idol of idiot worshippers

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

[residentsuperhero]

hey! i'm keara! all my work to date is listed below. happy reading! <3

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 > part four > part five

bpm - completed series (18+)

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.

part one > part two > part three > part four > part five

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 - GN Reader

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 (18+)

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.

get the balance right - one shot - request - GN Reader

Adrian talks you through it - and by it he means...the rules of D&D.

smoke got through and so did you - one shot - request - GN Reader

Vigilante catches you on a smoke break during a stressful shift at Fennel Fields. So, how does your boyfriend Adrian know you broke your promise not to smoke?

Superman (2025) (DCU)

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 (ongoing series) - 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.

[yourpoetcomics]

Weird stains after patrol

[wordfather]

something strange going on with my wip where nothing is happening because im not writing. does anyone know how to fix this

[residentsuperhero]

something has been weighing heavily upon me.........

do you consider Peacemaker Season 2 Adrian Chase blond?

yes

no

Voting ended onAug 10

[residentsuperhero]

for those of you who have had requests sitting in my inbox (you're all anon, so I hope you see this!) I promise these have been seen and I have been slowly plugging away at them all!

my beloved criminal!reader requester who has been patiently waiting since the spring, I promise I love this request and have been spending a lot of time with it, I just want to make sure it's just right! <3 it's got some real treats in it, I swear! it's a little bit sweet and a little bit sad and here's a preview just for funsies!

“Oh gosh thank you so much,” you gushed, yanking your cowl down around your neck before you turned fully around. The last thing you needed was this freak knowing your face, but you had to at least try to play the innocent card first. “You saved me! I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t – ”

“I know who you are,” he scoffed. “So you can give up the act.”

“Well, you can’t blame me for trying,” you replied with a shrug. “So, what happens now? You kill me? Because I’m not going to lie to you – that would be a bit of a bummer.”

“I – well, yes, usually that’s what happens…”

“Having a little performance anxiety?” you taunted.

“Fuck off, no, I’m just – thinking about it.”

“You’re…thinking about it?” you asked, just to make sure you heard him correctly. “Evergreen’s Vigilante: remorseless killer, defender of the streets, ‘no crime too big or small’ is only thinking about killing me?”

“Would you just – please stop talking, you’re really distracting me!”

“Is it the talking that’s distracting you, or…?” you prompted, enjoying teasing your would-be killer a little too much. “Or is it me?”

“What do you mean by that?” he laughed. “What, like you’re insinuating that I’m only not killing you because you’re hot?”

“So you think I’m hot?”

Vigilante stammered. “What? Fuck no! Criminals aren’t hot. You’re like the opposite of hot.”

“Cold?” you offered. You extended your hand towards him. “You can feel, if you’d like. See for yourself if I’m hot or cold.”

“Fuck no, dude!”

[residentsuperhero]

something has been weighing heavily upon me.........

do you consider Peacemaker Season 2 Adrian Chase blond?

yes

no

Voting ended onAug 10

[residentsuperhero]

love and appreciate ur writing (and u!) so much because even after i started transitioning i havent felt like your stories weren't for me now that i'm not a woman. i hope that makes sense! thank u mama residentsuperhero

hi!!! love you! <3 mama residentsuperhero truly had me laughing at my desk at work lololol

this is actually really wonderful to hear! i couldn't be more glad you feel that way - I always want everything I write to feel like it belongs to everyone. I know sometimes I use gendered language in some of my fics (but i do always hope even with my gendered fics that they just come across like people, you know?), but I really do my best to keep things gender neutral where I can!

also, and most importantly, I am so, so happy for you <3 <3

[does-this-character-eat-pussy]

adrian chase

Does Adrian Chase/Vigilante from Peacemaker eat pussy?

Yes

No

Remaining time: 3 hours 16 minutes

[nicijones]

Ao3 version that lets you open the 'director's cut' where I, the author, explain every detail in excruciating detail to you and what it is in reference to.

[liesmyth]

#it’s called sending me an ask and I tell you way more info than you actually wanted @newbromantics

[residentsuperhero]

something we as a society do not talk about enough is the line up the back of the Vigilante suit where it was clearly sewn back together at some point

like, what the hell happened there?? AND it's on Earth X Adrian's suit too!

what's the lore! when and how did Adrian get slashed all the way up the back! I want to know!

fuck it, I might have to write it

[residentsuperhero]

I'm back on this again because I was rewatching some scenes and realized he also has a small stitched section on his right side, I noticed it most clearly in Ignorance is Chris (S2 E6) - you can kind of see it on OG Adrian by his hip, right above his belt in the same screencap as above!

anyway all that to say, the criminal!reader x Adrian request I've been working on since literally April may or may not tackle the lore there and realizing there was a second mend actually made this fic make more sense lol! 👀

[lesbianhouseplant]

Ah yes, the 3 genders. Male, female, and “what the fuck are you, a cop?”

[residentsuperhero]

My beloved Keera. Do you plan on any more Clark fics? I have read and adored EVERYTHING you have posted, but that has been my favorite easily. My heart is only so strong though, I would love to see more. No pressure obviously! I am a stranger on the internet after all.

Please keep creating forever, even if it isn't here.

Best,

🐿

hi!!! <3 so much about this message is so lovely and so kind, thank you! :')

I am honored that you enjoyed my Clark fic so much! (if anyone is at all interested, full disclosure, a toll, a tithe, the passage of time does not have a happy ending, but you should read it anyway!) I loved writing that thing and I ended up enjoying writing for Clark so much more than I thought I ever would! I held onto that thing in my docs for so long because I didn't know if people would even like it, so it really, genuinely means a lot that anyone enjoyed it at all! <3

that all said, I'd love to write more for Clark! the only tentative thing I have would be a follow up to that piece (though I'm so tempted to just leave it sad lol I used to be such an evil fic writer when I was younger and the temptation is always there lol)

basically, all that to say, I don't have any solid plans or works in active development, but I would love to return to Clark, as soon as I have the right idea!

really and truly thank you for the kind words, my dear chipmunk, and for making me feel appreciated and seen! also, you're reminding me I need to keep working on my stuff outside of here hahaha, I have a play that has been begging to be finished lolllllllllll

[residentsuperhero]

smoke got through and so did you

for our beloved @glamourghoul-writesfics who requested the following:

pairing: adrian chase x GN!reader word count: 3.4k (I think I'm physically incapable of drabble) tags: smoking (don't smoke kids!), lying, Fennel Fields coworkers, Dave sucks, Adrian is a bit of a brat, Vigilante is kind of an asshole, reader matches both their freaks, established relationship, guns, brief (humorous) reference to suicide, humor, a sprinkling of angst note: y'all really put me through the ringer with these mini requests - learned a lot about smoking and D&D this week lmfao. title is from the song "edward 40hands" by mom jeans. very Adrian-coded song and weirdly perfect for this fic. had my fanfic oh. oh. moment when I was shopping around for the right fic title. as for the harcourt yuri, well, I leave that up to the capable hands of glamourghoul. x

“Yo, Dave, I’m taking my smoke break!” you called as you breezed past his office, fishing your phone out of your apron. The shift had been a bitch so far and your boyfriend was off for the night which meant you didn’t even have his adorable, dimpled smile to make it slightly more bearable.

You pushed the backdoor open only to find Blake and Dave standing in the alley, hands frozen mid-cigarette pass. You glanced over your shoulder and then back, like there was a slight chance there were suddenly two Daves. Oh, Adrian would hate that.

“Wait, I thought I just saw you in your office?”

“Did you actually look or did you just assume I was there?” Dave countered, finally moving, taking a long inhale off Blake’s cigarette. You pursed your lips and considered the question. “What are you even doing out here, I thought Adrian made you quit.”

“He didn’t make me do anything,” you retorted, maybe a little too defensively. “I, you know…started thinking about D.A.R.E. and poof! Needed to quit. That’s all. Totally coincidental timing.”

“Wasn’t D.A.R.E. about not doing drugs?” Dave asked, his brow raised. He was right but you refused to indulge him.

“Now remind me, was that before or after the absolute tirade Adrian went on about smoking in the middle of the kitchen?” Blake asked with a knowing smile. You rolled your eyes at her.

“I mean, he had some points,” you argued weakly, eyes drifting, tracking the cigarette passing back to Blake. She inhaled slowly, smiling at you in that fond, crinkled eye way. The same way you used to smile at Adrian when you thought he was being dumb but you liked him anyway.

“You know, I think your little boyfriend is starting to rub off on you,” Dave commented wryly, glancing sidelong at Blake. Thank god Adrian wasn’t there to make a stupid retort about exactly how he rubbed off on you. Anyway, you weren’t stupid – you knew everyone at work talked about you and Adrian behind your backs. They all thought he was an absolute weirdo loser and couldn’t understand why you were with him. You’d never felt the need to justify it to them. Let Adrian live rent-free in their brains for all you cared, you got to go home and have the real thing.

That, of course, didn’t mean jack shit when it came to your hankering for a cigarette.

“You’re only entitled to a smoke break if you’re actually going to smoke,” Dave said, straightening his posture into what you and Adrian had coined his ‘corporate mode’. Dave could be a real dick when he wanted – he was totally chill when it meant flirting with staff and buying weed off the line cook, but the second things weren’t going his way the rules suddenly mattered. 

“Okay, so, I’m going to smoke,” you said flatly back at him, crossing your arms over your chest. 

“So do it.”

You arched an eyebrow and looked at Blake. “Is our boss trying to force me to smoke in front of him? I feel like that must be a violation of the handbook?”

Blake snorted. “Mmm yeah, I think it’s in there somewhere.”

Dave scoffed and looked back and forth in disbelief. “Whatever. I’m not dealing with whatever scheming you two are up to. Be back in 10.”

Once Dave had huffed off back into Fennel Fields, Blake smiled and fished a pack out of her apron and tossed it to you.

“Pall Malls? What are you, 70?” you teased. You slid your thumb under the lip of the green cardboard and hesitated. The faint smell of menthol was like a siren song. 

“You know Linda?” Blake asked, exhaling.

“‘My husband was taken over by an alien Linda’ or ‘Let me show you pictures of my illegal Pomeranian breeding business Linda’?” you asked. Blake snorted.

“Pomeranians. She always tips in cash but like two weeks ago she forgot to go to the bank so she asked if she could tip me in a brand new pack of Pall Malls and I said fuck it, you know?” Blake replied with a shrug. “She still came in next time and tipped me twice.”

“Hell yeah, Linda,” you laughed, putting the last cigarette between your lips, but still fiddling with the empty box in your hands. 

“Hell yeah, Linda,” Blake agreed, a sort of cheers to the universe between the two of you. She held up her lighter, with a quirk of her brow and you sighed, the paper wetting between your lips. 

“I promise not to tell Adrian,” she laughed. Just one would be okay! Besides, you’d been so good. Adrian didn’t need to know. If he was working tonight you wouldn’t even have entertained the idea. By the time you got home to him he would be none the wiser. And then you’d quit again tomorrow.

“Thanks,” you murmured after Blake flicked her lighter closed. 

“How is Adrian, by the way? For what it’s worth, I think you two are kinda cute together. Doesn’t hurt that you’ve mellowed him way the fuck out.”

“I think you might be the only person here who thinks that,” you replied, exhaling slowly, enjoying the way the menthol hit the back of your soft palate and left you feeling only feeling slightly guilty. Perhaps even a small amount of the shift’s stress eased out of your shoulder blades. “But he’s good.”

“Yeah?” she asked, seeming genuinely curious. “He’s got that puppy-dog thing about him when it comes to you. It’s sweet. I think he’d do anything for you.”

“That’s probably true,” you agreed, a fondness stirring in your chest. Your fingers itched to text him back. Blake made sure her cigarette was fully out under the heel of her non-slip shoes and then made for the door.

“See you back out there,” she called and you gave her a little waggle of your fingers. You ashed your cigarette gently, watching it burn down further without returning it to your lips.

She paused in the doorway, silhouetted by aggressively fluorescent lighting. “Any chance that beefy friend of his is coming by anytime soon?”

“I still cannot believe you were actually into the whole sweet cheeks thing!” You let yourself really laugh. “In your dreams, babe!”

And then Blake was gone with a wistful sigh and it was just you and your half-smoked Pall Mall and the vaguely misty Evergreen weather. Shoving the empty packaging into your apron, you fumbled around for your phone. He’d texted you ten times since you’d last checked in, all of them versions of I miss you and one inexplicable video of a red panda with its baby clinging to its back followed by the text: this is so us.

Something in the air shifted just slightly and you were suddenly certain you weren’t quite as alone as you thought you’d been.

“Smoking kills,” came a voice from somewhere behind you. You didn’t have to turn to know it belonged to a particular suited-up freak. You’d really been hoping not to run into him again, but fate had a different plan, apparently.

“Yeah, and so do you,” you quipped back. The sound of his boots hitting the pavement were still surprisingly light for a man jumping from the roof. 

“I saved your life once, the least you can do is try to stay alive.” His voice was pitched low in his chest, a concerted effort to disguise its true sound. Still, there was something about him.

“I don’t know if I’d say scaring off a rabid raccoon one time counts as ‘saving my life’,” you argued, complete with air quotes. Before you could tuck the dwindling cigarette back between your lips Vigilante was towering over you and plucking it from your fingers. It turned to ash beneath the toe of his boot, ground into the damp concrete. 

“Smoking within 25 feet of a building egress is prohibited in Washington State, you know,” he said haughtily. “I could kill you right now.”

“Pretty sure it’s a civil infraction, smartass,” you replied. You took a step forward, chest brushing against his. “So glad you have your priorities in order, dude.”

For a moment the two of you just stood, nearly pressed together, breathing heavily, willing the other to do something first. Finally, the crackling tension between you was broken by his hand reaching into the tight space between your bodies and into your apron.

“Hey!”

The punch you threw at his stomach landed without much fanfare. His masked face just inclined downwards slowly. “You really need to work on that.”

You scoffed. “You sound like my boyfriend.”

Vigilante’s posture turned ramrod straight. “I don’t sound anything like your boyfriend.”

“How would you know?” you asked with a spiteful laugh. 

“I don’t. How would you?” 

An alarm flared at the back of your brain, insisting something impossible. You shook it loose.

“That doesn’t even make sense. You’re so weird.”

The corpse of a Pall Mall pack was crushed in the strong grip of his gloved hand.

“Do you want my gun?” he asked suddenly, reaching towards his holster. Panicking, you slapped both your hands over his at his waist.

“Whoah, whoah! What? No!”

He shrugged and relented. “I just figured if you’re trying to kill yourself, you should at least be efficient.”

“Jesus Christ, dude,” you hissed, stepping back from him. “Why are you so wound up about this?”

“I don’t like being lied to,” he mumbled, his boot kicking idly at the butt on the ground. Your brow knit together at the comment, at the familiar lilt to his voice. There was only one person you’d told you were quitting who wasn’t currently inside Fennel Fields. 

“Who are you?” you asked, arms crossed over your chest. 

The back door slammed open and made you nearly lurch straight out of your skin. You whipped around.

“We need you back inside.” Dave’s head poked out the door. “Who were you talking to?”

Only an empty alleyway greeted you when you looked back expectantly behind you.

“Ade?” you called out as you hung your bag up on its respective hook by the front door. You knew he was home, his car was outside. And yet, he wasn’t all over you the second you’d crossed the threshold like he normally was. Never thought you’d miss being tackled into the front door but here you were, Adrian-less and strangely unhappy and…unnerved.

The distinct sound of Princess Peach: Showtime! could be heard from the living room.

“That better be my boyfriend in there and not some robber playing his Switch because if you are I will have to stab you on his behalf,” you called out.

“I’m in here,” he huffed. “Don’t stab me.” There was a long pause. “Well, don’t stab me right now. If you were going to stab me I’d want to enjoy it and I can’t enjoy it if I’m mad at you.”

