idol of idiot worshippers

keara. 31. actor. writer. general fool. AO3

[residentsuperhero]

I'm also over on AO3!

Adrian Chase (Peacemaker)

under the influence - completed series

Checkmate needs an image overhaul, and you’re just the person for the job. As their new one person PR team publicist social media manager(?), you’re dropped straight into a crash course on navigating antiheroes, near-death experiences, accidental blackmail, and goddamn Adrian Chase. You’re determined to get him to trust you, and he’s apparently determined to ruin your life. Somewhere along the way you learn how to look out for each other–and how to pretend you don’t.

part one > part two > part three

bpm - ongoing series

In the field, you've come to expect Vigilante not to follow orders. After another reckless maneuver and at your wits' end you find yourself alone in the office with Adrian and discover maybe he's not so bad at listening after all. (18+)

part one > part two > part three > part four

breaking up is hard to do (one shot) (request)

After breaking up with Adrian Chase, you find your dating life thwarted at every turn by Evergreen's own Vigilante.

your trigger finger's mine (one shot) (request)

The first thing you notice about Vigilante is his hands. It's just a professional curiosity. Until it isn't.

no fool for discretion (one shot) (request)

Sometimes, dating Adrian Chase means sneaking through basement windows because he really wants you to see his secret basement and really doesn't want you to meet his mom. (18+)

Clark Kent, Lex Luthor (DCEU)

a toll, a tithe, the passage of time (one shot)

You and Clark Kent bond at one of Lex Luthor's annual Winter Galas. One year later, things are not the way either of you planned. In another life, maybe you'd be able to save each other.

The Lost Boys

let not light see my black and deep desires series (ongoing) - David x OC (AO3 only)

Kat desperately needs a change of scene. But when she runs away across the country to the place she'd spent her childhood summers, the last thing she expects to find there is her newly-divorced aunt and her two favorite cousins. But Michael's being angsty, Sammy's been having nightmares, Lucy has a new boyfriend, and Michael's new friends are a bad influence. Maybe running away to Santa Carla won't solve her problems after all. Maybe, just maybe, it'll make new ones.

David finally has a chance to make things right with his maker. Turn the Emerson family. Give Max his happily little nuclear family. But Michael's got too much humanity, Sam's teaming up with the local vampire hunters, Lucy is clueless and then there's the little wrench in the plans - the Emerson cousin. Maybe there's too much in the way for David to finally get what he wants. Maybe, just maybe, he wants too much.

sharp knife, loaded gun - one shot - David x GN! Reader

David feels like hunting. Unfortunately for you, you're the deer.

this world's a cold place, isn't it? - one shot - Movie/Musical David Character Study

Sometimes, surviving is the worst thing you can do. Sometimes, surviving is all you have anyway.

[malinaa]

[alivehouse]

lets start blair witching it in the corner. together

[alivehouse]

[tokillaking13]

[holocrone]

WIDOW'S BAY 1.02 ⋄ Lodging

[residentsuperhero]

saw The Odyssey tonight and !!!!!! I gotta say it rips! I obviously have some thoughts, but I thought it was so so well crafted - I was moved to tears multiple times

I think Nolan packs a lot of thought into this one that is textual and subtextual (some similar themes from Oppenheimer actually) that I found really compelling and to have striking modern parallels

👀 almost like we continue to tell ancient stories over and over again as a way of examining our own humanity 👀 and maybe, just maybe, looking for a guidebook to getting it right next time

[ayamemes]

"got him! :D"

[residentsuperhero]

the problem with writing nonlinearly 90% of the time is when I write a line I really like or think is funny and then by the time I get back to it the whole section it's a part of may end up on the chopping block lmfaoooo

[justslightlyconfused]

That ‘comment on your a03 work’ email hits like a line of cocaine every time. unmatched dopamine increase. shoutout to everyone who leaves a comment on fics. you deserve the world

[applefield]

Hollywood cast Carrie White with a fat actress challenge

Difficulty level: apparently fucking impossible I guess

[bunniesofsteel]

Self Moodboard!

Search these terms on Pinterest: Lyrics, color, character, place, outfit, aesthetic.

Well... that's pretty accurate! I don't know that I could pull off the outfit, but it's something I would *want* to wear.

Tagging: @rosaries-and-thorns @miss-jennifer-cormier @ca11istee @residentsuperhero

[residentsuperhero]

Self Moodboard!

Search these terms on Pinterest: Lyrics, color, character, place, outfit, aesthetic.

thanks for the tag @bunniesofsteel!

sorry K from Blade Runner 2049 being the character choice is very funny to me

but honestly it is all kind of a vibe?

no pressure tags: @vigilantexreader @itsnewmath @a-basement-moth

[golfgalaxy]

y’all still beat your meat? lol

[yassmines]

what do u beat

[golfgalaxy]

evildoers

[residentsuperhero]

WAIT WAIT WAIT

why am I just now realizing that the bunny with the sign on Flag's shirt is the same bunny with a sign that Adrian has in his car on his dashboard????? and that gets put on his desk at the end of Season 2 of Peacemaker?????????

people have probably discussed this elsewhere but I've never seen it mentioned before and i just saw a gifset of Flag and I was like !!!!

i'm sure it's just a fun James Gunn easter egg but actually the implications of this are kind of diabolical????

there is rick flag jr everywhere for those with the eyes to see - christopher smith probably

[residentsuperhero]

me realizing the last part of bpm is already over 8k and I'm nowhere near done:

[residentsuperhero]

bpm, part three: tachycardia

bpm part one > bpm part two > bpm part three > bpm part four

synopsis: Near death experiences are supposed to put everything into perspective. Unless you actively choose to ignore that perspective.

gif by @/stackhousesookie

pairing: adrian chase x f!reader word count: 7.4k tags: 18+, mission partners who hookup sometimes and maybe don't know how to deal with those feelings, Checkmate reader, injury, loss of consciousness, blood, blood consumption (kind of?), attempted phone sex, idiots avoiding their feelings, questionable medical ethics, angst, emotional slow burn, miscommunication note: remember when I said this was going to be three parts? surprise! it's four! i needed to torture these two for just a little longer. give me a chance to indulge my slow burn proclivities and I will take it to the extreme! anyway, oops I'm sorry for this one! also! this is the picture in question if you're unfamiliar with Romeo + Juliet (1996)!

Your head was swimming, your heart beating so fast you were certain it was trying to make a run for it straight out of your ribcage. All things considered, you should have known shit was about to hit the fan the second Adrian leaned over in the back of the van and whispered, “I wasn’t listening to the briefing at all, were you?”

And now you were writhing on the ground, agonizing that it wouldn’t be you that got to kill him but some sort of…poisonous gas? Unfortunately, that also meant you were about to die. A real, grade-A fucking bummer. 

“Don’t! Go! To! Sleep!” Vigilante grunted, punctuated by each drag across the floor closer towards you. You realized suddenly you were on your back. When had that happened? His gloved fingers slapped at your face, poking you in the eye. 

“I’m so tired, Vig,” you slurred out, letting your heavy, heavy eyelids slip closed. Your hand flailed uselessly towards his, trying to bat it out of your face, but you had to settle for clutching at his wrist. He turned his hand and laced his fingers through yours, his grip punishing, but your brain felt so far away from your body that you couldn’t muster the energy to care. “I don’t wanna die.”

“Hey!” he wheezed. “We’re not going to die. I won’t let you. If you die I’m going to have to resurrect you and then kill you myself for dying on me.” 

“But…if we do, I'm sorry.”

“Don’t do that!”

“Do what?”

“That…that deathbed confession shit. I don’t want to hear it. In fact, I’d put my fingers in my ears right now but I can’t feel my arms,” Vigilante mumbled.

“Fuck you,” you hissed, your head rolling to the side. Your forehead brushed against his mask and you opened your eyes again, only to be greeted with the red gash of his visor. “I wish…I could…see your face right now.”

“You do?” he asked. “Why?”

You swallowed and even the effort of that was difficult. “It would just be nice…to see your face one last time.”

You were too out of it to even be properly concerned with how embarrassing the truth of that was. 

“Oh my god,” he huffed out. “You’re so in love with me.”

“I am not.”

“Admit it, you are!”

“I can’t believe you’re wasting your dying breaths on this,” you whispered, eyes fluttering closed again.

“Will you keep your eyes open for me if I take the mask off?” he asked, sounding panicked.

“Can’t.”

There was a slight rustle beside you. “Open your eyes.”

“Make me,” you argued half-heartedly. You were so tired that you couldn’t even feel how uncomfortable the floor was anymore. You felt like you were sinking into the floor, limbs weighted and dragging down, down, down.

“Open your eyes, dude,” he demanded gruffly. His hand squeezed yours harshly, startling you and wrenching you back from your floor-melt. You obeyed, even though it was a near-excruciating effort. You became faintly aware of the tears streaming out of your eyes, and the sting of the gas, and the sharp, chemical smell in the air. But you were very aware of Adrian: his warmth beside you, the smell of sweat clinging to his skin, the pressure of his hand in yours that you were fast becoming sure was the first and only and last thing in the world.

“That’s better,” he cooed. His eyes were bloodshot which made their delicious green all the more vibrant.

“Yeah,” you agreed, managing to dip your chin in a nod. A violent cough wracked your whole body and you felt the weight of Adrian’s head on your shoulder.

“Don’t…” 

But Adrian didn’t finish that sentence. You pressed your cheek into his damp hair.

“You…were right,” you wheezed. “I should have told you that I – ”

You awoke with a start, a gasp pulling air into your burning lungs. The back of your throat stung like a bitch. A bright flash nearly blinded you and you slung your arm over your face in an attempt to block it out. You could feel your arms again.

“Move her arm, it’s ruining the picture!” Christopher Smith’s voice was a strangely welcome sound, even if you didn’t understand anything he was saying. Move whose arm? What picture? Five seconds ago you were dying holding Adrian Chase’s hand.

“Leave the poor girl alone!” Adebayo’s voice. You tried to lift your head but the world quickly shifted into a watercolor version of itself. You swallowed the acrid taste at the back of your mouth and tried not to gag.

“Fuck.”

“Hey, killer, welcome back to planet Earth!” Chris cheered. You tried to roll onto your side to relieve the relentless pressure of concrete against your spine, but something was weighing you down. 

“What’s happening?” 

“Well – ”

“She loves me!” 

