminded how little he knows of that one-off psychotic result of a merc hit that went wrong, Iliana had always been the partner that mattered there.
It’s that hate that angers him most; the way it had happened; not the fact he did it at all.
Regret something he doesn’t think he’d recognise even if it were that. But a methodical calculation in the manner he racks his mind over how she’s right there when there’s so many other places she could be, is certainly, karma.
Not the kind of torture he likes.
He’s at least within audible distance now, the only way he can cope with not reaching out to slam her into the brick wall behind her; crack it the same way she tore down his own mental ones in seconds is almost the most willpower he’s ever possessed. Because he wants to take her right there and make her remember what she walked out on. Doesn’t care who watches.
When his lips lift, manage it in the only way he can without exploding in places he cannot, she’s not long near stumbled into an elderly civilian.
“Fuck, what, Lia,”
--
Stuck. Fight or flight instincts be damned; Iliana chooses neither. Cemented onto the sidewalk with the foot traffic behind them parting between the pair, her mind screams at her to go; leave; run. But she doesn't and she's stuck like a deer caught in headlights and at this point she invites the incoming vehicle. Crushed under the weight of his gaze, the thought of wheels on top of her, pushing down onto the road seems like a much better option. She's choosing door number two, Alex.
But life doesn't work like that, right? Life likes to tease and ridicule -- dangle something in front of her that she had but with the way it was so easy for him to turn around and throw away the life they were building together, Iliana's not sure if she ever had him at all. And that's the crux of it all, wasn't it? She gave him everything and in the end, all she got was this stupid t-shirt. And a divorce.
Iliana Acosta-Hargrave. An ex wife. A joke from the very beginning.
Chuck Norris has nothing compared to this stand off. Anger replaces shock, face morphing to something cold; indifferent. Where he held the privilege of something softer, something that Iliana would never let anyone else experience, Fletcher now belongs on the outskirts of 'people she actually gives a damn about.'
The more she says it, the less it sounds like a lie.
Because she loves him. Loved him. In either case, Iliana can't deny herself of that, can't deny that there was a moment in her life where --. Where what, Acosta? Where letting your guard down meant letting someone in? Where did that leave you? Late night stake outs that start with a blade pressed on skin with such intimacy that it's a contrast to how the very same is used hours after. Body pressed down onto a mattress, indented with nights of white knuckled grasp on linen sheets and a litany of prayers through swollen lips.
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
Iliana finds her voice eons later. “Fuck you,” she clarifies. “You don’t get to call me that.”