Coming to a halt in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, you found Adrian slumped on the couch, glasses slipped down his nose, neck bent as he fiddled with his Switch. You could very clearly see he’d paused the game, yet his fingers fiddled with the buttons like he thought he could fool you. Like he was trying to keep his eyes anywhere but you.

“So, you’re mad at me?”

He scoffed. “Why would I be mad?”

“Well, I don’t know, Adrian, that’s why I’m asking. But you literally just said you’re mad at me. Like…out loud.”

His head lifted at that. “Oh. Right.”

“So, you wanna tell me what’s up? Because I was really looking forward to coming home and spending some quality time with my cute boyfriend, but it seems he has other plans.”

“Are you smoking again?” Adrian finally bit out.

“Um. Define ‘smoking again’?” you asked sheepishly. Goddamn you weren’t a good liar. 

“I can smell it all over you,” he said, pausing to sniff the air for dramatic effect. You rolled your eyes. 

“You can smell me from across the room?” you deadpanned.

“Yes!” he whined. “You smell like minty death.”

“Adrian…”

“It’s true! And it’s reminding me of your fragile mortality and it’s freaking me out!”

You leaned against the wall and rubbed at your tired eyes. Eyes still slightly bleary they caught on something crumpled on the coffee table in front of Adrian. A crushed pack of menthols. The exact same as the one Vigilante had pried from your hands in the back alley of Fennel Fields maybe two hours earlier. Swallowing properly was a task that you barely managed.

“I missed you tonight at work,” you began. You normally knew how to play Adrian just right. If it was any other evening you’d crawl right into his lap and kiss him silly and you’d let him tell you all about his day while he casually slipped inside you. Of course, this was another matter entirely. 

“Yeah?” he asked, perking up ever-so-slightly. 

“Yeah.”

“Anything, uh, interesting happen tonight, or…?” The slightly higher pitch of his voice was a dead giveaway, if the crumpled Pall Mall pack and that eerily familiar cadence of his in the alley hadn’t already been. Your boyfriend was fucking Vigilante. And he had the gall to be mad at you for smoking one cigarette during a stressful shift at work!

He looked at you and you smiled. “Nah. Just a busy shift. Stressful. Dave was being an asshole.”

“Fucking Dave,” Adrian muttered like a reflex. Then he cleared his throat. “Nothing else notable?”

“Nope.”

“And no cigarettes?”

You cocked your head at him, relishing the redness of his ears. Somehow you were fairly certain you had the upper hand in this bizarre situation. You didn’t answer his question. “Did you start?”

“What?”

“Smoking?” you asked, blinking slowly at him, batting your eyelashes innocently. You uncrossed your arms to gesture at the evidence on the table. 

“Oh uh, I, uh — those are…and I found that in your work apron!” he stumbled his way through.

“Huh. That’s so strange because I have my work apron with me?”

“Um…”

Watching his brain go into overdrive trying to come up with a reasonable lie was kind of adorable, actually. Though he seemed at risk of completely overheating and frying the circuitry entirely. 

“Oh gosh, I actually totally forgot there was something else that happened at work! Vigilante showed up.”

Adrian’s swallow was audible across the living room. You crossed to him slowly until you were between his knees, sitting on the coffee table across from him. You reached for the Pall Mall pack.

“And it’s so weird, Ade, because he reached into my work apron and took this exact pack from me before he disappeared!”

His eyes were so wide, whites fully exposed as he seemed to be trying to disappear into the couch. 

You frowned. “Aren’t you mad Vigilante put his hands on me?”

“Uh…are you mad about it?” he squeaked out. You were surprised at how much fun this was turning out to be. You turned the crushed cardboard over in your hands. You should have been mad about Vigilante touching you but now you were certain Vigilante was your boyfriend and you weren’t sure how to feel about it at all. Was Vigilante kinda…? Hmm. Much to consider.

“Look, the truth is I did smoke, Adrian. Blake offered me the last cigarette in this pack and I took it and I smoked it. Well, some of it. But I do promise that was the only time since I quit months ago.” You let that settle between you. Adrian pouted, but he didn’t argue and he didn’t launch into his anti-smoking rant. That meant there was really only one more thing to take care of. “You told me already tonight you don’t like being lied to, so it’s only fair I tell you the truth.”

“And I stand by that!”

You smacked your forehead with your palm. “No, wait! It was Vigilante who said that to me tonight!”

A strangled sound came out of Adrian’s throat.

“Well! He! Has! Some…good ideas! That I agree with!” He tossed his hands up. “Apparently!”

“Or she. Or they. We don’t even know who Vigilante is, right?”

“Yes. Totally. So progressive of you, babe! Vigilante could totally be a badass chick or a cool as fuck nonbinary person also!”

“Except he’s not. Because he’s you,” you said firmly. Adrian looked like he was considering the possibility of being able to unzip his human skin. “When are you going to stop pretending, Ade?”

He withered slightly. “Any minute now.”

“Okay,” you said, softening finally. You just needed to hear him say it. Sure, your world as you knew it was probably fracturing, but, with Adrian, you were pretty sure you could get through it. With him. For him. You were mad at him for keeping something like that from you, but you were just as mad at yourself for not figuring it out sooner. It felt shockingly obvious.

“Okay,” he said finally, taking a deep breath. He raked his hand up under his glasses and rubbed at his eyes furiously before he gave himself a little slap on the cheek. Then he leaned forward, knees knocking yours. “I wanted to tell you! So many times! But I kept trying to do the math of when it would make sense – you know, when did I know I could trust you, and when would be right for it to not be weird, and I was like, okay, well obviously first date is too early and six months is even weirder than that and it just sort of…got away from me? And then, I thought well, I’ve made it this far. And that maybe it was just better for you not to know. Safer. I only want to keep you safe. From big things – like crime, and supervillains finding out about you and using you to take me down. But also, small things like lung cancer. Or maybe lung cancer would be the big thing. I can’t fight lung cancer with my bare hands. The other stuff I could probably handle.”

You looked down at your own hands. His were mere millimeters from yours, wanting to touch you, but afraid. He’d hurt people with those hands. He’d killed people. And he’d held you gently with them.

“So, do you do a lot of jumping off of roofs?” you asked suddenly, thinking back to the alley. When you looked up at him again Adrian looked like every synapse in his brain was firing at once.

“...Yes?”

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“I’m not going to ask you to stop being Vigilante,” you finally managed. “But I am going to ask you to not keep anything else from me.”

“Okay.” Adrian nodded and his curls drifted so you reached up and raked your nails through them, pushing his hair back. “I’m not mad at you, you know.”

You nodded slowly. “I’m a little mad at you.”

“That’s fair.”

“I have a million questions.”

“I’ll answer them,” he said firmly. Then he grimaced. “Well, okay, technically there are some classified things – ”

“Adrian,” you interjected, causing his nodding to intensify.

“No, no, you’re right, you’re right. I’ll tell you those things too.”

“I’m a little scared.”

“Of me?”

“For you,” you admitted. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“Now you know how it feels,” Adrian said, somewhere between taunting and utterly earnest. You leaned forward and kissed him gently. Adrian murmured against your mouth, “You taste like cigarettes.”

You pulled back and punched him in the shoulder, hard. He rubbed at it idly and you got the impression it hadn’t hurt him at all. God, how strong was he?

“If you’re going to keep running around as Vigilante, you really ought to work on your disguise, you know,” you said matter-of-factly. Adrian’s eyebrows raised and for a moment all he did was blink back at you.

“What?”

“Yeah, Vigilante sounds exactly like my boyfriend.”

adrian taglist: @countvonklit @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 @zombiebytes @1eliana123-blog @castawaybarnes @jaydennicole @cherryspacedust

[e0wens]

Adrian looked like he was considering the possibility of being able to unzip his human skin.

Such a good fic!

[residentsuperhero]

I'm so glad people have liked this line so much ahahaha

[residentsuperhero]

bpm, part five: myocardium

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

summary: You and Adrian never did anything normally, so why start now?

gif by @/life-or-something-like-it

pairing: adrian chase x f!reader word count: 8.2k tags: 18+, smut, mission partners to friends to hook-ups to whoevenknows to friends to lovers, sub Adrian, dom Vigilante, oral (f receiving), fingering, protected sex, biting, mask stays on (sometimes), accidental exhibitionism, Checkmate reader, idiots in love note: surprise! it's a goddamn double feature finale! STOP RIGHT NOW if you haven't read part four: the limbic system yet! thank you to everyone who has followed along as this went from smutty one shot to angsty multi-part. so glad i decided the story wasn't quite done! crossposted on ao3.

Friday morning at the office was nearly untenable. Work was boring as fuck, everyone was tired at the end of the week, but your skin was buzzing.

Every word on your computer seemed to blur together, unable to be parsed apart. You opened and closed the same email approximately ten times before giving up entirely. How was it that the day seemed to go by slower than ever before, as if Time knew you and Adrian had a date to get to and was purposefully torturing you?

Your utter distraction was actually what caused you to realize that, in fact, the only decorations on your desk were things put there by Adrian. The Mario and Luigi figurines he’d painted to match your uniforms after your first joint-mission (Mario had started on his desk but migrated to yours because Adrian worried Luigi might be lonely). The bat Beanie Baby he’d given you after the mission in a warehouse that was, it turned out, home to a colony of bats and you’d both had to get rabies vaccines afterwards. The now totally dead succulent you’d found on your desk one Monday morning after mentioning off-handedly to Adrian on a Friday night out that the office needed more greenery. Over a dozen various doodles on random Post-Its.

He had loved you, quietly, the entire time. In his strange, and deeply Adrian way. 

God, you’d been so fucking stupid.

A chat box popped up from Adebayo.

Adebayo: Adrian wants to know if you’re still coming to drinks tonight? You: why doesn’t he ask me himself? Adebayo: why does Adrian do anything that he does?

That was a fair question. And one that plagued you often.

You: tell Adrian if he wants to know if I’m coming to drinks he has to ask me himself

Perhaps it was cruel to make Ads an unwitting middle man in whatever was transpiring between you two. Only a moment later Adrian was launching himself into his office chair and you heard a flurry of typing at the desk next to yours. You shifted your gaze from your computer to the view of Adrian hunched over his keyboard, brow furrowed.

Vigilante: sar e y cumming Vigilante: **are you coming to drinks tonight Vigilante: *****? Vigilante: that was a question Vigilante: without the question mark it seemed like a threat Vigilante: i would never threaten you 🧜‍♂️

You watched a flush creep up the side of his neck, but still he refused to look at you. So, you turned to your computer.

You: Is there a reason you’re typing this while sitting next to me instead of just speaking to me?

You didn’t need to look over to know that the reason his desk chair was squeaking suddenly was because his leg was bouncing rapidly beneath his desk. 

Vigilante: i can’t talkt o you out loud rn i’m gonna say something incriminating

You swiveled in your chair to stare at him and when he finally glanced at you, you rolled your eyes. His brows lifted and he brought his fingers to his keyboard once more.

“Hey,” you said coolly, giving him a small smile. The truth was you wanted to smile at him so widely it might split your face in two. Somehow, you wrangled it down. 

“Hey,” he squeaked out, grinning at you like an idiot. You glanced around and then beckoned him over with a single crook of your finger. He slid his chair so fast the two of you collided and you laughed as he nearly fell out of his chair into your lap.

“Why were you asking if I’m going to drinks tonight? You know I am.”

He shrugged, his ears tinged red. “Just checking.”

“I might be a little late though,” you feigned a sigh and Adrian’s held tilted. “Yeah, I’ve got this really hot date right beforehand.

His confusion gave way to a handsome smile after a moment. “Riiiiight. Right, right. Cool, yeah. Yeah, cool. Lucky fellow! I’ve also got a hot date before, so I might be late, too.”

“Look at us,” you commented, giving Adrian’s knee a subtle squeeze before pulling your hand back. Adrian gasped suddenly.

“Wait, what if we put both of our monitors in the same cubicle and we could sit next to each other like this all the time,” he gushed, turning both your chairs to face your monitor and smashing the arms together. 

“Adrian we are not doing that,” you sighed. He leaned into your shoulder.

“But then I could hold your hand literally all day,” he cooed, his pinky brushing against yours on the armrest of your chair.

“Get it together, losers! We’ve got a last minute tip. Suit up, we’re heading out in 10!” 

Chris’s strong hands clamped down on a shoulder each and spun you towards him. Adrian shifted away, pretending to cough for some reason. You watched Chris wrestle down a grin before he gestured towards the armory where your uniforms and weapons were kept.

It wasn’t the first time you and Adrian had suited up in the armory at the same time, but it certainly was the most difficult. You two kept bumping arms and elbows and you began to suspect that Adrian was doing it on purpose just for an excuse to touch you. Heat crawled up the back of your neck and you shook it off, getting your brain in the proper headspace. 

“Here, let me…” Adrian mumbled, zipping up your compression jacket all the way to your chin, his fingers lingering there. He nudged your chin up ever so slightly, forcing you to look up at him.

“You don’t have to help me put on every item of my uniform, you know,” you remarked casually, even if your skin was burning under his touch. 

“Maybe I don’t have to but I want to. Gotta make sure you’re properly equipped!” he cheered.

You smiled but rolled your eyes. “You sure do love to help in the most annoying way possible.”

“Well, what is it that that scary guy who lives on the street says?” His brow pulled taut in consternation. “‘Look for the helpers!’ That’s me. I’m your helper. Well, sometimes. But sometimes you’re mine! We balance each other out. Like I’d lick your boots clean if you asked but you’d pet my hair. You know, reciprocal.”

You couldn’t even process the entirety of that because, “Sorry, do you mean Mister Rogers?”

“Who?” Adrian laughed. Then he simply shrugged. “Is he a homeless guy whose only friends are puppets?”

You turned your back to Adrian wordlessly and he buckled your holster under your arm for you. When you turned back to him you hooked your finger into the front of his chest plate and pulled him close. 

“I wish I could put your brain under a microscope,” you said quietly, eyes studying his handsome face. You held out your hand and he took his glasses off and pressed them into your palm. You unzipped his pocket for them but when you looked back up he was still just holding his mask in his hand. His green eyes, unobstructed from your view by any lens or visor, were wide and glistening.

“I think that’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

The mission, while successful, overtook the rest of the day, effectively squashing you and Adrian’s date. He’d also taken a slice to the forearm while being cocky and stylish with his hand-to-hand instead of efficient. By the time you’d made it back to Checkmate, everyone was ready to head home and clean up and regroup at the bar, and you juggled excuses deftly without Adrian to fumble the lies. 

You were getting a jumpstart on your paperwork, you wanted to stop sweating before you showered, each lie doled out to your friends with a tiny bit of guilt. Instead, you sat at your desk and ate emergency candy from the drawer just to give your fingers something to do. By the time Adrian returned, newly bandaged up under his Vigilante sleeve, Adebayo was flipping off her office lights and calling out that she’d see you both at the bar. Adrian surreptitiously tried to shove several gummy bears in his mouth at once.

“Right behind you, Ads!” you called out, listening for the jangle of her keys. Your head whipped towards Adrian. “Get in the closet.”

“What?”

“Get in the closet right now.”

If Adrian was still confused he didn’t waste anymore time arguing with you in the hallway. He pushed the door open and you followed behind him, clicking the lock into place as the door shut firmly.

To say you were proud of your next actions would be a gross overstatement. To say that you “could live with them” was maybe more accurate.

You were shrugging out of your uniform before Adrian could even properly turn around in the small space.

“So, what’s going on right now – oh.”

Adrian started nodding, looking you up and down, visibly swallowing in a way that made you want to sink your teeth into his neck. Why was he so…biteable? That thought was surprising enough on its own, surprising enough that your hands stilled over the clasp of your bra.

“Well don’t stop on my account!” he giggled. Then his eyes widened. “No, wait, do stop.”