The words were a sharp gasp from directly beside you, hot breath and too much volume making your skull feel like it was floating away from your brain. Still, your heart seized in your chest. He couldn’t have heard you – he was out before you and you hadn’t even finished the words.

If that’s what you were even going to say. Which. You know, maybe you weren’t. 

I should have told you that I like the ferocity with which you stab targets!

I should have told you that I like working with you even though you don’t listen to me most of the time.

I should have told you that I like the way I feel when you touch me.

I should have told you that I lo –

Suddenly, you looked down and realized the thing weighing you down was Adrian. Half his body was draped across yours, your legs tangled, your fingers interlocked, his head resting on your shoulder. Until he lifted it to look at you, his eyes wide and unfocused. 

“Who?”

“You!” Adrian’s eyes widened as he processed everyone else standing over them. He stammered, “Uhhhh, ha ha youuu know who!”

“I don’t!” 

Was Chris pouting? He still had a phone pointed at the two of you and the implications of that were not great. 

“Harcourt!” Adrian yelped. He rolled flat onto his back. “Yeah, ha! I had this crazy dream…because of the…gas…that Harcourt finally admitted that she loves me. But I was like, no way José, you’re Chris’s girl and I would never interfere with the sanctity of that. Bro code.”

You swallowed hard. God he was bad at lying. It shouldn’t have been charming, and yet. 

“You dreamt all that in the, what…five minutes you two were unconscious?”

“The human brain is a wild, wonderful and terrifying place, Ads. You really ought to stop underestimating it.”

“I don’t want to think about what’s going on inside your brain, Adrian,” Adebayo said with a shiver.

“Hey, so is anyone going to fucking explain what the hell just happened?” you asked, getting annoyed. Adebayo extended a hand in your direction.

“Sit up nice and slow,” she urged. Then she rolled her eyes. “Adrian, get off of her!”

Adrian grunted and then slowly disentangled your limbs before rolling onto his back, starfish-flopping onto the concrete with an audible slap of limbs.

“Adrian, please be careful,” you said, a more begging quality to your tone than you would have liked. Once Ads had you on your feet, you reached down to help him up against your better judgment. He made it significantly more difficult than it needed to be, practically dead weight that you hoisted upright and then he settled right against your hip like he needed your support to walk. You rolled your eyes but indulged him anyway, wrapping an arm around his narrow waist.

“You good, Vij?” Chris asked. “Are you hurt?”

Adrian nodded and then slumped down further so he could rest his head on your shoulder. “Yeah, I’m like…definitely wounded.”

“Where?” Ads asked as she and Chris started to guide you out of the building, flanking either side of you and Adrian.

“My heart.”

Chris slapped him upside the back of the head at the precise moment your fingers pressed deep into his ribs and Adrian whimpered.

Back in the van, Economos gave you both a once over, checking your pulses, your pupillary reaction, your oxygen levels and blood pressure as Ads explained the gas that had been deployed was just a run-of-the-mill airborne sedative. Adrian fidgeted beside you at every opportunity, stripped down to just his tactical pants and his undershirt. His bicep kept brushing yours, making him shudder, but he seemed to be going out of his way to do it anyway. 

“Your pulse is still a little elevated,” Economos said to you, checking the pulse oximeter he’d slipped onto your finger. “130.” You nodded, unsurprised. “Let’s get those scrapes cleaned up.”

Economos busied himself with the med kit and Adrian turned sideways to you on the bench.

“Can I check?”

“Check what?” you asked, genuinely confused. 

Adrian laughed one of his wide, too loud laughs. “Your pulse?”

You glanced back at Economos who was still rifling through the kit, clutching a bottle of antiseptic in one hand, his brow furrowed. “I think we’ve got it covered, Adrian.”

“So you think a tiny robot is better at checking your pulse than me?” he asked, an urgent whisper.

“Did I say that?” you asked with a roll of your eyes. But Adrian was still staring at you in a way that was starting to make you both annoyed and also hot despite being stripped down to a tank top. 

“Please just let me check,” he whined. With a heaved sigh, you acquiesced and gave him a nod, expecting him to reach for your wrist or your throat. Both bearable and socially acceptable options. Except Adrian snaked his bare hand up under your shirt, brushing against the underside of your breast, fingers pressing into that familiar space. Your breath caught in your throat.

“Adrian, what the fuck?” Adebayo gasped.

“What’s he doing now?” Chris asked as he wheeled around in the passenger seat. “Oh dude, come on.”

“What? What’s wrong?” Adrian asked, head snapping between you, Adebayo and Chris, genuinely looking for an explanation. 

“Dude, you’re a fucking HR nightmare,” Economos sighed. 

You blinked slowly, realizing everyone was looking at you for a reaction you were not providing. When had your own personal metric for normal behavior gotten so thoroughly screwed? You reached up slowly and wrapped your hand around Adrian’s wrist, pulling his attention back to you. His brow was furrowed, softening only slightly as he searched your face for understanding.

“Adrian, your hand is up my shirt,” you said slowly.

He rolled his eyes. “Uh, yeah, I know? I’m looking for your pulse, dude.”

“I know, but uh…”

“You know?” Chris guffawed. His eyes darted rapidly between the two of you. “Is this like…wait a minute…is this like a regular thing between you two?”

You didn’t know how to answer the question. Because Chris wasn’t entirely off base. You guided Adrian’s hand out of your shirt and hoped your bra and shirt were doing enough work to hide the way your nipples had hardened at his touch.

Adrian laughed. “What is this, the Pervert Mobile? Driving all the local perverts around? You all see me with my hand up my partner’s shirt and you think, oh, Adrian’s trying to feel her up?”

“I mean, kinda, yeah?” Adebayo admitted with a shrug at the same time Economos said, “Yes.”

Harcourt only heaved a sigh from the front seat.

“That’s gross. You’re all gross weirdos with perverted brains. That’s where the strongest pulse point is! Apical pulse! Econogoat, give me your hand, I’ll show you!”

Economos recoiled and moved further out of the radius of Adrian’s reaching hands. “No fucking way, dude.”

“I’ll show you on me, not her, weirdo! No one gets to touch her except me.”

You watched numbly as Economos desperately tried to bat Adrian’s hands away until Adebayo had to get in between the two of them. Everyone was arguing but it was like you were experiencing the whole thing on mute, ears ringing as if Adrian had just set off a bomb between the two of you. 

Adrian turned to you and smiled, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at Ads and Economos and scoffing, as if to say: get a load of these idiots! You could even hear his voice in your own head. You frowned back at him.

Economos finally managed to get in between you to clean out the scrapes on both elbows where you’d hit the deck hard, and gave you a once over for any other serious injuries. 

“What about me?” Adrian pouted.

“You can bleed out for all I care!” Economos exclaimed, though it lacked the conviction John probably would have liked it to have.

“I said I was sorry for calling you a ‘touch-starved, Reddit-lurking virgin’! Not that you ever apologized for saying I was like ‘Weasel if he had no social skills’! That fucking hurt, man!”

“No you didn’t, you said ‘sorry you’re offended by the truth’. That’s not an apology, dude! And it’s not even true!”

“Right, just like the beard dye wasn’t true until it was!” 

“You know what, Adrian, next time there’s an opportunity to kill someone with a chainsaw I’m going to do it on fucking purpose!” Economos yelled back. “Fuck you, dude!”

“The only person who should be mad at me in this truck is her and she’s not mad at me!” Adrian whined, pointing in your direction.

You inhaled slowly through your nose. “Adrian, I’m very mad at you.”

“Oh. But I…I mean…yeah, no, of course. That’s fair. I almost got us killed. So.” Shaking his head emphatically, Adrian’s eyes were searching you for something you couldn’t possibly give. Because it was the truth. You were so, so mad at him.

But mostly you were just grateful he was alive.

Harcourt admonishing them both from the driver’s seat finally seemed to get them both to settle and the only noise in the van went back to the low hum of whatever glamrock Chris was DJing from his phone.

Your head had just settled back against the wall when your heart leapt into your throat at the sensation of Adrian’s fingers slipping against your wrist. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at you. John was preoccupied with repacking the medkit and Adebayo was furiously typing into the field laptop, already on top of the utterly disastrous mission report. You were dreading the inevitable paperwork of tomorrow.

In the front seat you caught a glimpse of Chris’s hand giving Harcourt’s thigh a squeeze. She rolled her eyes at him but the corner of her lip quirked up in a private smile, and his hand still stayed. What would it be like, you wondered, to love someone out loud?

Adrian’s shoulder bumped yours just as you watched Emilia hook her pinky finger through Chris’s. 

Adrian’s fingers tapped at your pulse point before they danced towards the edge of your palm and you knew before he spoke that your heart rate had only gone up further. He bumped his chin on your shoulder as he leaned forward to whisper, “143.”

You would have thought falling asleep that night would be easy. The sedative probably wasn’t even fully out of your system. But instead you laid flat on your back and stared at the ceiling, ignoring your phone lighting up with Adrian’s name on your bedside table.

There were many nights you’d laid awake, laughing into your pillow at whatever indecipherable meme he’d sent you. He somehow always knew when you’d be awake, mercilessly in tune with you. 

But now the sight of his name on your phone felt different. Loaded in a way you were unwilling to unpack.

And yet, your curiosity got the better of you.

Adrian Chase: this is kinda us

Attached was a photo from…was that Romeo + Juliet? Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes dead in the tomb from the end of the movie. Her head rested on his shoulder, curled into his side, him splayed out on his back, the camera aerial and looking down at them from above. You weren’t quite sure what to make of that. Was it sweet? Was it kind of a threat? Either way it made your heart twinge traitorously. You decided to roll with it, thankful for a reminder of the kind of rapport you and Adrian had once had.

It was easier with distance, with your face behind a screen. Where there was no possibility of your hands brushing, or seeing his stupid smile, or him sticking his fingers in your – 

You: who’s who in this scenario? Adrian Chase: obvi you’re Leo and I’m Claire You: oh? Adrian Chase: mostly just because of the positions You: ??? Adrian Chase: what do you mean ???  Adrian Chase: ??????????? You: i literally do not know what you’re talking about Adrian Chase: oh Adrian Chase: you haven’t seen the picture?

Three little dots appeared and then disappeared then reappeared then – 

Suddenly, Adrian was FaceTiming you and your finger hesitated over the button. It wasn’t like it was the first time he’d ever FaceTimed you. 

