synopsis: When his rut ends, Adrian has to face his new reality. As Chris starts preparing him to return to his life, and to see you again, it's a lot harder than he thought it would be.
tags/warnings: 18+ MDNI, omegaverse dynamics, alpha!Adrian, omega!reader, talk about ruts/heats, hurt/comfort (Adrian is a sad boy who has trouble with change), mutual pining
word count: 6.4k
notes: I got a lot of questions after the last chapter about when the next part was coming - I will be updating this every Tuesday!! As always thank you to @embeanwrites and @snowyathena for listening to me ramble about this story and being there to bounce ideas off of <3 also I might have taken some liberties with the s1 canon timeline for backstory purposes just walk with me here
Masterlist | part one | part two | part three
Three days later—the first day that Adrian wakes up feeling refreshed instead of writhing in a pool of his own sweat—he nearly cries tears of relief.
He’s been confined to the trailer for a full week now, cycling between phases of fever, insomnia, irritability, and oversensitivity. And beneath it all, the constant, overwhelming, unbearable arousal.
Seven days of torture. Seven days of chugging Gatorade, seven days of sweating through the bedsheets, seven days of wanting you.
The wanting you hasn’t stopped, but he’s not sure it ever will. That’s not a symptom of his rut, that’s just a symptom of his existence.
But the rest of it—the rest of it is gone. The end is in sight. His mind feels clearer than it has in what seems like years.
Adrian decides to get dressed, clean himself up. To make himself feel more like a human again, less like an animal controlled by his biological impulses. When he hops in the shower and washes the sweat and the grime and the grossness away, he comes out feeling like a new person entirely.
As he dries off afterward and slowly starts to get dressed, he’s reminded, quite literally, that he is a new person entirely. He’s not the same as he was seven days ago. He’s an Alpha now, and he catalogs the physical changes to his body with simultaneously growing curiosity and irritation.
He just barely manages to squeeze his legs into his jeans. They’re way too tight around the muscle of his thighs, and he knows instinctively that if he tried to sit down in them the seam would split. Chris would laugh his ass off and he would never hear the end of it. He sighs, peels them back off, and swaps them out for some stretchier sweatpants. Even those show off his ankles in a way they didn't before. He got taller. An inch, maybe two. He might even be as tall as Chris now.
His shirt, too, is more form-fitting when he wrangles it on, clinging to his skin in a way that's terribly uncomfortable, biceps straining under the too-tight sleeves. Part of him is pleased—he’s constantly putting effort into his body, and it’s nice to have muscles to prove it, but the other part of him is just pissed off.
“Fuck,” he mutters as he strips off the shirt and reaches for a hoodie that used to be oversized, but now fits him pretty normally.
He’s gonna need to replace his entire wardrobe. He can’t live like this. It’s a sensory nightmare. He has no idea how Chris functions in that tight-ass Peacemaker costume. He would be fucking miserable.
Given how different he feels, Adrian is almost afraid to go look in the bathroom mirror and see how different he looks, but when he does, he’s relieved that it’s just him. His face. Silver glasses, green eyes, the tiny mole on his cheek. He’s a little scruffy, which is weird. He doesn’t usually grow this much facial hair this quickly, but…he’s got more testosterone, now, doesn’t he? He scrubs his hand across his chin, feeling the scratchy, prickly hairs against his palm, and he frowns. He doesn’t like it.
He digs around under the sink until he finds an unopened pack of razors and a half-used bottle of shaving cream and takes care of it, nicking his jaw twice in the process. He growls, annoyed, and then hums, because the growling is new, too. The sound surprises him, a low rumbling in the back of his throat. It’s the first time he’s made the noise when he’s fully aware of himself, not in some protective, panicked haze where his body is telling him he needs to protect you.
Clean, dressed, and freshly shaved, Adrian kind of, sort of, feels like himself again. When he comes out of the bedroom, Chris is sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast. His best friend raises an eyebrow and sits back in his chair, observing.
“None of my fucking clothes fit,” Adrian complains, taking out a frying pan and starting to make himself some scrambled eggs. “Economos brought me that bag I keep in my locker in the office. All of it fit me this time last week, and now it’s all too tight, and I look like I stole my sweatpants from Judomaster.”
“I was wondering about that,” Chris says thoughtfully. “If you’d still get the growth spurt. Even though you’re, well, already grown. But I’m glad you’re wearing clothes. And you’re hungry. That’s a good sign.”
“I think it’s over,” Adrian says. “I feel good. I feel clean, and not horny. In fact, I never want to touch my dick again. It’s a fucking miracle if there is any cum left in my body, actually—”
Chris makes a face. “Yeah, okay, I get it, bro. I’m eating.”
Adrian wants to ask if he can see you, now, since he’s feeling better. But he doesn’t want to push it. Doesn’t want to seem too eager, in case that sends the wrong signal, gives Chris the wrong idea that maybe he’s still a little too desperate to see you.
Technically, he supposes, he doesn’t actually need permission from Chris or Emilia anymore. But out of respect for them, he’ll wait. Whatever Chris says, he’ll obey. It’s like he told them the other day—he’s not interested in being a macho Alpha dickhead who doesn’t listen to his friends, who starts his own pack and makes his own rules. He’s not interested in being a leader. If all he’ll be is your Alpha, he is more than okay with that.