You arched an eyebrow at him, heart tugging in your chest thinking about the possibility he was about to turn you down. Instead, he took a step closer to you.

“Let me do it,” he said lowly, giving you a toothy grin. You allowed your arms to drop to your sides and to give in to Adrian’s request. His mask was still clutched in his gloved fingers and he reached up to gently place it on a shelf full of office supplies. 

His eyes flicked from your chest to your mouth to your eyes and then, wordlessly, he raised his hand in the space between you and gestured for you to turn around with a little twirl of his finger. You obeyed, measuring yourself to make sure you were not coming off overeager.

His gloves scratched against the skin of your back as he pressed close, taking hold of the clasp of your bra. If he noticed that for once you weren’t wearing a sports bra under your tactical gear, he didn’t comment on it. He undid the clasp with a surprising deftness and slid the straps off your shoulders, breath hot against the side of your neck.

“Go on, ask me,” you demanded, hating how breathless you sounded. But you had an inkling of what he wanted to hear. You could hear the crackle of Adrian’s wet lips sliding over his teeth as he grinned. 

“Are you mad at me for getting a tiny bit stabbed?”

“Livid, actually,” you lied.

“Well, you better show me how mad you are. Just so I’m clear.”

You meant to turn around but Adrian’s teeth sunk into the meat of your shoulder, dangerously close to the scar there. Instinctively, your elbow lashed out behind you and landed somewhere in his ribs. Air escaped his lungs in a pleasant mix of laughter and pained surprise. Seizing your chance to turn around you darted up to kiss him, more bite than anything else. His lip was caught beneath your teeth before he could react. 

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry,” he pleaded, still laughing. His lips trailed down to your jaw, a kiss pressed there followed by a breathy apology. Another whispered into the column of your throat. Another bout of penance at your collar bone. Then his tongue laved, flat and hot, over the mark left by his teeth. He pivoted from the tense weight of his attention to daintily kiss your scar before dropping to his knees in front of you to continue his devotion to your body, wasting no time swirling his tongue around one of your nipples.

His gloved fingers sunk deep into your bare flesh, scraping down your sides until they came to rest on your waist. He kissed up your sternum and then grazed his teeth across your other breast. One of his hands travelled up to the underside of your breast and he pulled back just a moment to tear the glove off with his teeth. He caught his breath, face pressed against your stomach and you realized he was checking your pulse. You rolled your eyes but something about the intimacy of it had you shifting, your thighs pressing together. A crooked smile stretched across his pretty mouth. 

He kept his fingers pressed flat for your apical pulse as he dragged his chin up your torso and licked flat up between your breasts. He peppered kisses to the tops of both and then, with no warning, sunk his teeth into the side of one.

“Adrian!” you gasped, hand raising to swat him but instead your hand gripped into his hair when he laved over the bite with his tongue and then took your nipple into his hot mouth. He pulled back slightly, catching it in a careful drag of his teeth and then he sat back on his heels and nodded to himself.

“You like that,” he assessed, seeming pleased. 

“Yeah, I like you having your mouth on me, a novel concept,” you managed, noting for yourself your own elevated pulse. 

He shook his head. “Well, duh. I mean the biting specifically. You like it. I bet if I put my hand in your pants right now you’d be soaking wet.”

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?” you countered, grasping desperately at taunting for some semblance of power in the situation.

He just smiled blissfully. “I can’t wait to put it in you.”

You could only laugh in disbelief. You couldn’t believe you were going to have sex with this hapless idiot. Finally. 

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Um, so sorry, I’m realizing right now I don’t have a condom. But! I can just uhhhh pull out maybe? Or, no, the pull out method is like scientifically untrustworthy, so maybe I just use my fingers instead and we save the – ”

His brain was pacing ahead, already assuming a problem where there wasn’t one. You pulled him back to standing by the front of his suit and presented him with a condom fished from your pocket. 

He gasped in relief. “Oh thank god. Can I admit something? That day when I thought we were maybe dying all I could think about was how annoyed I was that I never got to fuck you properly – not that that’s like…the only thing I think about when it comes to you. I don’t even…I like sex a totally normal amount, for the record. As in, I’m not some kind of pervert. But I have been wanting to fuck you, and when we were almost-dying I was really bummed I wouldn’t. And just now I was thinking: fuck, I am still fucking it up so bad."

“Good thing one of us pays attention to logistics, hm?” you taunted, feeling rather smug. You were about to ask him exactly what constituted a totally normal amount. That was, of course, until Adrian’s face shifted slightly and his eyes searched yours.

“Why did you have this in your pocket?” he asked, blinking slowly at you. A grin slowly spread across his face and his head tilted. “Wait a minute…were you planning this?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“No, no, no – you so were!” Adrian exclaimed, as if scandalized by the idea. That you would plan to have sex with him. That you thought about him like that and wanted it. “Oh my god, you want to have sex with me!”

“Well, yes, Adrian, that’s the general idea and I think you already knew that.”

“No, but like…you want it. Enough to put a condom in your tactical pants. That’s kind of textbook premeditation,” he rambled. He was fucking delighted. And you hated the stupid part of the back of your brain that found that cute. 

“Are you talking about murder or fucking?” you nearly growled. 

“Well, I’m perfectly happy to multitask.”

“Adrian, shut the fuck up and kiss me, please.”

“Copy that. Shutting the fuck up!” he eked out before he dove for your mouth. He kissed you sloppily, not even giving you a chance to catch your breath. He moaned as he ran his tongue across your teeth and you bit down at the intrusion. His fingers fumbled at the closure of your pants and you hated that it charmed you. Here was a man who could toss a knife into a man’s skull without even looking and yet couldn’t seem to get your pants unbuttoned. 

Desperate, you reached down to assist him and the second your pants were unbuttoned his hand was slipping in between your legs, dragging against your clit. He retreated quickly and immediately put his slick fingers in his mouth, moaning pathetically. You swallowed hard. 

“I love how wet you get for me,” he breathed. His head dipped forward like he was going to kiss you but he just leaned his forehead against yours and pressed his fingers inside you, panting against your open mouth. “I love how you feel around my fingers.” He crooked his fingers ever so slightly and it was as if a spark had run straight up your spine. “I love how you respond to my touch.”

He leaned down to bite at the juncture of your jaw and throat and then ran his tongue up the side of your neck. “I love the way you taste.” He bit down hard, sucking a hickey into your collarbone. “I love how you bruise.” He kissed the scar on your shoulder. “I love how strong you are.”

Then he dropped to his knees and yanked your pants down. You whined at the loss of his fingers in you, but he pressed gentle kisses to your stomach that had your brain melting. No one had ever touched you like that. “I love how soft you are.”

He paused a moment, fingers pressing into the back of your thighs, holding you firmly in place. You hadn’t even realized you’d shrunk back slightly.

“Don’t do that,” he said, a darker edge to his tone.

“Do what?” you asked, your voice a betrayal.

“Pull away from me because you don’t believe that I could love things about you.” His expression was deadly serious. “I’m sorry I didn’t use the words to let you know before, but I’m telling you now. And I’ll never stop telling you for literally the rest of our lives. God, I really fucking hope I die before you.”

You found the corners of your eyes suddenly wet. “No, I’m sorry I was afraid to love you.”

“It’s okay,” he said lowly. Then he shook his head. “Okay, bleh! Enough serious shit, let’s get down to fucking business!”

Once he’d managed to untie your boots and get them off, your pants were quick to follow, and he returned to his dogged devotion of you. His bottom lip dragged across the skin just above the waistband of your underwear and he looked up at you through long eyelashes. Your mouth flooded with want so quickly you thought you were about to drool. 

The pulsing thrum of desire felt like it was narrowing to a point so sharp and sure it could cut you right open. That you might as well use it to make a careful incision between your breasts and yank your heart out for Adrian’s consumption.

He caught the fabric between his teeth and slowly sunk down, dragging the garment with him until he let it go and it pooled at your feet. He wasted no more time taunting or teasing or prolonging, he nudged your knees apart, hooked your knee over his shoulder and put his mouth to you.

But he didn’t devour you. No, instead he was mercilessly tender and slow. Like he’d turned the burner to low, just to let you simmer. You writhed against him, desperate for more, desperate for faster. Adrian smiled against you and continued his meticulous pace. He’d let his teeth graze your clit, sending a jolt down your spine, and then swirl his tongue around it like it was made of glass. The alternating sensations were driving you towards the edge quickly, even if his machinations were languid and unhurried. He opened his mouth even wider and ran his tongue the length of your folds before sucking your clit between his lips. And he did it again, slower. And slower. You were about to beg him to just let you come when he dragged his tongue up and stopped, bringing his fingers to your clit while he made love to you with just his tongue. 

Your head tossed back of its own accord, knocking the shelf behind you, and sticky notes tumbled to the floor beside you but you couldn’t be bothered to care because you were too busy crashing into an orgasm, hot and ragged and still somehow not enough. 

“Are you okay? That was crazy! Came so hard it started raining office supplies! But we should probably pick those up because Fleury will be really annoyed if we mess up his color coding system and — ”

You dragged him into a kiss, something slow and deep and tender. Adrian's hand slid to the back of your neck and held you tight, your bodies bending together as if you were trying to kiss your way into existing in the exact same space. You’d let him take up residence along your atoms and neurons. You’d let Adrian do anything. 

“Okay!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands together as he pulled back and dropped to his knees. “One more!”

“Adrian!”

“Oops, I’m already down here!” he said with a shrug, before he kissed a trail up the inside of your thigh. He pressed two fingers into you with no warning and you gasped, taking care to not whack your head a second time.

Your nails dragged across his broad shoulders, catching on kevlar. The feeling of the suit beneath your fingertips had you thinking about often Adrian had fucked in the suit. You knew he’d had threesomes with Chris before Chris knew Adrian was Vigilante. And some after, still as Vigilante. But that must have meant the mask stayed on. But if the mask stayed on…

“Wait, didn’t you claim you’d been told your pussy eating could make anyone love you?” You hadn’t entirely meant to ask the question out loud. Post nut clarity was a real thing, apparently.

Adrian’s head popped up between your legs, looking up at you, his head cocked to the side.

“Did I?”

“How are you eating pussy with the mask on, Adrian?”

“I’m…not? I don’t think I understand the question.”

“Sorry, was the first time you ate someone out – ”

“With you? Oh, yes.” Then he paused, his fingers crooking absently as he hummed in thought. “Well, I mean, one time with P a girl rode my face with the mask on but I don’t really count that. She didn’t come and I felt like I was getting waterboarded.”

And you felt totally normal about that. And about the way he was scissoring his fingers inside of you.

“Listen I hate to inflate your ego but – ”

“I’m very good at it. I know. I was there and you came twice!” he said, beaming with a sort of pride that you couldn’t even resent him for. “I’ve done a lot of studying. And Chris is an excellent teacher.”

You squirmed slightly. “Please don’t talk about Chris while your fingers are inside me.”

“Well, it is his technique so basically it’s like Chris is inside you.”

You both frowned at that. “Je - sus Christ, Adrian.” 

“Wait, forget I said that,” he panted, before pressing a series of kisses to your hip. “Chris…uh…sucks at sex. He’s sooo bad at it. You don’t want to fuck him, I swear.”

You laughed. “Adrian, I do not want to have sex with Chris.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Adrian started to lower himself back down with a very pleased grin on his lips but you grabbed him by the hair. “You’re not allowed to come in your pants, Adrian.”

“I’m sorry about last time, really. I don’t know what came over me — well, I do, you came over me. Thighs clenched around my head, actually. It was just really hot and I was really excited that you were letting me eat you out.”

“No, don’t apologize, Adrian,” you insisted. “It was…flattering. But this time, I need you to keep it together long enough to properly fuck me.”

“Aye, aye!” he chanted and then gave an honest-to-goodness salute before putting his mouth back to work between your legs. 

Was a man who just saluted your pussy really about to make you come? 

Evidently, yes. 

You muffled your second orgasm into the palm of your hand. A brief thought crossed your mind that maybe that action was utterly useless at this point, but your brain was too clouded with the milky-haze of pleasure to properly consider it.

“Now what?” Adrian asked, sitting back on his heels, looking up at you with wide eyes and a swollen mouth, your own wet smeared across his chin.

“Now, you’re going to fuck me,” you replied with a grin, inhaling sharply in a clumsy attempt to even your heartrate. 

“Okay, hold on,” he said, panting, hand fumbling around on the floor for a moment. When he found what he was looking for he sat up and dragged his mask over his head. 

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, well, remember way back after we hooked up the first time you said next time I should wear the suit?” he prompted as he yanked it all the way down. “And also, I don’t put P in V without the mask on.”

You stared at him for a long moment. “You…sorry, are you saying you’ve never had sex without the mask on?”

“Well, yeah. Vigilante fucks.”

“And Adrian doesn’t?”

He didn’t respond right away. “I don’t know if I understand the question.”

“Adrian – ”

“Vigilante,” he corrected. You rolled your eyes.

“Vigilante, you went down on me, remember? I gave you a handjob in the back of the fucking truck. You weren’t wearing the mask either of those times.”

“Well those weren’t sex.”

Oh now they weren’t sex? you wanted to yell. Instead you sighed.

“That feels…pretty heteronormative.”

Adrian yanked the mask back off. “Psh! I’m not heteronormative. I’m like…the opposite of heteronormative. Peacemaker and I have threesomes like all the time! Well, not so much now that he’s totally in love with Harcourt, but, yeah!”

Your mouth reached a new level of dry. You had just wanted to get fucked senseless by Adrian in a supply closet and instead you were accidentally unpacking some deeply weird shit. Obviously, you had not learned your lesson the first time. Or the second time. Curse him and his good head. And his cute face. And his devotion to you. And your weak, weak heart.

“What the hell is the opposite of heternormative?” you asked, despite yourself.

“I dunno…homo…homo-freaky?”

“Homo-freaky?” you repeated.

“I don’t know, my dick is too hard to think straight right now!”

You let the accidental pun slide and just grin at him crookedly. “Think there’s a box for homo-freaky on government forms?”

Adrian smiled a dimpled smile, the delicate lines creasing at the corners of his eyes in a way you hadn’t noticed before. You wanted to trace them with your fingertip while you two wasted away a weekend day in bed.

Oh my god, you loved him.

You frowned quickly. “What?”

“Nothing!”

“No, what is it? You’re smiling at me.”

“I smile at you all the time.”

“Sure, but, this feels like a very specific smile.”

Adrian ducked his head slightly, like he was attempting to turn down the wattage of his own grin. He was failing. Fondness tugged at the center of your chest.

Finally, he shrugged. “I just like it when you’re funny.”

You snorted. “Yeah, well, you like it when I’m mean to you, too. Pick a lane, dude.”

“I’m a man of many tastes,” he sniffed. “Forgive me for enjoying the full spectrum of your attention.”

“Speaking of…”

“Well, how do you want me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want Adrian or do you want Vigilante?”

You paused, genuinely thrown by the question. You knew exactly how devoted and pathetic Adrian could be. And you were very, very curious about the possibility of Vigilante rearranging your guts. But the moment was for you and Adrian. Vigilante could wait his turn.

“Just you, Ade. You’re all I need.”

Chewing on his lower lip as he contemplated it, Adrian nodded. 

“Where do you want me, Adrian?”

“Desk, I think?”

Turning to look over your shoulder, there was a spare desk, covered with all sorts of extra office supplies. It would have to do. He picked you up and you wrapped your legs around his waist and he leaned over and with one arm swept everything off the table and onto the floor. The two of you were still for a moment.

“I thought that was going to seem sexy,” he explained. Then he looked back up at you, a bit of a pout on his lips. “But I think if we leave them there I’m going to break out in hives.”

You allowed yourself to reach up and smooth his hair back slightly, your fingertips not-quite trailing the sharp curve of his jaw. 