“PleaseyouhavetoactsosurprisedtomorrowIpromisedChrisIwouldn’ttellyou!” Adrian gasped out, a rapid-fire string of words that your tired brain took several extra seconds to parse out. His face was so close to the screen, his glasses off, and he was breathing too close to the phone’s microphone. 

“Okay,” you sighed. You weren’t entirely sure what you were agreeing to, but whatever it took to assuage Adrian before he could circle the drain of full blown panic. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to act surprised about but I’ll do my best, Adrian.”

“Thank fucking god,” he said, seeming to finally catch his breath, his fingers unwinding from where they were gripping his curls tightly. He moved the phone slightly further from his face and then seemed to prop it beside him. It was then that you realized he too was laying down in his bed. 

“You know I could have genuinely acted surprised tomorrow if we hadn’t had this conversation, Adrian,” you taunted, feeling your lips curling up in a small smile against your will. 

“Fuck,” he hissed out. “Fuck, I fucked up.”

“You didn’t fuck up, Ade. I’m sure whatever it is will be great,” you attempted, even if the idea of Christopher Smith surprising you with something filled your entire being with dread. Adrian was frowning deeply so you decided to distract him.

“How are you feeling?”

“Me? Right as rain! How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” you lied. His brow furrowed. 

“How’s your heart?”

“My – what?” you choked out, feeling the damned thing thudding traitorously in your chest. 

“What’s your heart rate?”

You managed a breath. “Oh. I mean, I don’t know. I’m sure it’s – ”

“Check it right now,” he demanded, taking a surprising tone with you. He was slipping his glasses back onto his face, sitting up slightly in the little bit you could see of his dark room. 

You smiled wryly. “Trying to see my tits again, Adrian?”

He frowned. “Why would I need to see your tits right now?”

Jesus Christ. 

“I – forget it.”

“Oh, let’s check ours at the same time and compare!” he said suddenly. “You’re probably going to beat me, you’ve got such a good resting heart rate.”

“Okay, Adrian,” you agreed with a chuckle. Anything to stop him looking so desperately put-out.

“I’m going to do femoral, so you should do femoral, just so it’s fair,” he mumbled as you heard him readjusting in his bed. You sighed and slipped your hand between your legs, feeling around for your femoral pulse and actively trying to ignore the sudden heat between your legs. If it was anyone else in the world you would have assumed this was all some elaborate come-on, but it was Adrian. 

“Don’t start yet!” he insisted. 

“Why, giving yourself extra time to slow your heart rate down?” you taunted.

Adrian let out a huff. “My legs were all tangled in the sheets and that always stresses me out. So it wouldn’t really be baseline, now would it?”

You rolled your eyes. “You let me know when you’re ready, champ.”

“Now you’re just cheating,” he grumbled. 

You propped yourself up slightly on your pillows, the heel of your hand accidentally brushing against your core. You hissed involuntarily at the slight graze, aware suddenly of how desperate for relief you were. Pivoting your brain away from that train of thought, you pressed your fingertips a little too hand into the inside of your groin. Maybe it’d leave a mark. Maybe that would be a good thing.

After a few moments, Adrian seemed to pull himself together and finally gave the go-ahead. You tried, really you did, but your mind strayed as you stared, bleary eyed, at your phone screen. You studied his sleepy face, grainy but still as handsome as always. Your eyes cut along his sharp jaw, the pink pout of his lips as he counted silently to himself, down the long expanse of his bare neck. It was a good face. A face that made something stir in your chest. A face that made you warm and lonely all at once. 

“Goddamnit,” he cussed. “87. What about you?”

Fuck. You’d been drooling over Adrian for a minute like an absolute idiot.

“I dunno, Adrian, I’m tired, I lost focus,” you attempted. Another lie. What would happen if you told the truth? That you were suddenly struck by the intimacy of Adrian on the other end of the line, wanting nothing, simply making sure you were okay. He cared for you in a way that stretched beyond being partners in the field, beyond being desk buddies and past the clumsy physical relationship you’d stumbled in and out of. 

And you were selfish enough to want more.

Adrian scoffed. “Lame. Should we go again?”

“Tell me you didn’t just call me so you could jerk off on the other end,” you said suddenly. Adrian sputtered. “Because you called me in the middle of the night and asked me to put my hand in between my legs to feel my heartbeat, Adrian.”

“Of course not! That literally hadn’t even crossed my mind!” There was a long pause. “Why, do you want to?”

You chewed at your lower lip. 

It was a diabolically bad idea. 

But when it came to Adrian, you never really could think straight.

“I dunno, maybe?” you said with a shrug that was mostly for your benefit. Trying to convince yourself of the levity of the thing. “It might help us fall asleep.”

“Okay! Yes! Just two besties getting each other off over the phone,” Adrian agreed, a little too eager, making you laugh. He grinned again. 

“Exactly. It’s not a big deal,” you agreed, nodding maybe a little too much. A long moment passed between you two, only the sound of your synchronized breathing puncturing the heavy silence.

“What am I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know, like…sexy stuff?” you offered. To be honest, this was not exactly your wheelhouse. You didn’t do relationships, so you’d never had someone call you looking for anything remotely like it. In the past, it’d always been convenient quick fucks on missions, on the road, back when you used to bounce around from job to job. Back before you’d put down roots. Back before you started to fear you could be becoming comfortable. And safe. That you could become a relationship person. “Like…what are you wearing, Adrian?”

“Um,” he mumbled, looking down like he’d forgotten. “Pokémon pajama pants? And I was too hot so I didn’t wear a shirt.”

“Can you show me?”

“Sure!” Adrian agreed, followed by a lot of fumbling around in the dark until you were pretty sure the camera was angled to show you his pants. At least you got a good glance at his abs somewhere along the way. “Sorry, it’s kind of dark, so you can’t really appreciate the details, but these ones have Snorlax on them. He glows in the dark! Or well, he used to.”

“That’s not what I…” you began but then you stopped yourself, because you found yourself smiling anyway. God, Adrian could be charmingly clueless sometimes. But weirdly you found you preferred that. It was kind of…nice. “You’re right they’re kind of hard to see, but they sound cool.”

“Yeah?” Adrian asked, breathless from contorting himself in his bed to best show off his pajama pants.

“Yeah. So is that your favorite Pokémon?” you wondered, genuinely curious.

“No, dude, my favorite is Infernape! I feel like I’ve told you that before,” he replied. “Wait, is this the sexy part? I feel like you’re not finding this sexy.”

That dragged a reluctant chuckle from you. You buried your face further into the pillow. “I don’t know, it might be sexy eventually.”

“Aren’t we supposed to like…touch ourselves?”

“I think that’s the point, yeah,” you agreed, not sure that was still the point of this particular conversation.

“Well, are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Touching yourself?” he clarified with a raise of his brows. “Sometimes I get hard just thinking about you, but I don’t feel horny right now? I just sort of feel…warm? Do you think I’m getting sick?”

“I’m warm, too,” you murmured, apparently the wrong thing to say because Adrian cursed under his breath.

“What if it’s a residual effect from the gas? I mean, we’re both feeling it!” he said with a slight pant. “Should I come over? Should I bring soup?”

“Why would you bring me soup if you’re feeling sick?” you laughed, despite your best attempt not to. He was slip-sliding into a classic Adrian spiral and you knew you shouldn’t laugh.

“We could eat it together! I would take care of you and you would take care of me,” he insisted. Somehow that sounded more erotic than anything else that had been said in the entire conversation. The domesticity of it made you press your thighs together. Jesus Christ, who were you becoming? Aching over the idea of Adrian nursing you while you were sick? You were pathetic. 

“Adrian, we’re fine. We’ll get checked up tomorrow at work, I promise. Maybe it’s a good time to call it a night? We probably just need some rest.”

“Wait! But I – ” He paused, his brow scrunched together in a look of absolute consternation. You wanted to press your thumb to the space there and ease the tension. You wondered if you’d been too eager to assume Adrian wouldn’t bring up what you’d maybe or maybe not said earlier. It was never that easy. 

“I just…like talking to you,” Adrian admitted quietly. Could he somehow hear how loud your heart was beating through the phone? It wasn’t what you were expecting, but it was better. It was good that Adrian wasn’t forcing you to examine things. That he wasn’t on the other end declaring his love for you or something. 

If he’d heard you, he was being kind by not bringing it up. If Adrian felt even remotely similar you were sure he would have said something. And it was its own kind of answer, wasn’t it? One you could accept. Eventually. 

“I like talking to you, too,” you replied after a long moment. His resulting smile was blinding, even in the dark of his room, even from the too-distant other end of a Facetime call. 

“Yeah?” he breathed. “Wait, maybe say that again. I think I could get a little hard from that if you wanted to keep trying.”

You laughed. “Forget the phone sex thing, please.” 

“I’m sorry I’m not good at this! I’ve never had phone sex before! But give me a little time to study, I’m sure I could nail it in the future,” Adrian said cheerily. 

“I’m sure you could,” you agreed, which earned you a little hum of pleasure. You let your eyes flutter closed. “Can we just stay on the line until we both fall asleep?”

The request earned a pause so long you opened your eyes again. Adrian’s expression was…different. “Of course.”

Hunkering further down under your comforter, you nestled your phone against your pillow, facing you, before you let your eyes close once more.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Another thing for the list of things not to tell Chris?” You hummed in acknowledgment, so he’d know you were still listening. “Some days you’re my best friend in the whole world.”

What was one supposed to say to that? You didn’t know, and you bristled a little at the lack of anything that came to your brain. So you let it sit between you, unremarked upon, for better or worse. But Adrian didn’t need any extra encouragement to break the silence, as he came up with the idea to rattle off animal facts quietly until you both fell asleep. 

Somewhere between Adrian insisting that stingrays are the Warios of manta rays and that whale sharks are not whales or sharks but a secret third thing, you slipped into a dreamless sleep.

It was framed. 

That was somehow the worst part.

When Chris presented it to you at your desk, loosely wrapped in repurposed tissue paper, you at first were able to muster a smile. To laugh it off with everyone else. How funny! And aw, didn’t you two look cute! 

But when everyone else walked away an unwelcome panic surged up and seized you by the throat as you gazed down at the framed picture still clutched in your hands.

Adrian and you. You and Adrian. Legs tangled, Adrian partly draped over you, his face tucked into your neck, your hands desperately clinging to each other over your chest, eyes gently closed. You looked peaceful. You looked like you belonged together. Wrapped up in the repose of those star-crossed lovers.

Except you weren’t, were you? You were Adrian’s sometime-best-friend and he was your…what?

So the framed photo sat on your desk beside your monitor and taunted you all morning while you shoved your headphones in your ears and tried really hard to look like you were deeply invested in answering emails and filling out the incident report that Adebayo had insisted upon on top of the regular mission report. 

You could convince yourself that there was nothing between you two, aside from some fooling around between friends. Maybe you’d almost confessed something to him in a moment of dire panic, but you hadn’t, not really! And you could get over the festing feeling in your chest. Adrian was wandering around the office completely normally! You could do that too!

The blank page stared up at you, and you were struck by the idea that, actually, being sucked straight into its void would be preferable. What were you supposed to write?

Vigilante and I failed to correctly neutralize all threats, resulting in an escaped agent who was able to deploy sleeping gas. The gas rendered us unconscious, but actually we both thought we were dying and I think I maybe told him that I lov –

“Hey,” it was Adrian’s voice, surprisingly gentle, that startled you out of your apparently catatonic state. “You’ve had a pen to that paper for like…a weirdly long time now.”

You looked down at the pen clutched so tightly in your fingers that the skin of your knuckles was stretched taut. The incident report on your desk was still blank, the pen unmoving. 

“Are you okay?” he asked. You must have glared up at him because his shoulders crept up towards his ears. “What I mean to say is, have you been feeling okay? You know? Since the whole, um, gas thing? Because we haven’t really talked about it and I thought maybe – ”

“I’m fine,” you interrupted, not meaning to be short with him. If you were being honest, you’d been bleary eyed and unfocused for days before the incident, but you’d seemingly reached a new low and been caught utterly lacking, by Adrian no less. No, you needed him to think you were fine and well-adjusted. Or, you had to at least make an effort at pretending. 

“You don’t look fine,” Adrian said, and you knew he was just being blunt in the way that came naturally to him but it didn’t stop it from growing roots under your skin in just the wrong way.

How am I meant to be fine when I’m stuck staring at a reminder of the exact thing we cannot have all day? you wanted to ask. 

“Well, I mean, my body isn’t exactly feeling amazing after being dosed with some mysterious sedative, Adrian,” you snapped, a little harsher than intended. You looked around but the office was seemingly empty. You glanced at the clock – how was it already lunchtime?

If he was offended, it didn’t show on his face. “Then we should go and get you checked out again.”

“No, I don’t need…” You took a deep breath. “I’m good.”

“What do you need?” he insisted, crouching down beside your chair. He grabbed it by the arm and spun it so you were forced to face him. “Because whatever you need, I’ll get it. Unless, if it’s like…an abstract need…but I could still help you figure it out. Probably. You might need to explain it to me though.”

“Does Chris know? That we’ve…uh…”

Adrian’s hands dropped back to his sides, something suddenly kind of deflated about him that made your stomach squirm. “I wouldn’t…don’t worry I won’t ever tell anyone. Because, look, I’m not always reading things right but I’m pretty sure that’s not what you want? Unless you…did want – ?”

“I don’t.”

“No, yeah, right, of course! And I knew that. And, I totally agree.”

Nobody knew. Not even Chris. And that was…good. The right call. 

“Then why did Chris let you see that photo before me?” you asked suddenly. “Why didn’t he just text it to me or something?”

“He’s my best friend?” Adrian replied, sounding uncertain himself. He shifted his weight slightly and ducked his head closer to you like you two weren’t already alone. Like he wasn’t kneeling in front of you, one hand on your knee. “Also, I think he was worried that seeing it would cause a…um, physical reaction, if you catch my drift? And he didn’t want the first time I saw it to be in front of everyone at work because that would be,” he paused and cupped his hands around his mouth as if to shout, “embarrassing!”

“Did you get hard when you saw it?” you asked suddenly. That was unfair of you. Adrian’s eyes flicked to your mouth, and then your throat and then back. Everywhere he’d looked felt like he’d left searing heat in his wake.

“I mean obviously. I’m just a man with excellent sense memory recall. But don’t worry I talked myself out of it. To be respectful,” he said simply, looking a little proud, frankly. 

“Right,” you managed, a strained chuckle. 

“Um, so about the thing I mentioned earlier – ”

“Hey losers, you better not be fucking on my desk!” Rip called out, returning to the office with an armful of Taco Bell. Adrian’s head hung between his shoulders for just a moment before he shot to his feet with a sharp inhale.

“Only person I’ve been fucking on your desk is your mom, you little twerp!”

Freed from Adrian’s attention, you shot to your feet and beelined for the bathroom, cursing under your breath the whole way. Something was seriously, profoundly wrong with you.

“Wait!” Adrian called, but you ignored him and picked up the pace, nearly breaking into a dead sprint to get away from him.

Maybe you could give Adrian some far-fetched excuse for your behavior lately. Something that would allow you to take it all back. Maybe you could convince him you’d actually been possessed for the last few months. 

He’d probably believe that, actually.

Staring at yourself in the bathroom mirror you raked your hands over your face, pressing too hard into the skin. You were a goddamn mess. 

Just get it out of your system.

You just needed to get over whatever this was and everything would be fine again. And then you’d be able to push it all down and aside and you’d finally be able to think clearly, focus in the field, not waste time wondering what it would be like to have Adrian bare and curled around you in your bed.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” you hissed at yourself. 

It wouldn’t hurt him. It couldn’t hurt him. He didn’t feel the way you felt, you were sure of it. If he had…he would have said something by now, surely. Adrian was never one for subtlety. No, you’d all but confessed to him and he’d carried on, Adrian as usual.

Evidently, Adrian as usual meant kicking the bathroom door open with his hand clasped firmly over his eyes, causing you to nearly jump out of your skin. His shoulder banged against the doorframe as he stumbled in blindly, free hand slapping against the wall to grope along the tiles until he was standing at the sink beside you.

“What the fuck are you doing?” you groaned. 

“Are you decent, can I uncover my eyes?”

“Why would I be naked standing at the communal sink in the unisex bathroom, Adrian?”

“I don’t know what girls do in bathrooms!” he huffed, then spread his fingers so he could peek through at you. Finally he dropped his hands down to his sides and his shoulders relaxed slightly. “I feel like you had the right idea, to run away from Judomaster. Maybe I’ll start doing that whenever he talks to me. Fuck, but then he’ll think I’m a coward and I am not a fucking coward. Don’t tell anyone this but sometimes I wish he’d just do something illegal so that I could kill him without Harcourt getting pissed about it.”

You blinked slowly, so abruptly shaken out of your own self-consuming spiral. You even managed a laugh as you replied, “I think Harcourt would still be pissed about it.”

Adrian smiled, something languid and warm and unfair. “You sound like yourself again.”

“What does that mean?”

He shrugged. “Means you’ve just seemed…different. Like...distant, kinda?”

Your lips pressed into a thin line and you crossed your arms over your chest.

“Um, so, I’ve been thinking and I really think we should talk about what happened with the mission and what you said and I know we seem to keep getting interrupted but I — wait, I thought you said you were fine?” Adrian asked suddenly, his voice strangely high and tight in his throat as he pivoted from whatever he’d been about to say. You rolled your eyes, about to make a retort when you felt wetness on your upper lip just before you tasted the coppery bloom on your tongue.

You sighed. “I am fine. Whatever they put in that shit really dried my sinuses out and I keep getting nosebleeds. I just need some Aquaphor and it’ll – ”

“Ads has Aquaphor in her top desk drawer,” Adrian interjected and before you could tell him about the tube sitting next to your keyboard he had taken off. 

With him away from you for a moment you felt like you were able to take a deep breath, even if you could taste blood at the back of your throat. You braced your hands against the edge of the counter and gave your sore shoulders a decisive roll. Before you could reach for a paper towel to clean yourself up Adrian was back, slamming the jar of Aquaphor down on the sink beside you. 

You twisted to look at him over your shoulder but instead of thanking him as your brain intended you shifted your weight ever-so-slightly forward and fell into him, lips and all. You could feel your blood smear between you two, warm and slick, but after a beat of surprise that only seemed to spur Adrian on.

He licked across your mouth and then into it, and you could taste your own blood on your tongue. It was all at once repulsive and unsettling and also strangely intimate. A little too focused on the sensation of Adrian pulling your head back by the hair, you didn’t notice his other hand slipping its way under your shirt until his bare fingers were pressed into your ribs. His kiss was heavy, hot, his mouth and his firm grip controlling. It was as though he wanted to pry you apart, to lick at your bones. His hand was so far up your shirt it was like he was trying to climb inside your clothes with you.

A faint tingling at the back of your nose made you realize your nose was absolutely still bleeding. And you couldn’t find the energy to care. Part of you thought: good. Everything about you and Adrian’s lives was soaked in blood anyway, why shouldn’t this be too?

Adrian’s leg pressed between yours as he pinned you up against the bathroom sink and your arms wound their way around his neck, pulling him down as close to you as humanly possible. So firmly pressed together you could feel his heart hammering in your own chest. His hips ground against yours just slightly and you both moaned into each other’s mouths at the same time.

“Sick,” Adrian whispered before slipping his tongue back between your lips. Before you could even process what was happening, his hands slipped under your ass and lifted you onto the sink. He resettled himself in the space between your thighs and gave your hair a slight tug. Your mouth dropped open and you reeled back slightly, the awful part of your brain surging back to life with a vengeance. Adrian, undisturbed, moved his mouth to your jaw and then your neck, tongue tracing your jugular all the way down to your collarbone where he bit down hard. 

It felt like an undeserved pleasure. Something that would only keep you up at night, remembering what it had once been like to let Adrian make you feel alive. Frankly, it would have been easier to have been punched straight in the face.

Hands braced against his chest, you pushed Adrian back. He stayed where he collided with one of the stall doors, his chest heaving, his brow wrinkled in confusion. You slid off the sink and paced for a moment, brain scrambling for any words at all. Something that might help you explain, that actually it wasn’t him. It was never him. It was always you and your dumb, greedy brain, wanting more than you could have.

“We’re friends, right?” you asked, even though those weren’t the words you wanted, not really. 

“Of course we’re friends. I told you, you’re my bestie!” 