“Ade, I promise we’ll clean them up. But right now, we’re finally going to have sex.”

“Yes, please,” he groaned, practically banging his forehead against yours as he scrambled to kiss you again. Maybe kiss wasn’t the right word. His tongue was scraping your molars, charting your mouth like he was going to go home and make a topographic map from memory. Gently, he placed you down on the desk, his mouth not breaking from yours as he shed the top half of his armor and uniform. You ran your hands appreciatively up his abdomen – god, he was hot. Maybe he was onto something with all that weightlifting after all. 

Nah. You could just watch him weightlift from a distance and enjoy the sweat traveling between the planes of his chest and think about licking it off. You were pretty sure he’d enjoy that scenario more.

You batted Adrian’s hands away from the closure of his pants, taking it upon yourself to undo the utility belt that sat around his hips, letting it drop to the floor. You popped the button open and undid the zipper so you could dip your hands into his underwear. True to his word, he was already completely hard, the tip slick and flushed. You gave a few testing strokes that had Adrian dragging himself from your mouth to wriggle his pants down. He kicked them and his boots aside like you were timing him. 

When he stood again at the end of the desk he paused and you watched his chest heave as he took you in, his eyes glistening behind those long lashes of his. His head snapped up suddenly. “Condom!”

He reached over to retrieve it from its perch on the supply shelf and he ripped the foil open. You took the condom from his hand and kissed his lips as you rolled it gently down his shaft. Already, his hips bucked slightly into your touch. 

“Can I?” 

Nodding, you leaned back on your elbows to watch as he gripped your hips and pulled them to the edge of the desk. Air hissed through your teeth at the sensation of him running his tip through your folds. His brow was furrowed, his tongue pinched between his teeth in concentration, glasses already slipping to the end of his nose. God, he was so stupidly cute. Looking at him at that exact moment gave you the kind of aggression you felt seeing a cute animal.

“Adrian,” you breathed, not a demand, but an encouragement. He nodded, seemingly to himself, before splaying one hand flat against your lower abdomen and finally pressing himself inside.

It only took one smooth, slow motion for him to bury in you completely, aided by how wet you already were and how steadily he paced himself. 

“Don’t forget to breathe,” he taunted. An exaggerated breath from you later Adrian smiled and then took a firm hold of both your hips. 

“You can move,” you assured him. 

“I’m just enjoying this for a sec,” he admitted, a blush creeping high into his cheeks. “Because I mean like wow this is…and we’re…” He gestured between the two of you. “I’m like…inside you.”

“Yeah, you are,” you hummed in agreement, too pleasantly filled to make fun of him. How could you, when your brain too was starting to go blank already? He hadn’t even done anything. It was just…Adrian making you stupid. 

“Do you think, uh, do you think you could tell me?” he asked, voice a needy whisper that made your mouth flood with want all over again. Swallowing hard, you nodded. 

“Fuck me, Adrian Chase.” The words were barely out of your mouth before they were being replaced by a moan as he finally moved his hips, a testing withdrawal before sweetly sliding back in. You let him get his footing, feeling your bodies working together in a way they never had before. But it was easy, frankly. For him to find the pace that dragged ragged gasps from your lips with nearly every hard thrust, for you to find that the scrape of your nails up his sides made his lower lip quiver and him beg for more, for you two to both discover at the same time the angle that made him hit just right and cause you to clench around him. 

He looked down at you – equal parts hunger and reverence.

“You’re so beautiful it hurts,” he managed between choked back whimpers, one hand sliding up to your breast. “I feel like I shouldn’t look directly at you. You’re like a – fuck – you’re like a…um, oh god uh uh what’s it called? The thing you’re not supposed to stare at.”

“A solar eclipse?” you asked, slightly jarred by the topic while he was railing you so hard the desk was scraping the floor beneath you both. 

“Yes! You’re my little solar eclipse,” he exclaimed with a gasp. “I can’t look right at you or I might go blind, but that’d be okay, actually. If you’d be the thing burned into my retinas forever and – holy fucking shit, do that again please please.” 

He leaned further forward, the angle changing slightly as he hooked a hand under your knee and pressed it up towards your chest. Your eyes fluttered shut as a groan dredged itself from somewhere deep in your chest and you were babbling his name as he pressed his forehead to yours, his mouth touching your skin wherever he could manage between thrusts. 

“I’m gonna – fuck I don’t think I can last much longer. I need you…” he inhaled sharply through his nose, seeming to regain his senses slightly. “I need you to come first.”

“You can come, Ade,” you assured him, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck and pulling him to your mouth for a sloppily placed kiss. But he shook his head and slipped his hand between the two of you, his fingers circling your tender clit. It sped the process up significantly, and you could feel the release building up, pushing ever closer as Adrian held your hips down with his other hand. His pursuit drawing another orgasm from you was almost dogged. His fingers fumbled as his hips stuttered and he squeezed his eyes shut. 

“No, no, no, keep it together, Adrian,” he coached himself.

“Or don’t,” you suggested coyly. In response, he pinched at your nipple but that only made a shudder run down your spine and you squeeze around Adrian again. 

Inspiration struck you in a diabolical way, and you grinned as you grasped him by the chin, and slipped two fingers into his mouth. 

“Come for me, Adrian,” you ordered. 

The sound he made as he fucked desperately into you as his release overcame him would be locked into your brain forever. He suckled at your fingers until you pulled them away and his mouth chased them, nipping weakly at them as they escaped his grasp. He murmured nonsense against your clavicle, his body dead weight on top of you. After a few moments, his hips ever so slightly still bucking against yours, he pulled himself up and kissed you deeply, fingers resuming their work on your clit. He slid in and out of you, the small push and pull ramping you back up just as much as his firm, strong thrusts had. He licked into your mouth, mumbling your own name between your lips, and his fingers pressed firmer until suddenly you were tumbling over the edge into your third orgasm with a sharp gasp. 

His lips trailed along your jaw and down the slope of your neck and you couldn’t be bothered to care that he was absolutely sucking a prominent bruise at the side of your throat. He slipped out of you as he ran his hands along any part of you he could get within reach, tracing your fingertips with his and the curve of your hip and your lower lip. 

All the while, he lay his head on your chest, ear pressed over your heart, and you watched his lips shape around silent numbers.

“I think we messed it up again,” Adrian said.

You shook your head as you finished zipping his suit back up and then ran your fingers through his damp curls. “No way. I think this was exactly right. The right way for us.”

“That’s sweet,” he remarked. “You still owe me a date, though.”

“We will make it happen, I promise,” you agreed. You pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Just like the field, sometimes we have to pivot.”

“You’re good at that, you know,”

“Oh, I know,” you laughed. You opened the door and backed into the hallway, pulling Adrian with you. You gave him a quick peck. “Now we have to hurry up and change so we can meet everyone and…” You realized Adrian wasn’t looking at you. Following his gaze led you to the sight of Ads standing in the middle of the hallway. Your heart dropped straight into your ass.

“How long were you out here?” 

“Too long.”

“Okay, hear me out – ” you began but she was already waving you off.

“Oh, no, we are not going to talk about this right now. Maybe after a drink. Or seven. But not…not right now.”

“If you’re worried about whether or not she came, don’t worry she came,” Adrian said, suddenly appearing behind you. “Multiple times.”

“You know, I wasn’t worried about that actually, Adrian,” Adebayo said, looking pointedly at where his hand had come to rest on your hip.  

“We had to do it!” you exclaimed. “It was messing everything up if we didn’t. And, I guess, also it’s kind of messing everything up that we did.”

“Well, and also because you love me,” Adrian chimed in again, completely unhelpfully. Adebayo’s expression softened slightly.

“This is like…a love thing?” she asked gently. It didn’t escape your notice that she was only looking at you. 

“Oh, yeah, it was a love thing for me before I ever even went down on her that one time. And way before the van thing.”

“Adrian, I wasn’t talking to you!” Ads sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. Then her eyes shot open again. “Wait a minute, so this wasn’t the first time you two have hooked up?”

“So, anyway, back to the love thing…” you said with a grimace, trying to skirt around the gory details you were sure Adrian was about to provide.

“This is really going to mess up the betting pool.”

“The what?” you and Adrian asked at the same time.

Adrian pulled off onto the shoulder and put the car in park.

“Okay, briefing time.”

“What do you – ”

“I just think we should get our story straight, right?” His fingers were gripping the steering wheel for dear life, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. You waited for him to elaborate on exactly what he thought that entailed. “Now, obviously, you probably want to keep it a secret and that’s fine with me. Totally fine. And I’m so good with secrets. If I concentrate really hard. So maybe when we get to drinks don’t sit near me? Or across from me? Just maybe like directly out of my eye line is good? That way I can stay locked in. Because I look at you and suddenly my insides feel like goo and I can’t think straight.”

“Okay,” you agreed hesitantly. “We’ll tell everyone we came together because – ”

Adrian hissed, his hips shifting slightly in the seat. “Don’t say that!”

“What, that we came together? Because we did,” you remarked, knowing you were torturing him. “In both senses of the word.”

“Yeah, I, uh,” he paused and inhaled sharply. “I remember.”

“Okay, we say we arrived together because my car wouldn’t start?”

Adrian bit his lip but managed to nod.

“What do we do about Adebayo?” you asked.

“I really don’t want to kill her, dude.”

Your head whipped towards him “What? No, no, Ade, not at all what I meant!”

He let out a pent up breath. “Okay, good, thank god.”

“Why would you ever think that’s what I want?”

“I mean you’ve spent allllllll this time pretending like you didn’t love me and Ads could totally blow your cover.”

“Love the implication that I was the only one pretending here.”

Adrian finally looked at you. “I was never pretending not to. You just didn’t see it.”

For once, you didn’t deflect. You let the truth of that sit between you as you nodded thoughtfully. 

“So, we go in, we order drinks, we sit apart, we act totally, totally normal and chill and if anyone asks we came – we arrived together because your car wouldn’t start.” Adrian looked at you expectantly for your approval. The whole while you couldn’t help but think you actually didn’t give a fuck about the plan for once. 

God, you sounded like Adrian. 

But the truth was, sometime in the time since Adrian had pulled over you realized you had no intention of pretending at all. 

“Wow, that’s probably the longest you’ve ever paid attention to a briefing, fictional or not. Good boy, Adrian.”

Evidently you should not have said that. Because it’s how you found yourself in the backseat with Adrian’s tongue in your mouth and his hand snaked up your shirt, squeezing your breast tight. He dragged himself across your thigh again and again, the hard outline of him against you but not in you left you strangely wanting. 

More than once you’d offered to put him in your mouth, thinking it might speed up the process so you weren’t so egregiously late to drinks, but Adrian insisted, whimpering against your throat or wherever he could get his lips until he finally came. 

“Good thing I keep extra clothes in the trunk for blood emergencies,” he’d whispered somewhere behind your ear.

Adrian waved at your friends waiting just outside the front door as he opened the car door for you. He extended a hand your way and then drew it back slightly, looking over his shoulder, and then gave up somewhere in between. You bit down a laugh and slipped out of the car without any assistance from Adrian. 

Before he could step up on the curb, you grabbed his wrist, fingers curling inside, rooting out his radial pulse like you always knew exactly where it was. There was a time before Adrian’s heart mattered so much to you, but you couldn’t really remember it now.

He bounced on his toes excitedly and took your unoccupied hand and did the same. Your hand hovered in between the two of you. Adrian pressed the timer on his watch and the two of you counted silently, staring at each other with moon eyes.

“What the hell are they doing?” Chris asked in a rather loud stage-whisper. 

“85,” you said, speaking at the same time as Adrian. His eyebrows shot up. 

“What’d you say?” he asked.

“85? What did you say?”

“85.”

You had no choice but to laugh. Because of course. 

“No fucking way! Jinx!” he cheered, raising his hand for a high five. You obliged him and he cupped his hand around yours but didn’t let it go.

“I wanna kiss you so bad right now,” Adrian complained, shifting his weight from foot to foot. You grinned up at him.

“Hey Ade? New mission plan.”

You grabbed him by the front of the shirt and kissed him. It started relatively chaste, but Adrian did not know the meaning of the word. His arm wrapped around your waist tight as he dropped his mouth open, whimpering. Adrian’s back hit the car door, slamming it shut, jostling you both, tripping over each other’s feet but not stopping you. His tongue tasted of the handful of Icebreakers he’d insisted on downing on the ride over, something about being sure Chris would be able to smell sex on his breath.

“Oh, thank fuck.” Adebayo’s voice from the sidewalk made you laugh against Adrian’s lips. “There was no way in hell I was going to be able to keep that a secret.”

“You knew about…whatever this is?” Economos asked.

“They were fucking in the supply closet like half an hour ago!” she exclaimed. You pulled back from Adrian who whined in protest. He kissed your neck like a horny teenager as you looked over your shoulder at all your friends.

“We were trying to keep things subtle!”

“You mean to tell me you thought fucking the loudest man alive in the supply closet at work was keeping things subtle?” Chris asked with a bemused laugh.

“We thought everyone was gone! Would you believe me if I said that was actually the better option?” 

“You know, I don’t want to jerk my own chain too much here, but I will be taking full credit for you two finally hooking up. The sparring thing was a stroke of genius, I think. I mean, I’ve been waiting for this since Adrian said your name while we were banging this really – ”

Harcourt’s elbow straight into his ribs put an end to the rest of that sentence.

“Easy with the elbows, Emilia,” he grumbled. 

“Oh dude, as much as I believe in your matchmaking abilities, we’ve like…been hooking up,” Adrian said. Economos gasped so hard he choked and Sasha pounded him on the back. 

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but – we need details? I’m gonna need receipts, proof, timelines,” Rip sighed. When you winked at him he rolled his eyes. 

“For the sake of the betting pool, right?” you taunted.

“You guys know about the betting pool?” Fleury asked. Then, seemingly to himself, he muttered, “Damnit. Really should have gone all in on ‘them finding out about the betting pool’.”

“I, for one, don’t want to hear anything else or see anything else until I have at least two drinks in me,” Harcourt said dryly. But when her gaze landed on you she gave you a small smile before rolling her eyes. 

“How about we all go inside and the first round is on me and Adrian?” you suggested. 

“Thank fuck,” Chris agreed, shepherding them all inside the bar. At the front door, you paused, catching Adrian by the sleeve.

“Hey,” you said quietly. His attention was immediately laser-focused back on you. He smiled down at you warmly. 

“Hey,” he replied. You looked to where he was holding the door open for you and you smirked.

“This one of your ways of telling me you love me?” you teased, but Adrian grew suddenly very sober.

He shook his head. “Nah. It’d be a little something more like: I love you.”

It was incredibly smooth, but he still looked sheepish. Like there was a chance you might pull the rug out from beneath him and tell him to fuck off. Instead, you smiled back at him.

“I love you, too.”

“Come on, lovebirds, the people are thirsty and, for some reason, want to hear about you two nasty freaks!” Chris shouted. Chris asking for details of his sex life was Adrian-specific catnip and he practically launched himself into the bar. 

Following close behind him, you realized the tag was sticking out of the neck of his shirt. Without a word, you reached up and tore it free. Adrian whipped around and plucked it from your fingers.

“So, about that seam ripper…”

“Tomorrow. Second date.” You looked down at your wrist as if there was a watch there. “I think we can make some time between bouts of being ‘nasty freaks’?”

“I’d like that,” Adrian said gently, leaning down to kiss you gently.

When he pulled back you looked down at where his fingers had laced through yours. “I’d like that, too.”

adrian taglist: @countvonklit @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 @zombiebytes @1eliana123-blog @castawaybarnes @jaydennicole @cherryspacedust

bpm taglist: @big-old-boat @bastardstevie

if you'd like to join my taglist for any future adrian stuff, let me know! please note, I am not adding anyone under 18 to the taglist, so if your age isn't listed on your blog or you don't tell me when you ask, I can't add you! sorry! love you all! <3

[mrs-elsie-barnes]

I love these two so much 🥹 I can't believe you made me cry happy tears while I was reading smut. Such a gorgeous ending!

[residentsuperhero]

I'm so glad!!!! 🥹 that you love them! not about the crying while reading smut! well...maybe that too! that is a definitely a high honor haha! ❤️

[residentsuperhero]

bpm, part four: the limbic system

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

summary: You and Adrian have many skills in common: hand to hand combat, surveillance, marksmanship and avoidance. Maybe together you two can work on that last one?

gif by @/userilyarozanov

pairing: adrian chase x f!reader word count: 8.9k tags: 18+, smut, mission partners to friends to hook-ups to whoevenknows to friends to lovers, sub Adrian, dom Vigilante, chasing, dry humping/thigh riding, mask stays on (sometimes), Checkmate reader, idiots in love note: surprise! it's a goddamn double feature finale! i literally had to split it up for readability purposes, but I was so, so tempted to keep it intact at its behemoth 17.2k length lololol. (shout out to the 4 Fs of the limbic system, only half of them appear in this chapter now because of the split haha!) don't say I never did anything for you! part five is also live! crossposted on ao3.

Missions had ground to a halt at Checkmate. Apparently, even criminals were taking the summer off this year. 

You couldn’t even enjoy the ease that had settled over the office because Adrian was actively avoiding you. And he wasn’t exactly couth about it. How could he be, when your desks were next to each other?  

He was like a deeply unsubtle ghost – a blur of a man bolting across the office mumbling an excuse about Ads needing to see him, or Economos being lonely and needing company every time you were nearby. One day that week, with a lack of other options, he even sheepishly approached Rip at his desk. You weren’t sure if Rip had maybe taken pity on him, given him safe harbor, but Adrian did return to his desk with orange-dusted fingertips. And put his headphones on before you could even open your mouth.

If you wanted to talk to Adrian, to try and…what? apologize?...he was impossible to pin down. 

Every night your fingers hesitated over your phone, typing and re-typing a text that would never be able to vault the gap. How could it, when you had dismantled the bridge, plank by plank, until your fingers were raw and bleeding?

You had never felt like this in your entire life. The thought had crossed your mind that the first time you’d kissed him had been the mistake, in fact, it had crossed your mind the moment you’d put your lips to his. But you were quickly realizing the mistake was the way you’d treated Adrian. Like it was at all fair to kiss him, to touch him, to make him come, when every time it became clearer you’d be unable to suppress the fondness for him in your chest. And you’d punished Adrian for your brain’s stupid insistence on having feelings. Feelings he couldn’t reciprocate. That wasn’t his fault. 

Still, the avoidance stung. Even if you deserved it.

“Have a seat,” Harcourt said, barely looking up from the paperwork spread across her desk. She rubbed at the furrow in her brow but it did not seem to relent even when you were finally settled into the chair and she ran her incisive gaze over you.

“I’m going to cut right to the chase.”

It didn’t sound great, but still you nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“Do you want a new partner in the field?”

You recoiled slightly, genuinely gobsmacked. “Sorry, what? Did something happen to Adrian?”

You could have sworn you’d seen him about 15 minutes ago, trying to hide behind the open refrigerator door when you went in to wash your coffee mug. He’d seemed fine then. 

Well, fine probably wasn’t the right word.

She sighed and then leaned forward on her desk, her fingers interlaced. “I’ll be transparent with you: you have seemed distant from Chase for the last few weeks in a way that everyone has noticed. I don’t know if something happened between you, if he did something – because trust me, I know how Adrian can be…”

“He didn’t do anything,” you said firmly. Then, you tilted your head slightly and amended. “He didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve just been…off my game. And I’m sorry if that’s been manifesting in a way that’s clear to everyone. It won’t happen again.”

Harcourt’s eyes roved over you and you were struck suddenly by the memory of dissecting a frog in sixth grade science class. And if Harcourt was the one wielding the scalpel, that made you the… 

“It can’t happen again. Do you understand me?” she said slowly, words seemingly imbued with another layer of meaning. 

You nodded sharply. “Of course I understand.”

“So, to be completely clear, you want to stay partners with Vigilante?”

“Yes.” You nodded, half to Harcourt and half to yourself. “I want Adrian.”

Something flashed across Emilia’s face so briefly – there and gone before you could make heads or tails of it. 

“Thank you for your time,” Harcourt said and you started slightly, realizing that was your cue. You stood slowly.

“How long before Adrian stops hating me, do you suppose?” you asked. You watched her visibly oscillate between being Harcourt your boss and Emilia your friend. 

“He doesn’t hate you,” she said gently.

“And yet he’s avoiding me completely,” you countered, with a cross of your arms over your chest. 

“Why might he be doing that, do you think?” Emilia sighed, like there was some sort of obvious answer you were missing by a country mile.

You paused in the doorway, assessing whether you might be able to pry some kernel of truth from her. “Did, uh, did Adrian say something to you?”

“No.” Harcourt’s lips pressed into a tight line. You knew how seriously she took confidentiality. She was not one to indulge in gossip. Mostly. At least not before you got tequila in her system. Her head tilted slightly. “Not to me, directly, no.”

“Emilia,” you sighed, exasperated.

Her palms pressed flat to her desk and her eyebrows lifted as she refused to meet your gaze. “He may have said something to Chris.”

“Something along the lines of ‘total hypothetical here but how do you get your partner to like you again?’” Chris’s voice from behind you made you jump, then scowl up at him. He shrugged. “Close the door next time if you don’t like my commentary.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” you snipped, pushing past him. 

“Hey! That’s a real fucking insult, man. That guy sucks! And not in the fun way!”

The totally hypothetical question rang in your head. Adrian thought you didn’t like him. When that couldn’t have been further from the truth. But it was bad enough that it had gotten you dragged into Harcourt’s office as an official matter. You were absolutely blowing up your life over an unreciprocated crush. It was like you didn’t even recognize yourself anymore. 

“You. Me. On the mats in five,” Chris said as he breezed past your desk. Normally, you would have assumed he was talking to Adrian, but, as had become habit over the last two weeks, Adrian was nowhere to be found.

Which was how you found yourself being choked out by Peacemaker on the clock. Slipping beneath his hold with relative ease, you freed yourself again and he groaned. You put your hands on your hips and studied him. 

“Have you ever considered maybe your biceps are too bulky?” you asked, only half a joke. 

“I didn’t bring you here for your commentary on my gains, killer,” Chris said, rubbing a hand over the swell of his muscle like he was maybe genuinely considering what you’d said. 

“What did you bring me here for? Because I’m getting the impression after my meeting with Harcourt this maybe has something to do with Adrian.” At the expression on Chris’s face, you sighed. “Come on, Chris, I’m not stupid. Please tell me you’re not trying to be some kind of middleman between us.”

“Fuck no.” Chris waved you forward and you two settled back into your sparring flow. You ducked out of his grasp again. You always had your best success against Chris when you kept your center of gravity dropped and low. That didn’t work on Adrian. Actually most things didn’t work on Adrian – he knew you too well. But it was also why he was the most fun to fight, it was like solving a logic puzzle. A very mouthy logic puzzle. 

“I just…look, you care about him, right?”

“Of course I do. He’s my teammate.” 

Chris managed to grab you by the forearm.

“Yes, but…” he trailed off and paused, raking his other hand over his face. A window of opportunity that made your fingers itch to strike. “What the fuck, why do you two make this so hard? Jesus, you two just need to talk to each other!”

“He’s avoiding me,” you pointed out, twisting your arm until you were gripping his, pinning it behind his back. You couldn’t help your smug smile.

“What if I told you you’re both being fucking stupid?” Chris spit out. Then he shook his head as he tapped out. “Sorry. Sorry, I promised Emilia I wouldn’t…I would never presume to fully understand how Adrian’s brain works but I can say that you’re like…you’re like his north star or something.”

Your stomach flipped so violently you thought for a moment you might vomit. Looking down at the mat like it might ground you, you found the corners of your vision wet and blurry. “What does that mean?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. Normally Adrian tells me everything, but when it comes to you he’s…cagey. I don’t know if that means something has happened or nothing has happened but I know where I’d be willing to place my bets,” Chris said, so seriously it made you start to sweat. He paced behind you and you were thinking too slowly to counter properly. “I think…basically I’m just asking you not to break him.”

“I – ”

Chris got your knee from behind and grabbed you before you could go down to the mat, tossing you over his shoulder, knocking the wind right out of you. 

“P-P-P-Peacemaker! Wanna spar? I promise we don’t have to talk about you-know-what again! I’m being so chill and cool about it. Well, Ads says I’m being, quote, ‘more distracting than usual’ and Harcourt said I should find you and burn off some energy but – ” 

Adrian was upside down from your vantage point over Chris’s shoulder. He stopped dead in the doorway to the training gym, nearly dropping his gym bag in the process. 

“Oh.”

“Hey, Adrian,” Chris said. You tried to take advantage of him being distracted to wriggle loose from his hold, but he was onto you before you could even try to leverage your weight against him. 

“Ow!” you hissed, digging your elbow into Chris’s shoulder blade. He swatted at you like an annoying fly.

“Stop it!” he grumbled. 

“What’s uh…what’s – I didn’t mean to interrupt something. I’ll go!” Adrian squeaked. 

“Nah, man. I’ve got a meeting with Ads and Bordeaux, but you two both clearly need some enrichment time or something. Stay. Spar with her,” Chris said, a weird tone to his voice. Then he inhaled sharply and with one fluid movement he slammed you onto your back on the mat.

Air wheezed out of your lungs. “You know, I think you missed your calling in the WWE.”

“Those losers would be lucky to have me.” Chris stood over you, a foot on either side of your hips. He lowered his voice, his brow furrowed as he gazed down at you. “Play nice.”

He didn’t even help you up off the mat, slipping out the door of the training room without another word, leaving you and Adrian alone. 

For the first time since you’d left him standing in the bathroom. 

“I’ll go.”

“Adrian, you don’t have to – ”

Adrian whipped around, his back pressed to the door. “Okay, so, I guess I’ll stay.”

“Oh, I…didn’t think it was going to be that easy to convince you,” you said nervously. You wiped your perspiring palms on your sweatpants. When you looked back up, Adrian was grimacing. Uh oh. “Adrian, what is it?”

“The door won’t open.”

“Sorry?” That had you on your feet fast.  

Adrian tried the handle again. “Yeah, no I was pretty sure the first time but now I’m definitely sure. Just wanted to be thorough!”

He pounded his hand against the door. “Peacemaker! Dude! I think the door is stuck!”

That absolute bastard.

“I think it’s locked, Adrian.”

“What?” 

You took a deep breath. “I think Chris locked us in here on purpose.”

He paused, then, doubled over in laughter, his hands pressed between his thighs. “You’re so funny. Peacemaker would never imprison us against our will. False imprisonment is a crime.”

You sighed. “He’s not imprisoning us.” Though, you thought, that was kind of exactly what he was doing. “I think he thinks he’s Parent Trap-ing us.”

“We’re not twins.”

“No, Chris is the twins in this scenario.”

Adrian’s brow wrinkled. “We’re not divorced?”

You inhaled sharply. “Well, since we’re stuck in here, wanna spar? I barely broke a sweat with Chris.”

He seemed to be hesitating at the door, his hands behind his back still fiddling with the doorknob. Adrian frowned. “So, you and Chris are besties now?”

Oh, he was jealous. You fought down a grin. 

“I think he was looking for you and I was just the next closest body,” you said lightly. You rolled your neck slightly. “He seriously needs to work on his chokeholds, by the way. His form is all over the place.”

“Thank you! I’ve been telling him that but he just doesn’t want to hear it,” he exclaimed, tossing his hands up for extra emphasis. He took a tentative step towards you, fidgeting with his hands. That was promising, at least. A tension that had been wound in your shoulders was finally starting to release. “Don’t tell him I told you this, but I think his biceps might be too bulky.”

That drew an honest-to-goodness laugh from you that seemed to startle you both. There was a moment of tense silence until it faded into something familiar and easy between you two. Adrian’s resulting smile was radiant. Optimism wasn’t exactly something with any staying power in your life, but, for once, you could feel the possibility unfurling in your chest. 

“I told him the same thing and he told me he didn’t need my advice on gains,” you managed to get out between laughs. Moving closer still, his fingers played with the sleeve of his sweatshirt that he’d tugged down over his hand. “He’s not wrong, I don’t know the first thing about gains.”

“That’s so true!” he cackled. “You’re so useless with weights.”

“Not my fault it’s boring as fuck,” you retorted. “Besides, your body can still be a weapon without being jacked. I’ve always preferred sparring, you know that.”

Adrian nodded sagely. “I do. And you’ve been slacking.”

You genuinely guffawed. “Yeah, well, my preferred sparring partner has been avoiding me like the plague. If I wanted to be body slammed into the mat I would have asked Chris sooner, or if I wanted to be climbed like a tree I would have asked Rip. But that’s not what I want.”

“Yeah?” Adrian asked quietly. “What do you want?”

You swallowed hard. “I want to spar.”

Adrian turned and tugged his sweatshirt off and you reached up to tuck the tag of his t-shirt in before you could think twice about it. He shivered under the light graze of your fingers. 

“I thought you said you were going to cut all the tags out,” you remarked. The subject of Adrian’s disobedient shirt tags had long been a topic of conversation between you two. You’d tried to convince him to start buying shirts without tags, but he insisted his wardrobe was pretty set as is and it would be wasteful to buy more just to not have tags, even if he hated tags with a violent passion. 

“Well, I tried, but the seams of my collars kept unraveling and my mom got super pissed about it,” he huffed. You refrained from commenting on his mom doing his laundry. Adrian turned his back to you again to put his sweatshirt down and you seized the opportunity to jump on his back. 

He stumbled forward. “What the fuck!” His sweatshirt dropped to the floor, forgotten, as he tried to reach behind his back for you. You flipped his collar and leaned down, ripping the tag clean out with your teeth.

“Ow!” Adrian hissed.

“What are you saying ‘ow’ for?” you asked through gritted teeth. You spit the tag into your palm.

“Sorry, I thought you were going to bite me. It was a reflex.”

“I’m going to invest in a seam ripper for you,” you commented, looking at the clean rip. 

“Yeah?” Adrian breathed. “Do you, uh, do you think you’d want to come over and help me seam rip all the tags out some time?”

Adrian hadn’t even moved but it hit you like a punch to the gut. An olive branch. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

“Cool,” Adrian said softly. Then he grabbed you by the thigh and yanked you so you were hanging onto the front of him. You barely managed purchase on his shoulders before he rolled you both forward in a somersault, tucking your head down, using the momentum on the tail end to whip you off of him. You tumbled across the mat, air knocking out of you in a laugh. 

“You protecting targets’ heads like that in the field would be a little counterproductive,” you teased. He cracked a grin.

“Nah, that’s a special maneuver, just for you. Precious cargo.”

You scrambled onto your hands and knees and when you looked over at Adrian grinning at you that sparkling feeling was back in your chest. 

Before you could say anything, Adrian slid across the mat towards you and wrapped an arm around your neck, flipping you both onto your backs. He was breathing fast in your ear, his chest rising and falling against your spine. “Even the stupid tags that they put on the side of shirts?”

“Those too,” you agreed. Adrian’s hold tightened slightly but you gave it a long moment before you tapped his arm and he immediately released you. You rolled off of him and sat up. 

“Do you think maybe the person who invented those secretly got off on it?”

“On slightly scratching the sides of people forever?” you asked with a laugh. You leaned back on your hands as you considered it. “Oh, without a doubt. Just like the person who decided scissors should be packaged in plastic that needs scissors to open it.”

“Yes!” Adrian agreed, nodding emphatically, his eyes wide. Then he looked down at where his hands were fiddling with the leg of his sweatpants, rolling the fabric between his fingertips. “Hey, are we friends again?”