You looked at Adrian finally, his face smeared in your blood. His tongue darted out and traced his lower lip. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. This was a bad idea,” you whispered, backing up, only to have the sink bite into your hip. At least it was somewhat grounding, you supposed. A painful reminder of exactly where you were even if everything else didn’t make any fucking sense at all. You could practically taste your heartbeat with how fast it was fluttering, like there was some desperate bird trapped in the cage of your ribs. “I thought I could be excisive. I thought I could just…just get you out of my system.”

Adrian frowned, eyes sharp on you as he repeated your words slowly back to you, like he was trying to make sense of the shape of them, all foreign sounds on his tongue. “You want me out of your system? I don’t think I understand what’s happening right now. Did I do something wrong?”

Your mouth dropped open, but nothing came out. You couldn’t tell him you wanted him in a way that terrified you – in the kind of bone deep, painful, longing way. In a way you knew would only lead to hurt somewhere down the line. 

Because you…and Adrian…you’re not people built for normal things like love. 

And if you were a different, better, more well-adjusted person you could separate the physical and the emotional. But for some reason, when it comes to Adrian, you are incapable. 

So, you did the only thing you could do – you clamped your mouth shut and you left Adrian standing alone in the bathroom.

adrian taglist: @countvonklit @bastardstevie @tlfg-adrianchase @vigilantexreader @faelvz @a-young-g0d @euinein @fangirl48 @navs-bhat @snowyathena @kurt-wagner-enthusiast @vigil-mort @am-3-thyst @filmlover290 @veronicawinters444 @herogasm70 @lostfallenangelsblog @vigilickme @vampiricbytes @1eliana123-blog @castawaybarnes @jaydennicole @cherryspacedust

if you want to join my adrian taglist feel free to comment below! i'm not adding anyone to my taglist who is younger than 18, so if you have your age in your profile or you let me know you're 18+ we're good to go! :)

[shadowskribe]

Adrian laughed. “What is this, the Pervert Mobile? Driving all the local perverts around? You all see me with my hand up my partner’s shirt and you think, oh, Adrian’s trying to feel her up?”

He knows he's the driver of the Perv Mobile, right? 😍😂

[residentsuperhero]

lmfaooooooooo Adrian Chase is, in fact, the driver of the Pervert Mobile 🙂‍↕️

[residentsuperhero]

bpm, part three: tachycardia

bpm part one > bpm part two > bpm part three > bpm part four

synopsis: Near death experiences are supposed to put everything into perspective. Unless you actively choose to ignore that perspective.

gif by @/stackhousesookie

pairing: adrian chase x f!reader word count: 7.4k tags: 18+, mission partners who hookup sometimes and maybe don't know how to deal with those feelings, Checkmate reader, injury, loss of consciousness, blood, blood consumption (kind of?), attempted phone sex, idiots avoiding their feelings, questionable medical ethics, angst, emotional slow burn, miscommunication note: remember when I said this was going to be three parts? surprise! it's four! i needed to torture these two for just a little longer. give me a chance to indulge my slow burn proclivities and I will take it to the extreme! anyway, oops I'm sorry for this one! also! this is the picture in question if you're unfamiliar with Romeo + Juliet (1996)!

Your head was swimming, your heart beating so fast you were certain it was trying to make a run for it straight out of your ribcage. All things considered, you should have known shit was about to hit the fan the second Adrian leaned over in the back of the van and whispered, “I wasn’t listening to the briefing at all, were you?”

And now you were writhing on the ground, agonizing that it wouldn’t be you that got to kill him but some sort of…poisonous gas? Unfortunately, that also meant you were about to die. A real, grade-A fucking bummer. 

“Don’t! Go! To! Sleep!” Vigilante grunted, punctuated by each drag across the floor closer towards you. You realized suddenly you were on your back. When had that happened? His gloved fingers slapped at your face, poking you in the eye. 

“I’m so tired, Vig,” you slurred out, letting your heavy, heavy eyelids slip closed. Your hand flailed uselessly towards his, trying to bat it out of your face, but you had to settle for clutching at his wrist. He turned his hand and laced his fingers through yours, his grip punishing, but your brain felt so far away from your body that you couldn’t muster the energy to care. “I don’t wanna die.”

“Hey!” he wheezed. “We’re not going to die. I won’t let you. If you die I’m going to have to resurrect you and then kill you myself for dying on me.” 

“But…if we do, I'm sorry.”

“Don’t do that!”

“Do what?”

“That…that deathbed confession shit. I don’t want to hear it. In fact, I’d put my fingers in my ears right now but I can’t feel my arms,” Vigilante mumbled.

“Fuck you,” you hissed, your head rolling to the side. Your forehead brushed against his mask and you opened your eyes again, only to be greeted with the red gash of his visor. “I wish…I could…see your face right now.”

“You do?” he asked. “Why?”

You swallowed and even the effort of that was difficult. “It would just be nice…to see your face one last time.”

You were too out of it to even be properly concerned with how embarrassing the truth of that was. 

“Oh my god,” he huffed out. “You’re so in love with me.”

“I am not.”

“Admit it, you are!”

“I can’t believe you’re wasting your dying breaths on this,” you whispered, eyes fluttering closed again.

“Will you keep your eyes open for me if I take the mask off?” he asked, sounding panicked.

“Can’t.”

There was a slight rustle beside you. “Open your eyes.”

“Make me,” you argued half-heartedly. You were so tired that you couldn’t even feel how uncomfortable the floor was anymore. You felt like you were sinking into the floor, limbs weighted and dragging down, down, down.

“Open your eyes, dude,” he demanded gruffly. His hand squeezed yours harshly, startling you and wrenching you back from your floor-melt. You obeyed, even though it was a near-excruciating effort. You became faintly aware of the tears streaming out of your eyes, and the sting of the gas, and the sharp, chemical smell in the air. But you were very aware of Adrian: his warmth beside you, the smell of sweat clinging to his skin, the pressure of his hand in yours that you were fast becoming sure was the first and only and last thing in the world.

“That’s better,” he cooed. His eyes were bloodshot which made their delicious green all the more vibrant.

“Yeah,” you agreed, managing to dip your chin in a nod. A violent cough wracked your whole body and you felt the weight of Adrian’s head on your shoulder.

“Don’t…” 

But Adrian didn’t finish that sentence. You pressed your cheek into his damp hair.

“You…were right,” you wheezed. “I should have told you that I – ”

You awoke with a start, a gasp pulling air into your burning lungs. The back of your throat stung like a bitch. A bright flash nearly blinded you and you slung your arm over your face in an attempt to block it out. You could feel your arms again.

“Move her arm, it’s ruining the picture!” Christopher Smith’s voice was a strangely welcome sound, even if you didn’t understand anything he was saying. Move whose arm? What picture? Five seconds ago you were dying holding Adrian Chase’s hand.

“Leave the poor girl alone!” Adebayo’s voice. You tried to lift your head but the world quickly shifted into a watercolor version of itself. You swallowed the acrid taste at the back of your mouth and tried not to gag.

“Fuck.”

“Hey, killer, welcome back to planet Earth!” Chris cheered. You tried to roll onto your side to relieve the relentless pressure of concrete against your spine, but something was weighing you down. 

“What’s happening?” 

“Well – ”

“She loves me!” 

The words were a sharp gasp from directly beside you, hot breath and too much volume making your skull feel like it was floating away from your brain. Still, your heart seized in your chest. He couldn’t have heard you – he was out before you and you hadn’t even finished the words.

If that’s what you were even going to say. Which. You know, maybe you weren’t. 

I should have told you that I like the ferocity with which you stab targets!

I should have told you that I like working with you even though you don’t listen to me most of the time.

I should have told you that I like the way I feel when you touch me.

I should have told you that I lo –

Suddenly, you looked down and realized the thing weighing you down was Adrian. Half his body was draped across yours, your legs tangled, your fingers interlocked, his head resting on your shoulder. Until he lifted it to look at you, his eyes wide and unfocused. 

“Who?”

“You!” Adrian’s eyes widened as he processed everyone else standing over them. He stammered, “Uhhhh, ha ha youuu know who!”

“I don’t!” 

Was Chris pouting? He still had a phone pointed at the two of you and the implications of that were not great. 

“Harcourt!” Adrian yelped. He rolled flat onto his back. “Yeah, ha! I had this crazy dream…because of the…gas…that Harcourt finally admitted that she loves me. But I was like, no way José, you’re Chris’s girl and I would never interfere with the sanctity of that. Bro code.”

You swallowed hard. God he was bad at lying. It shouldn’t have been charming, and yet. 

“You dreamt all that in the, what…five minutes you two were unconscious?”

“The human brain is a wild, wonderful and terrifying place, Ads. You really ought to stop underestimating it.”

“I don’t want to think about what’s going on inside your brain, Adrian,” Adebayo said with a shiver.

“Hey, so is anyone going to fucking explain what the hell just happened?” you asked, getting annoyed. Adebayo extended a hand in your direction.

“Sit up nice and slow,” she urged. Then she rolled her eyes. “Adrian, get off of her!”

Adrian grunted and then slowly disentangled your limbs before rolling onto his back, starfish-flopping onto the concrete with an audible slap of limbs.

“Adrian, please be careful,” you said, a more begging quality to your tone than you would have liked. Once Ads had you on your feet, you reached down to help him up against your better judgment. He made it significantly more difficult than it needed to be, practically dead weight that you hoisted upright and then he settled right against your hip like he needed your support to walk. You rolled your eyes but indulged him anyway, wrapping an arm around his narrow waist.

“You good, Vij?” Chris asked. “Are you hurt?”

Adrian nodded and then slumped down further so he could rest his head on your shoulder. “Yeah, I’m like…definitely wounded.”

“Where?” Ads asked as she and Chris started to guide you out of the building, flanking either side of you and Adrian.

“My heart.”

Chris slapped him upside the back of the head at the precise moment your fingers pressed deep into his ribs and Adrian whimpered.

Back in the van, Economos gave you both a once over, checking your pulses, your pupillary reaction, your oxygen levels and blood pressure as Ads explained the gas that had been deployed was just a run-of-the-mill airborne sedative. Adrian fidgeted beside you at every opportunity, stripped down to just his tactical pants and his undershirt. His bicep kept brushing yours, making him shudder, but he seemed to be going out of his way to do it anyway. 

“Your pulse is still a little elevated,” Economos said to you, checking the pulse oximeter he’d slipped onto your finger. “130.” You nodded, unsurprised. “Let’s get those scrapes cleaned up.”

Economos busied himself with the med kit and Adrian turned sideways to you on the bench.

“Can I check?”

“Check what?” you asked, genuinely confused. 

Adrian laughed one of his wide, too loud laughs. “Your pulse?”

You glanced back at Economos who was still rifling through the kit, clutching a bottle of antiseptic in one hand, his brow furrowed. “I think we’ve got it covered, Adrian.”

“So you think a tiny robot is better at checking your pulse than me?” he asked, an urgent whisper.

“Did I say that?” you asked with a roll of your eyes. But Adrian was still staring at you in a way that was starting to make you both annoyed and also hot despite being stripped down to a tank top. 

“Please just let me check,” he whined. With a heaved sigh, you acquiesced and gave him a nod, expecting him to reach for your wrist or your throat. Both bearable and socially acceptable options. Except Adrian snaked his bare hand up under your shirt, brushing against the underside of your breast, fingers pressing into that familiar space. Your breath caught in your throat.

“Adrian, what the fuck?” Adebayo gasped.

“What’s he doing now?” Chris asked as he wheeled around in the passenger seat. “Oh dude, come on.”

“What? What’s wrong?” Adrian asked, head snapping between you, Adebayo and Chris, genuinely looking for an explanation. 

“Dude, you’re a fucking HR nightmare,” Economos sighed. 

You blinked slowly, realizing everyone was looking at you for a reaction you were not providing. When had your own personal metric for normal behavior gotten so thoroughly screwed? You reached up slowly and wrapped your hand around Adrian’s wrist, pulling his attention back to you. His brow was furrowed, softening only slightly as he searched your face for understanding.

“Adrian, your hand is up my shirt,” you said slowly.

He rolled his eyes. “Uh, yeah, I know? I’m looking for your pulse, dude.”

“I know, but uh…”

“You know?” Chris guffawed. His eyes darted rapidly between the two of you. “Is this like…wait a minute…is this like a regular thing between you two?”

You didn’t know how to answer the question. Because Chris wasn’t entirely off base. You guided Adrian’s hand out of your shirt and hoped your bra and shirt were doing enough work to hide the way your nipples had hardened at his touch.

Adrian laughed. “What is this, the Pervert Mobile? Driving all the local perverts around? You all see me with my hand up my partner’s shirt and you think, oh, Adrian’s trying to feel her up?”

“I mean, kinda, yeah?” Adebayo admitted with a shrug at the same time Economos said, “Yes.”

Harcourt only heaved a sigh from the front seat.

“That’s gross. You’re all gross weirdos with perverted brains. That’s where the strongest pulse point is! Apical pulse! Econogoat, give me your hand, I’ll show you!”

Economos recoiled and moved further out of the radius of Adrian’s reaching hands. “No fucking way, dude.”

“I’ll show you on me, not her, weirdo! No one gets to touch her except me.”

You watched numbly as Economos desperately tried to bat Adrian’s hands away until Adebayo had to get in between the two of them. Everyone was arguing but it was like you were experiencing the whole thing on mute, ears ringing as if Adrian had just set off a bomb between the two of you. 

Adrian turned to you and smiled, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at Ads and Economos and scoffing, as if to say: get a load of these idiots! You could even hear his voice in your own head. You frowned back at him.

Economos finally managed to get in between you to clean out the scrapes on both elbows where you’d hit the deck hard, and gave you a once over for any other serious injuries. 

“What about me?” Adrian pouted.

“You can bleed out for all I care!” Economos exclaimed, though it lacked the conviction John probably would have liked it to have.

“I said I was sorry for calling you a ‘touch-starved, Reddit-lurking virgin’! Not that you ever apologized for saying I was like ‘Weasel if he had no social skills’! That fucking hurt, man!”

“No you didn’t, you said ‘sorry you’re offended by the truth’. That’s not an apology, dude! And it’s not even true!”

“Right, just like the beard dye wasn’t true until it was!” 

“You know what, Adrian, next time there’s an opportunity to kill someone with a chainsaw I’m going to do it on fucking purpose!” Economos yelled back. “Fuck you, dude!”

“The only person who should be mad at me in this truck is her and she’s not mad at me!” Adrian whined, pointing in your direction.

You inhaled slowly through your nose. “Adrian, I’m very mad at you.”

“Oh. But I…I mean…yeah, no, of course. That’s fair. I almost got us killed. So.” Shaking his head emphatically, Adrian’s eyes were searching you for something you couldn’t possibly give. Because it was the truth. You were so, so mad at him.

But mostly you were just grateful he was alive.

Harcourt admonishing them both from the driver’s seat finally seemed to get them both to settle and the only noise in the van went back to the low hum of whatever glamrock Chris was DJing from his phone.

Your head had just settled back against the wall when your heart leapt into your throat at the sensation of Adrian’s fingers slipping against your wrist. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at you. John was preoccupied with repacking the medkit and Adebayo was furiously typing into the field laptop, already on top of the utterly disastrous mission report. You were dreading the inevitable paperwork of tomorrow.

In the front seat you caught a glimpse of Chris’s hand giving Harcourt’s thigh a squeeze. She rolled her eyes at him but the corner of her lip quirked up in a private smile, and his hand still stayed. What would it be like, you wondered, to love someone out loud?

Adrian’s shoulder bumped yours just as you watched Emilia hook her pinky finger through Chris’s. 

Adrian’s fingers tapped at your pulse point before they danced towards the edge of your palm and you knew before he spoke that your heart rate had only gone up further. He bumped his chin on your shoulder as he leaned forward to whisper, “143.”

You would have thought falling asleep that night would be easy. The sedative probably wasn’t even fully out of your system. But instead you laid flat on your back and stared at the ceiling, ignoring your phone lighting up with Adrian’s name on your bedside table.

There were many nights you’d laid awake, laughing into your pillow at whatever indecipherable meme he’d sent you. He somehow always knew when you’d be awake, mercilessly in tune with you. 

But now the sight of his name on your phone felt different. Loaded in a way you were unwilling to unpack.

And yet, your curiosity got the better of you.

Adrian Chase: this is kinda us

Attached was a photo from…was that Romeo + Juliet? Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes dead in the tomb from the end of the movie. Her head rested on his shoulder, curled into his side, him splayed out on his back, the camera aerial and looking down at them from above. You weren’t quite sure what to make of that. Was it sweet? Was it kind of a threat? Either way it made your heart twinge traitorously. You decided to roll with it, thankful for a reminder of the kind of rapport you and Adrian had once had.

It was easier with distance, with your face behind a screen. Where there was no possibility of your hands brushing, or seeing his stupid smile, or him sticking his fingers in your – 

You: who’s who in this scenario? Adrian Chase: obvi you’re Leo and I’m Claire You: oh? Adrian Chase: mostly just because of the positions You: ??? Adrian Chase: what do you mean ???  Adrian Chase: ??????????? You: i literally do not know what you’re talking about Adrian Chase: oh Adrian Chase: you haven’t seen the picture?

Three little dots appeared and then disappeared then reappeared then – 

Suddenly, Adrian was FaceTiming you and your finger hesitated over the button. It wasn’t like it was the first time he’d ever FaceTimed you. 

“PleaseyouhavetoactsosurprisedtomorrowIpromisedChrisIwouldn’ttellyou!” Adrian gasped out, a rapid-fire string of words that your tired brain took several extra seconds to parse out. His face was so close to the screen, his glasses off, and he was breathing too close to the phone’s microphone. 

“Okay,” you sighed. You weren’t entirely sure what you were agreeing to, but whatever it took to assuage Adrian before he could circle the drain of full blown panic. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to act surprised about but I’ll do my best, Adrian.”

“Thank fucking god,” he said, seeming to finally catch his breath, his fingers unwinding from where they were gripping his curls tightly. He moved the phone slightly further from his face and then seemed to prop it beside him. It was then that you realized he too was laying down in his bed. 

“You know I could have genuinely acted surprised tomorrow if we hadn’t had this conversation, Adrian,” you taunted, feeling your lips curling up in a small smile against your will. 

“Fuck,” he hissed out. “Fuck, I fucked up.”

“You didn’t fuck up, Ade. I’m sure whatever it is will be great,” you attempted, even if the idea of Christopher Smith surprising you with something filled your entire being with dread. Adrian was frowning deeply so you decided to distract him.

“How are you feeling?”

“Me? Right as rain! How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” you lied. His brow furrowed. 

“How’s your heart?”

“My – what?” you choked out, feeling the damned thing thudding traitorously in your chest. 

“What’s your heart rate?”

You managed a breath. “Oh. I mean, I don’t know. I’m sure it’s – ”

“Check it right now,” he demanded, taking a surprising tone with you. He was slipping his glasses back onto his face, sitting up slightly in the little bit you could see of his dark room. 

You smiled wryly. “Trying to see my tits again, Adrian?”

He frowned. “Why would I need to see your tits right now?”

Jesus Christ. 

“I – forget it.”

“Oh, let’s check ours at the same time and compare!” he said suddenly. “You’re probably going to beat me, you’ve got such a good resting heart rate.”

“Okay, Adrian,” you agreed with a chuckle. Anything to stop him looking so desperately put-out.

“I’m going to do femoral, so you should do femoral, just so it’s fair,” he mumbled as you heard him readjusting in his bed. You sighed and slipped your hand between your legs, feeling around for your femoral pulse and actively trying to ignore the sudden heat between your legs. If it was anyone else in the world you would have assumed this was all some elaborate come-on, but it was Adrian. 

“Don’t start yet!” he insisted. 

“Why, giving yourself extra time to slow your heart rate down?” you taunted.

Adrian let out a huff. “My legs were all tangled in the sheets and that always stresses me out. So it wouldn’t really be baseline, now would it?”

You rolled your eyes. “You let me know when you’re ready, champ.”

“Now you’re just cheating,” he grumbled. 

You propped yourself up slightly on your pillows, the heel of your hand accidentally brushing against your core. You hissed involuntarily at the slight graze, aware suddenly of how desperate for relief you were. Pivoting your brain away from that train of thought, you pressed your fingertips a little too hand into the inside of your groin. Maybe it’d leave a mark. Maybe that would be a good thing.