“We never stopped being friends,” you replied gently. You wanted to say more, but you weren’t sure what would come out if you opened your mouth again. There was something painfully sweet about the easy rapport between the two of you and you didn’t want to ruin it. Not when you’d just gotten it back.

He seemed to consider that. “Oh. Okay.”

“Um, and you don’t hate me?”

“Who?” Adrian asked, brow wrinkling. Then he scoffed, “Me?”

“Yes you!” You were breathless as you shifted up into kneeling. Wrangling down your own impulse to flee, you sat back on your heels. 

“Why would I hate you?” he asked, genuinely trying to understand.

“Just answer the question, Adrian!” You already knew the answer, you just needed to hear it. To fully shake yourself out of the delusion that everything between you was ruined forever.

“No! No, I don’t hate you and I’m confused why you would even think that! Don’t you hate me?”

“Of course I don’t hate you, Ade, I – I could never hate you.”

“But you said you wanted me out of your system,” he whispered. 

Suddenly, it became glaringly obvious why he’d been avoiding you. Because he thought that’s what you needed. What you wanted. Your heart hurt in a way you couldn’t verbalize to him. Not yet. 

“Oh, Ade,” you said gently. You thought about reaching out, putting your hand on his. You didn’t. One thing at a time. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

He stared at you, blinking slowly behind his glasses (You really ought to make him take them off so they didn’t get damaged but he was always so persnickety about being at a disadvantage.) Adrian was so, so still. The way he got when he was really trying to wrap his brain around something. Usually it involved significantly more questions. He could ask the exact follow up you were dreading, forcing you to fully bear your heart to him. To say it out loud and have the real possibility that he would say he didn’t feel the same way towards you. But he didn’t.

Instead, he started laughing so suddenly it made you jump. He slapped his hands against his thighs. Then he just kept laughing, laughing so hard he doubled over at the waist, nearly planting his forehead against his knees. His whole frame shook and when he sat back up his eyes were wet and he lifted the bottom of his t-shirt to dab at them, giggling the whole while.

“That is so funny!” he finally wheezed out. He gestured between the two of you but still couldn’t catch his breath enough to explain. “We both thought? You mean you thought that I – and – and I thought that you – ! That’s so silly of us.”

“It’s not silly,” you said defensively. 

Adrian tried to stop laughing but he couldn’t suppress his shit-eating grin. “It’s a little silly – hey!”

All his laughter shifted into a giggling wheeze as you tackled him back into the mat. His head bounced against the cushioning and popped his glasses askew. You paused your process of restraining him to resettle his glasses properly on his nose.

“I totally let you do that, for the record,” he grunted out. “But it’s uh…good, uh, good strategy, you know. Attacking when your opponent is distracted.”

“Oh, totally, of course you let me,” you drawled, rolling your eyes. 

He pouted. “Was that sarcasm?”

“No, I totally meant it,” you taunted him again. His whole face contracted in that way it did when he was annoyed, giving you pause. The next thing you knew you were on your back, staring up at the gym ceiling fluorescents. 

“You know it’s confusing to me when you’re sarcastic,” he complained, dropping his forehead to your shoulder. The two of you laid like that for a few moments silently. You were grateful to have your friend back. Even if his body weight pressing you into the floor made it difficult to ignore your stronger feelings for him. You could get over him. Eventually.

“Can’t believe you got me that fast,” you grumbled. Adrian’s head lifted off your shoulder but he dragged his cheek along your neck. 

“You let your guard down,” he replied matter-of-factly. Finally, his head lifted to look at you.

“I keep doing that when it comes to you,” you admitted quietly. A crooked grin played at your lips. “You’re very disarming, you know that?”

“Is it bad that I want to kiss you right now?” Adrian asked. 

“What?” You could have sworn your heart had stopped beating entirely.

“Uh…what?” Adrian echoed. “It’s probably bad, right?”

You swallowed hard. He wanted to kiss you. Your brain was too busy trying to suddenly sift through things to properly respond. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to – in fact you very much wanted…but you’d only just begun the gentle process of stitching the wound between you two. The whiplash was dizzying. So, you only managed another dumbstruck, “What?”

His eyes widened and he scoffed. “I mean, considering how it went the last time we kissed? You stopped talking to me!”

“You stopped talking to me!” you countered.

“I didn’t think you wanted me to talk to you!”

“I always want you to talk to me, I just…” you trailed off and squeezed your eyes closed. Maybe if you weren’t looking directly at him you could manage some semblance of a complete thought. “I haven’t been very nice to you, Adrian.”

“Well, I mean, I do kind of like it when you’re mad at me. It’s hot…when you’re all wound up...” he trailed off.

You shook your head slowly and forced yourself to peel those eyes open and look at him. “What I mean is, I haven’t been…kind. Is that a better way to say it?”

Adrian only looked at you with continued confusion. You rolled out from beneath him and sat up on the mat. Silently, Adrian followed suit, mimicking your posture and the lazy cross of your legs so that the side of his calf was pressed up against yours, warm even through your sweatpants.

“Fuck, I’m bad at this. Okay, um, good lord this is…I – those times when I was mad at you? The times when we hooked up, but also…before that? And for a long time now, I think…I was angry because I worry about you. In the field and…not in the field. I was angry at myself for even being worried. Because I didn’t understand it – I’ve never had a partner before, not like you. And sure, you always watch each other’s backs but with you and me we’re…”

“We’re like puzzle pieces,” he mused. Fuck you wanted to kiss him.

You nodded. “We’re like puzzle pieces. We just…fit. Even if that’s because I’m covering your ass when you’re being reckless – ”

“Hey!”

“But I’d do it for you. A hundred times over. You’re…important to me. And when we almost died, which was objectively mostly your fault – ” A half-hearted whimper of protest died on his lips “ – I tried so hard to be mad at you. But I couldn’t, because I kept thinking I was just grateful you were alive. And that terrified me, Ade. I had a huge blindspot and it was you. I didn’t feel you crawling into my heart until you’d already built a home there and I didn’t know what to do with that. So, I was cruel.”

“That’s okay,” he said quietly. You shook your head, hating whatever happened in his life to make him so desperate for affection that he would forgive so easily. 

“No, it’s not. You don’t deserve that. I’m sorry, Adrian.”

A long silence passed between you. Finally, Adrian pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “Thank you.”

Shifting your weight, you moved to stand, but Adrian’s warm hand wrapped around your wrist and tried to pull you back down to the mat. You were quicker than him, breaking his hold and pulling his arm behind his back, pressing him face down into the floor. He moaned, writhing underneath you, but made no attempt to get you off of him. You straddled his waist and sat down on his disrespectfully perfect ass. 

“Aren’t you going to at least try?” you asked. “You never let me win.”

“I’m exactly where I want to be right now,” he mumbled, breathy and pathetic. Consuming want coursed through you, and lust threatened to haze your rationality. You released your punishing hold on his arm and he whined. He didn’t waste any time, bracing that arm beneath him and tossing you off his back with ease. Of course, you certainly weren’t trying very hard at all either. No, you laid on your back patiently as he crawled over you, watching the languid pull of his muscles beneath the skin. He didn’t pin you down, he only held himself above you, a hand planted firmly into the mat by your shoulders. He leaned down until his hair was tickling your forehead and you could smell the coconut scent of his curl cream. Your heart hammered in your chest as his nose brushed yours.

“We can’t kiss here,” you whispered against his lips. In fact, you were all too aware of the cameras in the training room. And the entire wall of windows. You wrapped your legs around Adrian’s waist and he didn’t fight you as you flipped him onto his back. Pinning his hands above his head, you grinned down at him. His pupils were blown wide, consuming the lovely green, and his gaze was fixed on your mouth. He swallowed hard. 

“What about bathroom?” he asked, barely a sentence. “I need to kiss you somewhere soon or I’ll probably die.”

“You’re not going to die – ”

“You don’t know! I might!”

His hips shifted beneath you. 

“Don’t do that or I won’t kiss you at all,” you taunted and Adrian immediately stilled. “Good boy, Adrian.”

“You’re evil,” he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut. 

Guilt coursed through you suddenly, a cold plunge into dangerous and icy waters. “Are you saying you want to kiss me because you want to kiss me?”

“Why would I lie about wanting to kiss you?”

“Not lie, just…is it because you want it or because you think it’s what I want?”

“I don’t think I understand.”

His eyes darted back and forth between yours, like the understanding of what you were saying might lay somewhere in between. 

“Okay, maybe you need some tangible examples…” Adrian always did better with real world examples – he needed the debrief. “Like the phone sex thing – ”

“By the way I read up on that in Cosmo and I have some killer ideas now!’

“This is what I mean though! You think of things! You think of me!” you exclaimed, exasperated.

“Of course I do. I think about you all the time!”

“But do you think of you?

He squinted at you for a long moment before he finally managed an uncertain, “Yes?”

“What do you want, Adrian?”

“Just to be with you.”

It was immediate. A breath, a gently uttered simple statement. And, in true Adrian form, utterly devoid of complex undertones. It was the truth – bare and easy. You envied the ease with which he accessed his emotions and was able to present them as they were. Even if he was always insisting he didn’t have them.

“You have to promise me that doesn’t come at the expense of you.”

“I promise.”

“Okay.”

He smiled gently and then pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “Okay.”

It wasn’t everything, but it was most things, laid out between you. A mutual understanding – you were friends. Friends who wanted to kiss and to be with each other. You were unwilling to ask for more. Knowing you were wanted was enough. For now. Enough to quell the uncharacteristic uncertainty that had been consuming you for weeks. Adrian made you feel off balance in a way that you’d never experienced before. But you knew now, without a doubt, he’d be there to catch you if you fell.

“Wanna come patrolling with me tonight?”

You weren’t sure you’d heard him properly. He’d never invited you on patrol before. You’d always sort of imagined it shrouded in mystery. Like it was his own personal time, an almost-sacred communing with his personal deity, Vigilante. 

“You want me to come patrol with you?”

He looked at you like you were stupid. “Wow, and you always rag on me for not listening!”

“Why?”

He shrugged, slipping back into his sweatshirt. “I dunno. Thought we could burn off some more steam. I feel like a caged animal at my fucking desk all the time and I know you feel the same.” You bit back a comment about Adrian spending his time anywhere but his desk. “We’re not meant for this life, dude. We’re meant to be free range.”

“I’d be honored,” you said with a smile.

“Fuck yeah,” he whispered, pumping his fist as if he wasn’t standing directly in front of you. As if you couldn’t plainly see him. Or, more like, he didn’t fucking care. That was the Adrian that you loved. Then he straightened up and assumed his patented totally-cool-Adrian affect that was not cool at all. “Pick you up at 9? I’ll bring extra knives.”

Evergreen was so damn sleepy. Earlier in the evening, Adrian had posited that maybe some mad scientist had dumped a chemical in the water supply that made everyone stop committing crime? It was utterly deranged, and yet, in your line of work the possibility wasn’t zero.

“It’s kind of eerie how quiet it is,” you commented as Adrian kicked another rock down the street as you patrolled. He’d lost the first one in the gutter somewhere, which you were pretty sure he was still stewing about under his breath. 

“I’m sorry this is so lame,” he apologized. 

You shrugged. “Not lame at all.”

He huffed and you could almost picture the expression on his face beneath the mask. Definitely pouting. 

“We could always do something else, Vig,” you offered. “What else do you like to do when you’re not-on-the-Checkmate-payroll Vigilante? Don’t you and Chris shoot stuff in the woods or – ” 

“You should let me chase you.”

He said it so simply, like it was the most normal sentence in the world. Admittedly, it didn’t even rank in the top 100 strangest things he’d ever said to you. Still, you couldn’t help but betray your surprise.

“You want to…chase me?”

He nodded. “It could be fun! Like a custom one-on-one immersive Vigilante experience. There’s a lot of people out there who would probably pay big bucks for that!”

Laughing, you stopped and looked at him. “Lucky me, I get it for free.”

“Friends, family and partner discount,” he chirped. 

“Phew! Thank goodness I meet the partner criteria,” you laughed. 

“No,” he said with a scoff. He stopped and you stumbled to a halt beside him. “You’re all three of those things. That’s the You Discount.”

Bereft of any other words you just managed a choked, “Thank you?”

As quickly as the seriousness had settled between you, it crackled apart as Adrian kept strolling.

“It’ll be good for us. Burn off some energy, get our heart rates up.” You couldn’t help but notice the way his index and middle fingers twitched at the idea, like he was already itching to press them to your pulse and tell you exactly how your heart was reacting. “And once I catch you I can give you some pointers on how to avoid capture better.”

You barked out a laugh. “Bold of you to assume you’ll catch me at all.”

His head inclined slightly, leaning closer into your side. “I know I will.”

“Yeah?” you taunted. He laughed, low and wicked, about to say something overly confident. So you took advantage of the moment and broke off in a dead sprint.

“Hey!” he called after you. 

But you were already yards away, breaking right for the woods beside you. You knew there was a small forested area that opened on the other side to the sleepy stretch of downtown where everything shuttered at 9pm. Far from the morose bars of Evergreen, far from prying ears and eyes, exactly where you wanted Vigilante to catch you. 

If he could.

So maybe you didn’t try that hard. Still, you ran at top speed, branches whipping past you. Alert and alive, your kept you eyes wide and focused as you ran, avoiding roots and rocks and low-hanging foliage. When you burst forth on the other side, your boots pounded as the dirt gave way to pavement and a new surge of energy coursed through your bones. You glanced behind you but he was nowhere to be seen.

You knew better than to be cocky about it. Adrian’s cardio had always been better than yours. You weren’t outrunning Adrian in a foot race on a good day, and you certainly weren’t outwitting Vigilante in the streets he’d made his domain for years.

The first hope for cover were the buildings on the other side of a wide, empty parking lot. Which also left you wide open, absolutely nowhere to hide. Even if you couldn’t see him, you could feel him. For a moment you thought you heard boots on the pavement that weren’t your own but when you risked another look, still nothing. 

When you hit the building, you ran your fingers along the brick face as you ran, a burn in your fingertips to match the burn in your lungs. An alleyway opened up between the Jitters and some video rental store that had been shuttered for years. You seized your opportunity and ducked between them, hoping to add to your visual cover at the very least.

But that was when you finally saw him, running along the roof of the video store.

“Jesus Christ,” you muttered, trying to pivot and turn back, your heart launching into your throat. Your brain knew it was a game but your body was unconvinced. The dark shape of him cut an imposing figure that somehow was not entirely swallowed by the night sky. He was still in your peripheral one second, but the next gone again. 

“Fucking hell,” you whispered to yourself, feeling your stamina start to flag. You should have paced yourself but the prospect had just been too thrilling. You made it past the storefront of Jitters without incident, but he was already waiting for you at the mouth of the next alley. Had he jumped down from the fucking roof? You yelped, trying to feint past him, but he grabbed you with an almost bored ease and dragged you into the alley. 

“Okay, okay, I give up!” you laughed, but Vigilante still shoved you into the wall. He didn’t say anything, and you couldn’t decide if that was better or worse. Either way, it was certainly menacing.

“So? What’s the hot tip? How does one escape Vigilante?” you asked, breathless, chest heaving, palms pressed into the brick. You squirmed against him slightly and he relented the pressure of his body for just a moment, so he could turn you around.

“You don’t,” he growled. 

It struck you as funny. He was right. There was no outrunning him. Not as Vigilante. Not as Adrian. And you’d been foolish to try. There was no outrunning your feelings, try as you might, as new and tumultuous and terrifying as they were. 

Of course, you knew that was not at all what Vigilante meant. 

“Gee, thanks for the lesson,” you said with a stupid smile. Perhaps he’d taught you something anyway.

“Say: ‘thank you, Vigilante’,” he murmured, voice low and gravelly in your ear. You scraped out a gruff laugh. The impassiveness of the mask did lend the whole thing a certain…je ne sais quoi. A flame of fear and desire licked at the bottom of your stomach. He crowded you, backing you into the wall, his gloved hands on your hips. 

“Thank you, Vigilante,” you said, mocking his tone. His head crooked to the side, and you could feel yourself being studied even if you couldn’t make out his expression. Your tongue darted out to wet your lips before you realized you were doing it.

He laughed, sounding distinctly more Adrian-like. “You like this?”

As if to prove some kind of depraved point when you didn’t answer he pressed his knee between your legs, pinning you against the rough brick behind you. At first, he seemed to hesitate, his hands sliding to your hips like they were moving in slow motion. Slowly but surely, his hands on your hips guided you into a kind of rhythm on his thigh. A kind of rhythm because your pants kept catching on the stupid (…what even was it?) tactical garter he always wore clasped around his thigh. You couldn’t even begin to comprehend a useful function for it but it had been there as long as you’d known him, and it was as much as part of his uniform as his weapons. 

“You like me so bad,” he murmured, fingers flexing into your skin again. Hard. Sure to leave a mark. Maybe that’d be the only thing that reminded you it wasn’t some fever dream after all.

“Yes, Adrian, I like you,” you sniffed, giving him that much. He stopped moving you and you bit back a decidedly desperate whine.

“Vigilante.” You rolled your eyes and his gloved hand came up to grasp your jaw. “You like Vigilante.”

“I said what I said,” you retorted. His gloved fingers flexed against your skin.

“Wrong answer.” It might have been menacing if it wasn’t for the desperate whine in Adrian’s tone. 

“I like Vigilante,” you caved, if only so he’d let you come on his thigh. He hummed in pleasure. “And I like the dork inside the suit, too.”

“Hey!”

“Mr. Vigilante acts very tough for a man I’ve seen get hard over just having my fingers in his mouth,” you taunted.

“I shouldn’t even let you come,” he argued back. 

“And I shouldn’t let you let me,” you countered, knowing how dumb it sounded the moment it left your mouth. Your thighs tensed around his. “Because there’s this guy named Adrian I really like. It wouldn’t be right.”

He was quiet for a long time. “Maybe…maybe you can pretend I’m Adrian.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded emphatically. “Yeah, I bet…I bet this Adrian guy really wants to be inside you right now. I bet he wants to bury himself inside you. Like his dick but also kind of like metaphorically. Like he wishes he could be as close to you as possible. Actually, I’m kind of jealous of Adrian because he probably gets to put his mouth on you.”

You laughed. “If he’s lucky.”

“But I have to keep my mask on because, you know, secret identity and everything!”

“Of course,” you agreed, feigning seriousness. You wrapped your arms around his neck and dragged him closer. “How about you let me come on your big, strong thigh, Vigilante, and then I’ll kiss you through the mask?”

He tapped his index finger against his chin. “Hmm. I don’t know if that seems like a fair trade.”

“Well, then, Vigilante gets nothing at all,” you taunted, bracing your hands against his chest to push him away. 

“But then you don’t get to come?” He sounded genuinely perplexed. 

“I have two hands and a bed that’s calling my name,” you said with a shrug, biting back a smile as you acted like you were going to leave him standing alone in the alley. His arms wrapped around your waist and dragged you back to the spot he’d had you pinned before. 

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” he murmured, mask brushing the side of your face as he leaned into your ear. “Now, ride my thigh like a good girl.”

A shudder rolled down your spine. You ought to give him a piece of your mind, but it was surprisingly pleasant to have someone else tell you what to do. Adrian was soft, adoring, obedient, eager to please. Vigilante was…well, frankly, a fucking brat.

You huffed as he forced your hips down again, frustrated by the thigh guard blocking you from feeling the firm warmth of his thigh between your legs. And, in fact, the stupid…oh. Maybe it did have some use after all. Certainly not the intended one, but once you were sort of able to position yourself correctly it pressed against you just right as you let Adrian rock your hips. Your hands fluttered up to his neck, forgetting you couldn’t knot your fingers into the hair there. The mask had some disadvantages – anyone who’d fucked Vigilante had not gotten the distinct pleasure of running their fingers through Adrian’s curls. Their loss. 

And, if you had anything to say about it, they’d never get the chance again.

His grip tightened exactly at the moment you realized you were about to come strictly from riding Adrian’s thigh. The hard metal and plastic of the garter pressed deliciously in between your legs and your head jolted back, knocking into the brick. You hissed, but one of his hands swept up and into your hair to prevent it from happening again. His fingers rubbed gently over the tender spot as you ground down one final time and pleasure coursed through your whole body, rough and quick and not quite enough. 

Vigilante was panting too, and his forehead dropped to press against yours, forcing you to meet his gaze through thick red plastic. You rolled up onto your toes and pressed a kiss where you were pretty sure his mouth was.

“Thank you, Vigilante.”

The ride to your place was pleasantly still and quiet, a kind of thrum in the air between you. Like at any moment you might reach over and stroke the strong line of his jaw, or he might put his hand on your thigh. But you were both a little too stubborn to be the one to cave.

When Adrian parked the Sebring in front of your building, he finally punctured the silence.

“Maybe we’re doing this all wrong.”

“Probably,” you agreed with a half-hearted laugh. 

“So, I was thinking we could go to dinner before team drinks tomorrow.”

“Oh, sure, where’s everyone going?” you asked, not sure how the two things were related. Things often made sense in Adrian’s brain and literally nowhere else. It was part of his strange charm.

Adrian paused. Blinked slowly. “No. Just us.”

“Just us?”

“Yes?”

“Like…”

“Like a date? Yes.” He tilted his head like it might help him parse the confusion festering between you both. “Because…we’re dating? Aren’t we?” His brow wrinkled. “Because you said you love me? And now we’re done running away from each other. Metaphorically, obviously. Because you literally just ran away from me but that was different.”

You laughed nervously. “When did I – I don’t – what are you – ”

“Oh, yeah, I mean I think you thought I was already dead but I fully heard you.” He paused, his head tilting, eyes flitting as he verbally processed his way through. “I mean I actually kind of thought we were dating like riiiiiight after it happened and then I realized whoops! Not the vibe! So when I was trying to stay away from you because I thought that was what you wanted it was kind of like we broke up. But then, you know, I feel like we’re kind of back together again? Whew! What a whirlwind romance we’re having! Just like the movies!”

Silence passed between you for a beat before you inhaled sharply.

“You know, if I did say I love you – ”

Adrian laughed. “Dude, you definitely did say it.”

You glared at him. “If I did say I love you, you didn’t say it back.”

He blinked slowly. “What?”

You fidgeted in your seat, yanking on your seatbelt like it was the last lifeline saving you from drowning. “You didn’t…you’ve never…and anyway I thought we were dying, it was like a…a panic response or something.”

“So…are you trying to say you don’t love me?”

“No!” you gasped, feeling like the air was being wrenched from your lungs.

“Oh,” he said, nodding. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. But for the record? I said I love you first. So actually you were just catching up.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Oh, I thought I was being obvious? Chris is always telling me I’m deeply and profoundly unsubtle. I say I love you all the time!”

When you stared blankly back at him he laughed nervously, his fingers picking at the steering wheel. 

“The first time was that mission when Harcourt made us stay in that awful motel room together? And you let me put on whatever stupid movie I wanted and you raided the vending machine and we stayed up half the night shooting the shit and Harcourt was so mad the next day when we were sleep deprived, but I was kind of only pretending to be sleep deprived so you wouldn’t feel bad. I was like…wired. I felt this weird sort of electric feeling in my bones that I’d never felt before. Kind of like being tasered, but pleasant? Anyway, that night when you fell asleep next to me on the rooftop while we were staking things out I told you.”

“Adrian…” You trailed off, uncertain what else to say. “That mission was, what, like, a year ago?”

“Eleven months and sixteen days, but who’s counting?” he said cheerily with a shrug. Casual. Like he hadn’t just confessed to loving you. For almost a year. 

“Why didn’t you say something?” you wondered, a desperate ache unfurling in your gut.

“I did! I do!” he insisted as your eyes only grew wider. Had you smacked your head and forgotten somehow? Then, Adrian grimaced. “Okay, well, I guess I maybe haven’t said it directly with words. But every time I bring you a cup of coffee, or you give me a piece of candy from your desk drawer, or when we high five after a really good mission. Oh! And every time we’ve touched each other or kissed or made each other come. I was thinking it a lot when you let me eat you out.”

Unable to stop yourself, you reached up and touched his face and he shuddered. You ran your thumb over his lower lip before you drifted them down to his pulse point. 

“Your heart is beating really fast, Adrian.”

“You do that to me,” he said simply. You nodded.

“Me too.” You pulled your hand back but Adrian caught you by the wrist and let his fingers settle over your radial pulse. You let him count while you studied his handsome face, marked the way his eyes always drifted back up to yours, glittering like you’d captured the stars and put them in his expression for safekeeping. You would. For him.

“I lost count,” he admitted. 

“Can I kiss you?” you asked, realizing you’d never asked before. 

He shook his head slowly. “Tomorrow. On our second date. I want to do things right.”

“Second?”

“Uh, yeah. This was our first?” he laughed in disbelief at your dumbstruck expression. He crossed his arms defensively over his chest. “Patrol is a totally legit first date!”

“Adrian,” you groaned, covering your mouth as you laughed. 

“I made you come! It counts!”

“Vigilante made me come,” you corrected. Adrian’s lips seemed like they were trying to frown but he was conflicted. 

“Yeah, but I made you come first weeks ago so it doesn’t matter,” he huffed, seemingly in a competition with…himself? 

“I should go inside,” you said, gesturing vaguely over your shoulder towards your building. When had you turned completely sideways in your seat? The seatbelt was cutting a red mark into your neck with every passing moment but you didn’t much mind because each was a moment longer with Adrian. “And I’m not going to invite you in. If we want to do this right, let’s do this right.”

“Yeah?” Adrian asked, sighing dreamily, batting his eyelashes at you. The last dregs of your self restraint were quickly fleeing your body. You had to get out of the car or you were about to fuck him right there in the front seat.

“Yeah. Dinner, drinks with our friends, and then you and I are going to finally fuck.”

“Sick,” Adrian nodded emphatically. He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as you unbuckled yourself and opened the door. 

“‘Night, Adrian,” you said slowly, still giving him a chance. But he was seemingly committed to his no kiss rule. He lifted one hand to give you a polite wave before slamming it back down and gripping the steering wheel for dear life and staring straight ahead. 

You had only reached the stairs when you heard Adrian sprinting up behind you, so you leisurely leaned against the railing, waiting for him. 

“I realized I should probably walk you to your door. You know, to be respectful,” he wheezed out. For a man who did a lot of cardio he was somehow cartoonishly breathless often. “Because that’s what respectful guys do after first dates. Make sure you’re home safe. Which is not to say you can’t fend for yourself, I’ve seen you tear a man’s windpipe out before and choke a man with your thighs, but you know. To do things right.”

“Right.”

Twirling your keys around your finger, you blinked up at Adrian. You’d made it to your door by the time he’d finished talking. 

“Oh! We’re here! Well! Good night!” Adrian saluted. Standing a foot away he bent over slightly, his lips pursed until they connected with your forehead. 

“Maybe you should just kiss me?” you suggested coyly. “I think that’s totally appropriate first date behavior.”

Especially after I rode your thigh in an alleyway while you were in full Vigilante outfit, you didn’t add.

“I mean, if you insist – ” Not even allowing himself to finish he stepped forward and swept you into his arms, kissing you earnestly. He pressed you up against the door and your keys slipped from your fingers so you could knot both your hands in his hair. There was no coming up for air – it was a kiss to end all kisses. Utterly all-consuming. Hot, wet, Adrian’s glasses pressing into your skin as he tried to be somehow even closer, but you didn’t mind. He was trying to speak into your mouth again, but you couldn’t make heads or tails of it. You had half a mind to stop and ask him but the sound of someone clearing their throat was what did it in the end.

Staring at you was your neighbor from across the hall, Mrs. Flores. 

“I’m her dentist!” he said at the same time as you said, “This is my boyfriend, Adrian.”

The two of you exchanged a look. You two seriously needed to work on getting on the same wavelength. Wait a minute, did he say dentist? Mrs. Flores looked Adrian up and down. “Getting a bit late, isn’t it?”

“Yes!” Adrian audibly gulped. “I was just seeing her to her door. Like a totally normal date. And I am going to go right now! Bye! Good night!”

Adrian took off in a flash, leaving you to sheepishly smile at your elderly neighbor and her decrepit looking dog. You expected some kind of reprimand about public impropriety but instead she just smiled warmly at you. 

“You’re dating your dentist?” she asked. You exhaled a soft laugh, shaking your head. 

“I have no idea why he said that,” you admitted. “Not my dentist.”

Mrs. Flores chuckled. “Shame, I could use a handsome dentist.”

adrian taglist: @countvonklit @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 @zombiebytes @1eliana123-blog @castawaybarnes @jaydennicole @cherryspacedust

bpm taglist: @big-old-boat @bastardstevie

if you'd like to join my taglist for any future adrian stuff, let me know! please note, I am not adding anyone under 18 to the taglist, so if your age isn't listed on your blog or you don't tell me when you ask, I can't add you! sorry! love you all! <3

looking for part five, myocardium? look no further than right here! :)

[mrs-elsie-barnes]

Eeee they're both weirdos and I love them 🥰🥰 the difference between Vig and Adrian gives me whiplash in all the best ways 🤭🤤

[residentsuperhero]

it is my firmly held belief that Adrian is like well...Vigilante is different from me (and better). and not even in an angsty "this is how i separate myself from what I must do to fight crime way" in a like straight up "Vigilante is my alter ego and he's sick as fuck!" way.

[residentsuperhero]

bpm, part three: tachycardia

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

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! :)

[mrs-elsie-barnes]

Bloody mad woman omg 😭😭😭😭 it was literally right there on the tip of their tongues!!!

[residentsuperhero]

i'm so sorry for being evil!!!!

[residentsuperhero]

smoke got through and so did you

for our beloved @glamourghoul-writesfics who requested the following:

pairing: adrian chase x GN!reader word count: 3.4k (I think I'm physically incapable of drabble) tags: smoking (don't smoke kids!), lying, Fennel Fields coworkers, Dave sucks, Adrian is a bit of a brat, Vigilante is kind of an asshole, reader matches both their freaks, established relationship, guns, brief (humorous) reference to suicide, humor, a sprinkling of angst note: y'all really put me through the ringer with these mini requests - learned a lot about smoking and D&D this week lmfao. title is from the song "edward 40hands" by mom jeans. very Adrian-coded song and weirdly perfect for this fic. had my fanfic oh. oh. moment when I was shopping around for the right fic title. as for the harcourt yuri, well, I leave that up to the capable hands of glamourghoul. x

“Yo, Dave, I’m taking my smoke break!” you called as you breezed past his office, fishing your phone out of your apron. The shift had been a bitch so far and your boyfriend was off for the night which meant you didn’t even have his adorable, dimpled smile to make it slightly more bearable.

You pushed the backdoor open only to find Blake and Dave standing in the alley, hands frozen mid-cigarette pass. You glanced over your shoulder and then back, like there was a slight chance there were suddenly two Daves. Oh, Adrian would hate that.

“Wait, I thought I just saw you in your office?”

“Did you actually look or did you just assume I was there?” Dave countered, finally moving, taking a long inhale off Blake’s cigarette. You pursed your lips and considered the question. “What are you even doing out here, I thought Adrian made you quit.”

“He didn’t make me do anything,” you retorted, maybe a little too defensively. “I, you know…started thinking about D.A.R.E. and poof! Needed to quit. That’s all. Totally coincidental timing.”

“Wasn’t D.A.R.E. about not doing drugs?” Dave asked, his brow raised. He was right but you refused to indulge him.