After a few moments, Adrian seemed to pull himself together and finally gave the go-ahead. You tried, really you did, but your mind strayed as you stared, bleary eyed, at your phone screen. You studied his sleepy face, grainy but still as handsome as always. Your eyes cut along his sharp jaw, the pink pout of his lips as he counted silently to himself, down the long expanse of his bare neck. It was a good face. A face that made something stir in your chest. A face that made you warm and lonely all at once. 

“Goddamnit,” he cussed. “87. What about you?”

Fuck. You’d been drooling over Adrian for a minute like an absolute idiot.

“I dunno, Adrian, I’m tired, I lost focus,” you attempted. Another lie. What would happen if you told the truth? That you were suddenly struck by the intimacy of Adrian on the other end of the line, wanting nothing, simply making sure you were okay. He cared for you in a way that stretched beyond being partners in the field, beyond being desk buddies and past the clumsy physical relationship you’d stumbled in and out of. 

And you were selfish enough to want more.

Adrian scoffed. “Lame. Should we go again?”

“Tell me you didn’t just call me so you could jerk off on the other end,” you said suddenly. Adrian sputtered. “Because you called me in the middle of the night and asked me to put my hand in between my legs to feel my heartbeat, Adrian.”

“Of course not! That literally hadn’t even crossed my mind!” There was a long pause. “Why, do you want to?”

You chewed at your lower lip. 

It was a diabolically bad idea. 

But when it came to Adrian, you never really could think straight.

“I dunno, maybe?” you said with a shrug that was mostly for your benefit. Trying to convince yourself of the levity of the thing. “It might help us fall asleep.”

“Okay! Yes! Just two besties getting each other off over the phone,” Adrian agreed, a little too eager, making you laugh. He grinned again. 

“Exactly. It’s not a big deal,” you agreed, nodding maybe a little too much. A long moment passed between you two, only the sound of your synchronized breathing puncturing the heavy silence.

“What am I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know, like…sexy stuff?” you offered. To be honest, this was not exactly your wheelhouse. You didn’t do relationships, so you’d never had someone call you looking for anything remotely like it. In the past, it’d always been convenient quick fucks on missions, on the road, back when you used to bounce around from job to job. Back before you’d put down roots. Back before you started to fear you could be becoming comfortable. And safe. That you could become a relationship person. “Like…what are you wearing, Adrian?”

“Um,” he mumbled, looking down like he’d forgotten. “Pokémon pajama pants? And I was too hot so I didn’t wear a shirt.”

“Can you show me?”

“Sure!” Adrian agreed, followed by a lot of fumbling around in the dark until you were pretty sure the camera was angled to show you his pants. At least you got a good glance at his abs somewhere along the way. “Sorry, it’s kind of dark, so you can’t really appreciate the details, but these ones have Snorlax on them. He glows in the dark! Or well, he used to.”

“That’s not what I…” you began but then you stopped yourself, because you found yourself smiling anyway. God, Adrian could be charmingly clueless sometimes. But weirdly you found you preferred that. It was kind of…nice. “You’re right they’re kind of hard to see, but they sound cool.”

“Yeah?” Adrian asked, breathless from contorting himself in his bed to best show off his pajama pants.

“Yeah. So is that your favorite Pokémon?” you wondered, genuinely curious.

“No, dude, my favorite is Infernape! I feel like I’ve told you that before,” he replied. “Wait, is this the sexy part? I feel like you’re not finding this sexy.”

That dragged a reluctant chuckle from you. You buried your face further into the pillow. “I don’t know, it might be sexy eventually.”

“Aren’t we supposed to like…touch ourselves?”

“I think that’s the point, yeah,” you agreed, not sure that was still the point of this particular conversation.

“Well, are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Touching yourself?” he clarified with a raise of his brows. “Sometimes I get hard just thinking about you, but I don’t feel horny right now? I just sort of feel…warm? Do you think I’m getting sick?”

“I’m warm, too,” you murmured, apparently the wrong thing to say because Adrian cursed under his breath.

“What if it’s a residual effect from the gas? I mean, we’re both feeling it!” he said with a slight pant. “Should I come over? Should I bring soup?”

“Why would you bring me soup if you’re feeling sick?” you laughed, despite your best attempt not to. He was slip-sliding into a classic Adrian spiral and you knew you shouldn’t laugh.

“We could eat it together! I would take care of you and you would take care of me,” he insisted. Somehow that sounded more erotic than anything else that had been said in the entire conversation. The domesticity of it made you press your thighs together. Jesus Christ, who were you becoming? Aching over the idea of Adrian nursing you while you were sick? You were pathetic. 

“Adrian, we’re fine. We’ll get checked up tomorrow at work, I promise. Maybe it’s a good time to call it a night? We probably just need some rest.”

“Wait! But I – ” He paused, his brow scrunched together in a look of absolute consternation. You wanted to press your thumb to the space there and ease the tension. You wondered if you’d been too eager to assume Adrian wouldn’t bring up what you’d maybe or maybe not said earlier. It was never that easy. 

“I just…like talking to you,” Adrian admitted quietly. Could he somehow hear how loud your heart was beating through the phone? It wasn’t what you were expecting, but it was better. It was good that Adrian wasn’t forcing you to examine things. That he wasn’t on the other end declaring his love for you or something. 

If he’d heard you, he was being kind by not bringing it up. If Adrian felt even remotely similar you were sure he would have said something. And it was its own kind of answer, wasn’t it? One you could accept. Eventually. 

“I like talking to you, too,” you replied after a long moment. His resulting smile was blinding, even in the dark of his room, even from the too-distant other end of a Facetime call. 

“Yeah?” he breathed. “Wait, maybe say that again. I think I could get a little hard from that if you wanted to keep trying.”

You laughed. “Forget the phone sex thing, please.” 

“I’m sorry I’m not good at this! I’ve never had phone sex before! But give me a little time to study, I’m sure I could nail it in the future,” Adrian said cheerily. 

“I’m sure you could,” you agreed, which earned you a little hum of pleasure. You let your eyes flutter closed. “Can we just stay on the line until we both fall asleep?”

The request earned a pause so long you opened your eyes again. Adrian’s expression was…different. “Of course.”

Hunkering further down under your comforter, you nestled your phone against your pillow, facing you, before you let your eyes close once more.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Another thing for the list of things not to tell Chris?” You hummed in acknowledgment, so he’d know you were still listening. “Some days you’re my best friend in the whole world.”

What was one supposed to say to that? You didn’t know, and you bristled a little at the lack of anything that came to your brain. So you let it sit between you, unremarked upon, for better or worse. But Adrian didn’t need any extra encouragement to break the silence, as he came up with the idea to rattle off animal facts quietly until you both fell asleep. 

Somewhere between Adrian insisting that stingrays are the Warios of manta rays and that whale sharks are not whales or sharks but a secret third thing, you slipped into a dreamless sleep.

It was framed. 

That was somehow the worst part.

When Chris presented it to you at your desk, loosely wrapped in repurposed tissue paper, you at first were able to muster a smile. To laugh it off with everyone else. How funny! And aw, didn’t you two look cute! 

But when everyone else walked away an unwelcome panic surged up and seized you by the throat as you gazed down at the framed picture still clutched in your hands.

Adrian and you. You and Adrian. Legs tangled, Adrian partly draped over you, his face tucked into your neck, your hands desperately clinging to each other over your chest, eyes gently closed. You looked peaceful. You looked like you belonged together. Wrapped up in the repose of those star-crossed lovers.

Except you weren’t, were you? You were Adrian’s sometime-best-friend and he was your…what?

So the framed photo sat on your desk beside your monitor and taunted you all morning while you shoved your headphones in your ears and tried really hard to look like you were deeply invested in answering emails and filling out the incident report that Adebayo had insisted upon on top of the regular mission report. 

You could convince yourself that there was nothing between you two, aside from some fooling around between friends. Maybe you’d almost confessed something to him in a moment of dire panic, but you hadn’t, not really! And you could get over the festing feeling in your chest. Adrian was wandering around the office completely normally! You could do that too!

The blank page stared up at you, and you were struck by the idea that, actually, being sucked straight into its void would be preferable. What were you supposed to write?

Vigilante and I failed to correctly neutralize all threats, resulting in an escaped agent who was able to deploy sleeping gas. The gas rendered us unconscious, but actually we both thought we were dying and I think I maybe told him that I lov –

“Hey,” it was Adrian’s voice, surprisingly gentle, that startled you out of your apparently catatonic state. “You’ve had a pen to that paper for like…a weirdly long time now.”

You looked down at the pen clutched so tightly in your fingers that the skin of your knuckles was stretched taut. The incident report on your desk was still blank, the pen unmoving. 

“Are you okay?” he asked. You must have glared up at him because his shoulders crept up towards his ears. “What I mean to say is, have you been feeling okay? You know? Since the whole, um, gas thing? Because we haven’t really talked about it and I thought maybe – ”

“I’m fine,” you interrupted, not meaning to be short with him. If you were being honest, you’d been bleary eyed and unfocused for days before the incident, but you’d seemingly reached a new low and been caught utterly lacking, by Adrian no less. No, you needed him to think you were fine and well-adjusted. Or, you had to at least make an effort at pretending. 

“You don’t look fine,” Adrian said, and you knew he was just being blunt in the way that came naturally to him but it didn’t stop it from growing roots under your skin in just the wrong way.

How am I meant to be fine when I’m stuck staring at a reminder of the exact thing we cannot have all day? you wanted to ask. 

“Well, I mean, my body isn’t exactly feeling amazing after being dosed with some mysterious sedative, Adrian,” you snapped, a little harsher than intended. You looked around but the office was seemingly empty. You glanced at the clock – how was it already lunchtime?

If he was offended, it didn’t show on his face. “Then we should go and get you checked out again.”

“No, I don’t need…” You took a deep breath. “I’m good.”

“What do you need?” he insisted, crouching down beside your chair. He grabbed it by the arm and spun it so you were forced to face him. “Because whatever you need, I’ll get it. Unless, if it’s like…an abstract need…but I could still help you figure it out. Probably. You might need to explain it to me though.”

“Does Chris know? That we’ve…uh…”

Adrian’s hands dropped back to his sides, something suddenly kind of deflated about him that made your stomach squirm. “I wouldn’t…don’t worry I won’t ever tell anyone. Because, look, I’m not always reading things right but I’m pretty sure that’s not what you want? Unless you…did want – ?”

“I don’t.”

“No, yeah, right, of course! And I knew that. And, I totally agree.”

Nobody knew. Not even Chris. And that was…good. The right call. 

“Then why did Chris let you see that photo before me?” you asked suddenly. “Why didn’t he just text it to me or something?”

“He’s my best friend?” Adrian replied, sounding uncertain himself. He shifted his weight slightly and ducked his head closer to you like you two weren’t already alone. Like he wasn’t kneeling in front of you, one hand on your knee. “Also, I think he was worried that seeing it would cause a…um, physical reaction, if you catch my drift? And he didn’t want the first time I saw it to be in front of everyone at work because that would be,” he paused and cupped his hands around his mouth as if to shout, “embarrassing!”

“Did you get hard when you saw it?” you asked suddenly. That was unfair of you. Adrian’s eyes flicked to your mouth, and then your throat and then back. Everywhere he’d looked felt like he’d left searing heat in his wake.

“I mean obviously. I’m just a man with excellent sense memory recall. But don’t worry I talked myself out of it. To be respectful,” he said simply, looking a little proud, frankly. 

“Right,” you managed, a strained chuckle. 

“Um, so about the thing I mentioned earlier – ”

“Hey losers, you better not be fucking on my desk!” Rip called out, returning to the office with an armful of Taco Bell. Adrian’s head hung between his shoulders for just a moment before he shot to his feet with a sharp inhale.

“Only person I’ve been fucking on your desk is your mom, you little twerp!”

Freed from Adrian’s attention, you shot to your feet and beelined for the bathroom, cursing under your breath the whole way. Something was seriously, profoundly wrong with you.

“Wait!” Adrian called, but you ignored him and picked up the pace, nearly breaking into a dead sprint to get away from him.

Maybe you could give Adrian some far-fetched excuse for your behavior lately. Something that would allow you to take it all back. Maybe you could convince him you’d actually been possessed for the last few months. 

He’d probably believe that, actually.

Staring at yourself in the bathroom mirror you raked your hands over your face, pressing too hard into the skin. You were a goddamn mess. 

Just get it out of your system.

You just needed to get over whatever this was and everything would be fine again. And then you’d be able to push it all down and aside and you’d finally be able to think clearly, focus in the field, not waste time wondering what it would be like to have Adrian bare and curled around you in your bed.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” you hissed at yourself. 

It wouldn’t hurt him. It couldn’t hurt him. He didn’t feel the way you felt, you were sure of it. If he had…he would have said something by now, surely. Adrian was never one for subtlety. No, you’d all but confessed to him and he’d carried on, Adrian as usual.

Evidently, Adrian as usual meant kicking the bathroom door open with his hand clasped firmly over his eyes, causing you to nearly jump out of your skin. His shoulder banged against the doorframe as he stumbled in blindly, free hand slapping against the wall to grope along the tiles until he was standing at the sink beside you.

“What the fuck are you doing?” you groaned. 

“Are you decent, can I uncover my eyes?”

“Why would I be naked standing at the communal sink in the unisex bathroom, Adrian?”

“I don’t know what girls do in bathrooms!” he huffed, then spread his fingers so he could peek through at you. Finally he dropped his hands down to his sides and his shoulders relaxed slightly. “I feel like you had the right idea, to run away from Judomaster. Maybe I’ll start doing that whenever he talks to me. Fuck, but then he’ll think I’m a coward and I am not a fucking coward. Don’t tell anyone this but sometimes I wish he’d just do something illegal so that I could kill him without Harcourt getting pissed about it.”

You blinked slowly, so abruptly shaken out of your own self-consuming spiral. You even managed a laugh as you replied, “I think Harcourt would still be pissed about it.”

Adrian smiled, something languid and warm and unfair. “You sound like yourself again.”

“What does that mean?”

He shrugged. “Means you’ve just seemed…different. Like...distant, kinda?”

Your lips pressed into a thin line and you crossed your arms over your chest.

“Um, so, I’ve been thinking and I really think we should talk about what happened with the mission and what you said and I know we seem to keep getting interrupted but I — wait, I thought you said you were fine?” Adrian asked suddenly, his voice strangely high and tight in his throat as he pivoted from whatever he’d been about to say. You rolled your eyes, about to make a retort when you felt wetness on your upper lip just before you tasted the coppery bloom on your tongue.

You sighed. “I am fine. Whatever they put in that shit really dried my sinuses out and I keep getting nosebleeds. I just need some Aquaphor and it’ll – ”

“Ads has Aquaphor in her top desk drawer,” Adrian interjected and before you could tell him about the tube sitting next to your keyboard he had taken off. 

With him away from you for a moment you felt like you were able to take a deep breath, even if you could taste blood at the back of your throat. You braced your hands against the edge of the counter and gave your sore shoulders a decisive roll. Before you could reach for a paper towel to clean yourself up Adrian was back, slamming the jar of Aquaphor down on the sink beside you. 

You twisted to look at him over your shoulder but instead of thanking him as your brain intended you shifted your weight ever-so-slightly forward and fell into him, lips and all. You could feel your blood smear between you two, warm and slick, but after a beat of surprise that only seemed to spur Adrian on.

He licked across your mouth and then into it, and you could taste your own blood on your tongue. It was all at once repulsive and unsettling and also strangely intimate. A little too focused on the sensation of Adrian pulling your head back by the hair, you didn’t notice his other hand slipping its way under your shirt until his bare fingers were pressed into your ribs. His kiss was heavy, hot, his mouth and his firm grip controlling. It was as though he wanted to pry you apart, to lick at your bones. His hand was so far up your shirt it was like he was trying to climb inside your clothes with you.

A faint tingling at the back of your nose made you realize your nose was absolutely still bleeding. And you couldn’t find the energy to care. Part of you thought: good. Everything about you and Adrian’s lives was soaked in blood anyway, why shouldn’t this be too?

Adrian’s leg pressed between yours as he pinned you up against the bathroom sink and your arms wound their way around his neck, pulling him down as close to you as humanly possible. So firmly pressed together you could feel his heart hammering in your own chest. His hips ground against yours just slightly and you both moaned into each other’s mouths at the same time.

“Sick,” Adrian whispered before slipping his tongue back between your lips. Before you could even process what was happening, his hands slipped under your ass and lifted you onto the sink. He resettled himself in the space between your thighs and gave your hair a slight tug. Your mouth dropped open and you reeled back slightly, the awful part of your brain surging back to life with a vengeance. Adrian, undisturbed, moved his mouth to your jaw and then your neck, tongue tracing your jugular all the way down to your collarbone where he bit down hard. 

It felt like an undeserved pleasure. Something that would only keep you up at night, remembering what it had once been like to let Adrian make you feel alive. Frankly, it would have been easier to have been punched straight in the face.

Hands braced against his chest, you pushed Adrian back. He stayed where he collided with one of the stall doors, his chest heaving, his brow wrinkled in confusion. You slid off the sink and paced for a moment, brain scrambling for any words at all. Something that might help you explain, that actually it wasn’t him. It was never him. It was always you and your dumb, greedy brain, wanting more than you could have.

“We’re friends, right?” you asked, even though those weren’t the words you wanted, not really. 

“Of course we’re friends. I told you, you’re my bestie!” 

You looked at Adrian finally, his face smeared in your blood. His tongue darted out and traced his lower lip. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. This was a bad idea,” you whispered, backing up, only to have the sink bite into your hip. At least it was somewhat grounding, you supposed. A painful reminder of exactly where you were even if everything else didn’t make any fucking sense at all. You could practically taste your heartbeat with how fast it was fluttering, like there was some desperate bird trapped in the cage of your ribs. “I thought I could be excisive. I thought I could just…just get you out of my system.”

Adrian frowned, eyes sharp on you as he repeated your words slowly back to you, like he was trying to make sense of the shape of them, all foreign sounds on his tongue. “You want me out of your system? I don’t think I understand what’s happening right now. Did I do something wrong?”

Your mouth dropped open, but nothing came out. You couldn’t tell him you wanted him in a way that terrified you – in the kind of bone deep, painful, longing way. In a way you knew would only lead to hurt somewhere down the line. 

Because you…and Adrian…you’re not people built for normal things like love. 

And if you were a different, better, more well-adjusted person you could separate the physical and the emotional. But for some reason, when it comes to Adrian, you are incapable. 

So, you did the only thing you could do – you clamped your mouth shut and you left Adrian standing alone in the bathroom.

adrian taglist: @countvonklit @bastardstevie @tlfg-adrianchase @vigilantexreader @faelvz @a-young-g0d @euinein @fangirl48 @navs-bhat @snowyathena @kurt-wagner-enthusiast @vigil-mort @am-3-thyst @filmlover290 @veronicawinters444 @herogasm70 @lostfallenangelsblog @vigilickme @vampiricbytes @1eliana123-blog @castawaybarnes @jaydennicole @cherryspacedust

if you want to join my adrian taglist feel free to comment below! i'm not adding anyone to my taglist who is younger than 18, so if you have your age in your profile or you let me know you're 18+ we're good to go! :)

[lovelyroseybunny]

UGHHHH MY POOR AVOIDANT QUEEN😭😭💗

i loveeeee a good ole slow burn omg like make it hurt poke the bruise you left

this part is so so good i honestly think it’s my favorite so far!!! the way simple honest communication could clear up all her worries so quick but the fear stops her from getting the words out!! and poor adrian has BEEN trying to talk to her about it but they keep fucking getting interrupted.

“..What would it be like to love someone outloud?” RAHHHHHH THE HOPE AND ANXIETY AND LONGING ALL WRAPPED UP IN ONE SENTENCE

“..I would take care of you and you would take care of me.” so simple, so honest, so so sweet i love adrian so much and the way you write him i truly adore UGH so good💗💗💗

[residentsuperhero]

thank you so much!!! left to my own devices I will absolutely turn something that was supposed to be a sexy, silly, smut one shot into an ache-y emotional slow burn with angst. I am not to be trusted!!! but I swear they'll finally get to talk about it in the next part!

but seriously, thank you so much for the compliments and the quotes you've pulled - two of my faves! seeing what lines resonated with readers is always one of my favorite parts of writing anything! ❤️❤️❤️

[cheaphalloweencostume]

*dirty talking* you’ve been a very bad boy and im just going to straight up kill you now