“Now remind me, was that before or after the absolute tirade Adrian went on about smoking in the middle of the kitchen?” Blake asked with a knowing smile. You rolled your eyes at her.

“I mean, he had some points,” you argued weakly, eyes drifting, tracking the cigarette passing back to Blake. She inhaled slowly, smiling at you in that fond, crinkled eye way. The same way you used to smile at Adrian when you thought he was being dumb but you liked him anyway.

“You know, I think your little boyfriend is starting to rub off on you,” Dave commented wryly, glancing sidelong at Blake. Thank god Adrian wasn’t there to make a stupid retort about exactly how he rubbed off on you. Anyway, you weren’t stupid – you knew everyone at work talked about you and Adrian behind your backs. They all thought he was an absolute weirdo loser and couldn’t understand why you were with him. You’d never felt the need to justify it to them. Let Adrian live rent-free in their brains for all you cared, you got to go home and have the real thing.

That, of course, didn’t mean jack shit when it came to your hankering for a cigarette.

“You’re only entitled to a smoke break if you’re actually going to smoke,” Dave said, straightening his posture into what you and Adrian had coined his ‘corporate mode’. Dave could be a real dick when he wanted – he was totally chill when it meant flirting with staff and buying weed off the line cook, but the second things weren’t going his way the rules suddenly mattered. 

“Okay, so, I’m going to smoke,” you said flatly back at him, crossing your arms over your chest. 

“So do it.”

You arched an eyebrow and looked at Blake. “Is our boss trying to force me to smoke in front of him? I feel like that must be a violation of the handbook?”

Blake snorted. “Mmm yeah, I think it’s in there somewhere.”

Dave scoffed and looked back and forth in disbelief. “Whatever. I’m not dealing with whatever scheming you two are up to. Be back in 10.”

Once Dave had huffed off back into Fennel Fields, Blake smiled and fished a pack out of her apron and tossed it to you.

“Pall Malls? What are you, 70?” you teased. You slid your thumb under the lip of the green cardboard and hesitated. The faint smell of menthol was like a siren song. 

“You know Linda?” Blake asked, exhaling.

“‘My husband was taken over by an alien Linda’ or ‘Let me show you pictures of my illegal Pomeranian breeding business Linda’?” you asked. Blake snorted.

“Pomeranians. She always tips in cash but like two weeks ago she forgot to go to the bank so she asked if she could tip me in a brand new pack of Pall Malls and I said fuck it, you know?” Blake replied with a shrug. “She still came in next time and tipped me twice.”

“Hell yeah, Linda,” you laughed, putting the last cigarette between your lips, but still fiddling with the empty box in your hands. 

“Hell yeah, Linda,” Blake agreed, a sort of cheers to the universe between the two of you. She held up her lighter, with a quirk of her brow and you sighed, the paper wetting between your lips. 

“I promise not to tell Adrian,” she laughed. Just one would be okay! Besides, you’d been so good. Adrian didn’t need to know. If he was working tonight you wouldn’t even have entertained the idea. By the time you got home to him he would be none the wiser. And then you’d quit again tomorrow.

“Thanks,” you murmured after Blake flicked her lighter closed. 

“How is Adrian, by the way? For what it’s worth, I think you two are kinda cute together. Doesn’t hurt that you’ve mellowed him way the fuck out.”

“I think you might be the only person here who thinks that,” you replied, exhaling slowly, enjoying the way the menthol hit the back of your soft palate and left you feeling only feeling slightly guilty. Perhaps even a small amount of the shift’s stress eased out of your shoulder blades. “But he’s good.”

“Yeah?” she asked, seeming genuinely curious. “He’s got that puppy-dog thing about him when it comes to you. It’s sweet. I think he’d do anything for you.”

“That’s probably true,” you agreed, a fondness stirring in your chest. Your fingers itched to text him back. Blake made sure her cigarette was fully out under the heel of her non-slip shoes and then made for the door.

“See you back out there,” she called and you gave her a little waggle of your fingers. You ashed your cigarette gently, watching it burn down further without returning it to your lips.

She paused in the doorway, silhouetted by aggressively fluorescent lighting. “Any chance that beefy friend of his is coming by anytime soon?”

“I still cannot believe you were actually into the whole sweet cheeks thing!” You let yourself really laugh. “In your dreams, babe!”

And then Blake was gone with a wistful sigh and it was just you and your half-smoked Pall Mall and the vaguely misty Evergreen weather. Shoving the empty packaging into your apron, you fumbled around for your phone. He’d texted you ten times since you’d last checked in, all of them versions of I miss you and one inexplicable video of a red panda with its baby clinging to its back followed by the text: this is so us.

Something in the air shifted just slightly and you were suddenly certain you weren’t quite as alone as you thought you’d been.

“Smoking kills,” came a voice from somewhere behind you. You didn’t have to turn to know it belonged to a particular suited-up freak. You’d really been hoping not to run into him again, but fate had a different plan, apparently.

“Yeah, and so do you,” you quipped back. The sound of his boots hitting the pavement were still surprisingly light for a man jumping from the roof. 

“I saved your life once, the least you can do is try to stay alive.” His voice was pitched low in his chest, a concerted effort to disguise its true sound. Still, there was something about him.

“I don’t know if I’d say scaring off a rabid raccoon one time counts as ‘saving my life’,” you argued, complete with air quotes. Before you could tuck the dwindling cigarette back between your lips Vigilante was towering over you and plucking it from your fingers. It turned to ash beneath the toe of his boot, ground into the damp concrete. 

“Smoking within 25 feet of a building egress is prohibited in Washington State, you know,” he said haughtily. “I could kill you right now.”

“Pretty sure it’s a civil infraction, smartass,” you replied. You took a step forward, chest brushing against his. “So glad you have your priorities in order, dude.”

For a moment the two of you just stood, nearly pressed together, breathing heavily, willing the other to do something first. Finally, the crackling tension between you was broken by his hand reaching into the tight space between your bodies and into your apron.

“Hey!”

The punch you threw at his stomach landed without much fanfare. His masked face just inclined downwards slowly. “You really need to work on that.”

You scoffed. “You sound like my boyfriend.”

Vigilante’s posture turned ramrod straight. “I don’t sound anything like your boyfriend.”

“How would you know?” you asked with a spiteful laugh. 

“I don’t. How would you?” 

An alarm flared at the back of your brain, insisting something impossible. You shook it loose.

“That doesn’t even make sense. You’re so weird.”

The corpse of a Pall Mall pack was crushed in the strong grip of his gloved hand.

“Do you want my gun?” he asked suddenly, reaching towards his holster. Panicking, you slapped both your hands over his at his waist.

“Whoah, whoah! What? No!”

He shrugged and relented. “I just figured if you’re trying to kill yourself, you should at least be efficient.”

“Jesus Christ, dude,” you hissed, stepping back from him. “Why are you so wound up about this?”

“I don’t like being lied to,” he mumbled, his boot kicking idly at the butt on the ground. Your brow knit together at the comment, at the familiar lilt to his voice. There was only one person you’d told you were quitting who wasn’t currently inside Fennel Fields. 

“Who are you?” you asked, arms crossed over your chest. 

The back door slammed open and made you nearly lurch straight out of your skin. You whipped around.

“We need you back inside.” Dave’s head poked out the door. “Who were you talking to?”

Only an empty alleyway greeted you when you looked back expectantly behind you.

“Ade?” you called out as you hung your bag up on its respective hook by the front door. You knew he was home, his car was outside. And yet, he wasn’t all over you the second you’d crossed the threshold like he normally was. Never thought you’d miss being tackled into the front door but here you were, Adrian-less and strangely unhappy and…unnerved.

The distinct sound of Princess Peach: Showtime! could be heard from the living room.

“That better be my boyfriend in there and not some robber playing his Switch because if you are I will have to stab you on his behalf,” you called out.

“I’m in here,” he huffed. “Don’t stab me.” There was a long pause. “Well, don’t stab me right now. If you were going to stab me I’d want to enjoy it and I can’t enjoy it if I’m mad at you.”

Coming to a halt in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, you found Adrian slumped on the couch, glasses slipped down his nose, neck bent as he fiddled with his Switch. You could very clearly see he’d paused the game, yet his fingers fiddled with the buttons like he thought he could fool you. Like he was trying to keep his eyes anywhere but you.

“So, you’re mad at me?”

He scoffed. “Why would I be mad?”

“Well, I don’t know, Adrian, that’s why I’m asking. But you literally just said you’re mad at me. Like…out loud.”

His head lifted at that. “Oh. Right.”

“So, you wanna tell me what’s up? Because I was really looking forward to coming home and spending some quality time with my cute boyfriend, but it seems he has other plans.”

“Are you smoking again?” Adrian finally bit out.

“Um. Define ‘smoking again’?” you asked sheepishly. Goddamn you weren’t a good liar. 

“I can smell it all over you,” he said, pausing to sniff the air for dramatic effect. You rolled your eyes. 

“You can smell me from across the room?” you deadpanned.

“Yes!” he whined. “You smell like minty death.”

“Adrian…”

“It’s true! And it’s reminding me of your fragile mortality and it’s freaking me out!”

You leaned against the wall and rubbed at your tired eyes. Eyes still slightly bleary they caught on something crumpled on the coffee table in front of Adrian. A crushed pack of menthols. The exact same as the one Vigilante had pried from your hands in the back alley of Fennel Fields maybe two hours earlier. Swallowing properly was a task that you barely managed.

“I missed you tonight at work,” you began. You normally knew how to play Adrian just right. If it was any other evening you’d crawl right into his lap and kiss him silly and you’d let him tell you all about his day while he casually slipped inside you. Of course, this was another matter entirely. 

“Yeah?” he asked, perking up ever-so-slightly. 

“Yeah.”

“Anything, uh, interesting happen tonight, or…?” The slightly higher pitch of his voice was a dead giveaway, if the crumpled Pall Mall pack and that eerily familiar cadence of his in the alley hadn’t already been. Your boyfriend was fucking Vigilante. And he had the gall to be mad at you for smoking one cigarette during a stressful shift at work!

He looked at you and you smiled. “Nah. Just a busy shift. Stressful. Dave was being an asshole.”

“Fucking Dave,” Adrian muttered like a reflex. Then he cleared his throat. “Nothing else notable?”

“Nope.”

“And no cigarettes?”

You cocked your head at him, relishing the redness of his ears. Somehow you were fairly certain you had the upper hand in this bizarre situation. You didn’t answer his question. “Did you start?”

“What?”

“Smoking?” you asked, blinking slowly at him, batting your eyelashes innocently. You uncrossed your arms to gesture at the evidence on the table. 

“Oh uh, I, uh — those are…and I found that in your work apron!” he stumbled his way through.

“Huh. That’s so strange because I have my work apron with me?”

“Um…”

Watching his brain go into overdrive trying to come up with a reasonable lie was kind of adorable, actually. Though he seemed at risk of completely overheating and frying the circuitry entirely. 

“Oh gosh, I actually totally forgot there was something else that happened at work! Vigilante showed up.”

Adrian’s swallow was audible across the living room. You crossed to him slowly until you were between his knees, sitting on the coffee table across from him. You reached for the Pall Mall pack.

“And it’s so weird, Ade, because he reached into my work apron and took this exact pack from me before he disappeared!”

His eyes were so wide, whites fully exposed as he seemed to be trying to disappear into the couch. 

You frowned. “Aren’t you mad Vigilante put his hands on me?”

“Uh…are you mad about it?” he squeaked out. You were surprised at how much fun this was turning out to be. You turned the crushed cardboard over in your hands. You should have been mad about Vigilante touching you but now you were certain Vigilante was your boyfriend and you weren’t sure how to feel about it at all. Was Vigilante kinda…? Hmm. Much to consider.

“Look, the truth is I did smoke, Adrian. Blake offered me the last cigarette in this pack and I took it and I smoked it. Well, some of it. But I do promise that was the only time since I quit months ago.” You let that settle between you. Adrian pouted, but he didn’t argue and he didn’t launch into his anti-smoking rant. That meant there was really only one more thing to take care of. “You told me already tonight you don’t like being lied to, so it’s only fair I tell you the truth.”

“And I stand by that!”

You smacked your forehead with your palm. “No, wait! It was Vigilante who said that to me tonight!”

A strangled sound came out of Adrian’s throat.

“Well! He! Has! Some…good ideas! That I agree with!” He tossed his hands up. “Apparently!”

“Or she. Or they. We don’t even know who Vigilante is, right?”

“Yes. Totally. So progressive of you, babe! Vigilante could totally be a badass chick or a cool as fuck nonbinary person also!”

“Except he’s not. Because he’s you,” you said firmly. Adrian looked like he was considering the possibility of being able to unzip his human skin. “When are you going to stop pretending, Ade?”

He withered slightly. “Any minute now.”

“Okay,” you said, softening finally. You just needed to hear him say it. Sure, your world as you knew it was probably fracturing, but, with Adrian, you were pretty sure you could get through it. With him. For him. You were mad at him for keeping something like that from you, but you were just as mad at yourself for not figuring it out sooner. It felt shockingly obvious.

“Okay,” he said finally, taking a deep breath. He raked his hand up under his glasses and rubbed at his eyes furiously before he gave himself a little slap on the cheek. Then he leaned forward, knees knocking yours. “I wanted to tell you! So many times! But I kept trying to do the math of when it would make sense – you know, when did I know I could trust you, and when would be right for it to not be weird, and I was like, okay, well obviously first date is too early and six months is even weirder than that and it just sort of…got away from me? And then, I thought well, I’ve made it this far. And that maybe it was just better for you not to know. Safer. I only want to keep you safe. From big things – like crime, and supervillains finding out about you and using you to take me down. But also, small things like lung cancer. Or maybe lung cancer would be the big thing. I can’t fight lung cancer with my bare hands. The other stuff I could probably handle.”

You looked down at your own hands. His were mere millimeters from yours, wanting to touch you, but afraid. He’d hurt people with those hands. He’d killed people. And he’d held you gently with them.

“So, do you do a lot of jumping off of roofs?” you asked suddenly, thinking back to the alley. When you looked up at him again Adrian looked like every synapse in his brain was firing at once.

“...Yes?”

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“I’m not going to ask you to stop being Vigilante,” you finally managed. “But I am going to ask you to not keep anything else from me.”

“Okay.” Adrian nodded and his curls drifted so you reached up and raked your nails through them, pushing his hair back. “I’m not mad at you, you know.”

You nodded slowly. “I’m a little mad at you.”

“That’s fair.”

“I have a million questions.”

“I’ll answer them,” he said firmly. Then he grimaced. “Well, okay, technically there are some classified things – ”

“Adrian,” you interjected, causing his nodding to intensify.

“No, no, you’re right, you’re right. I’ll tell you those things too.”

“I’m a little scared.”

“Of me?”

“For you,” you admitted. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“Now you know how it feels,” Adrian said, somewhere between taunting and utterly earnest. You leaned forward and kissed him gently. Adrian murmured against your mouth, “You taste like cigarettes.”

You pulled back and punched him in the shoulder, hard. He rubbed at it idly and you got the impression it hadn’t hurt him at all. God, how strong was he?

“If you’re going to keep running around as Vigilante, you really ought to work on your disguise, you know,” you said matter-of-factly. Adrian’s eyebrows raised and for a moment all he did was blink back at you.

“What?”

“Yeah, Vigilante sounds exactly like my boyfriend.”

adrian taglist: @countvonklit @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 @zombiebytes @1eliana123-blog @castawaybarnes @jaydennicole @cherryspacedust

[vigilantexreader]

I love thissss god you write him so funny every time

[residentsuperhero]

eeeek thank you 😂 I can't help it, that man makes me straight up cheese. i love being inside his goofy ass head.

in this one i'm particularly fond of (no spoilers, zero context): "Any minute now."