But god, is he itching out of his skin to claim that title as soon as he can. He is tired of waiting. He wants to talk to you. He wants to see you. He wants to just be in your fucking vicinity.
“Can I talk to her?” he asks, trying and failing to be casual as he dumps his scrambled eggs on an empty plate. His hands are shaking, not because he’s holding himself back, but because—he’s nervous. Chris’s face softens. “Please? If—if my rut is done—”
“I think…” Chris considers. “I think you can try a phone call. And that will be a good test for it.” He digs into his pocket and hands over Adrian’s cellphone, which he’d confiscated a few days ago. Adrian smiles with relief, wide and bright, excited just to hear your voice.
“But,” Chris adds, “I also think we should probably wait things out an extra day or two before you actually see her in person, just to be safe. Like I told you the other night. It’s not even just about keeping you under control. It’s about not accidentally triggering a heat for her while she’s still recovering.”
Adrian doesn’t care how long he has to wait, as long as he can hear your voice. “Okay.” He shovels his scrambled eggs in his mouth. They’re still hot; he nearly burns his tongue. But the sooner he finishes eating, the sooner he gets to talk to you.
“I’ll call Emilia and let her know what’s up,” Chris says. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
Adrian pauses inhaling his breakfast to look up at Chris. He swallows. “Thank you,” he says, maybe the most serious, genuine thing he’s ever said to his friend. “I don’t think I’ve said it yet. But—this past week—I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t have you. So—”
Chris rolls his eyes. “Don’t get all fucking sappy on me. Save it for your girlfriend.”
Adrian flushes red. “She’s not my—I mean, I want her to be—fuck.”
Chris steps out of the room, ruffling Adrian’s hair on the way out. He smiles to himself and powers on his phone.
As soon as it connects to service, it buzzes dozens of times in a row. His brow furrows, then his heart skips a beat when he realizes they’re text messages, all from you, that you’ve been sending over the last week, even when you knew he didn’t have his phone and he wouldn’t receive them.
Watching a documentary on animal planet. Did you know there’s a species of jellyfish that’s technically immortal?
I wish I was with you
John just said something SO incorrect about Pokemon you would have spontaneously combusted if you were here to hear it
I miss you
I miss you
I miss you
He wants to cry. You’ve been thinking about him. You’ve been missing him.
You don’t have to miss him anymore. He clicks a button and the phone starts ringing.
“Adrian?” you answer almost immediately, your voice hushed, hopeful.
“It’s me,” he says.
“Hi,” you say, still whispering.
“You don’t have to whisper,” he says. “I think—I think it’s over. I think—”
“You—you’re better?” you say, your voice rising. “Can I come—”
“Not yet,” Adrian says gently. “One or two more days, Chris said, just to be extra safe. But we can talk, now. If you want.”
“I want,” you say quickly. “I really, really want. I missed you.”
“I know. I just saw your texts,” he says, grinning. “I missed you, too.” His smile falters a bit before he continues worriedly. “You’re not—Chris said that you coming around here, being near me, it could have—triggered your heat? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” you say softly. “I’m not due for a while, now, and with the injury, I’m taking temporary suppressants, just in case.”
“Good,” Adrian says, relieved, but there’s still anxiety clawing at his insides, still a million questions he needs to ask you, a million things he needs to say.
“Besides,” you continue. “I’ve been thinking a lot over the last couple days, and—I think we crossed that bridge a long time ago. I’m pretty sure you triggered my heat early, like, two years ago, when we first met.”
Adrian’s brain short circuits. “I did—what?”
“I wasn’t due for my heat that week,” you say. “I’m normally pretty regular. I thought it was weird at the time. Chalked it up to the stress of all the butterfly shit. But I’m thinking now that it was because of you. That my body recognized…” You trail off, the unspoken words hovering.
“You mean—that couple days when you disappeared, after Goff—” Adrian can’t even speak the words. The idea that all this time, even if your mind didn’t know, your body did. That you’ve been—waiting for him. His heart clenches.
“Yeah.”
“I felt so weird that week,” Adrian remembers. “I kept asking everyone where you were while you were gone. Emilia kept asking me why I cared, and I didn’t know what to tell her. I was so antsy, and anxious about it, and I couldn’t figure out why. And horny, fuck. I had a threesome with Chris!”
“You did?”
“Yeah. Like I said. Weird week.” You laugh on the other end of the line, and Adrian smiles at the sound. Then he sobers up a bit. “I know—I know we have a lot to talk about—”
“Later,” you say softly. “We have time, Ade. We don’t have to do the hard stuff right away. You’re probably fucking exhausted. We can just—do you have your Switch with you? If you don’t I can ask John to bring it over. And we can just play video games? Like we did before any of this happened?”
Adrian’s throat feels tight. He hears what you’re trying to tell him. Everything has changed, but also—nothing has changed, not the things that are truly important. You’re still you. He’s still him.
“That sounds really, really nice,” he says, his voice thick.
The last morning before Adrian is going to see you again, Chris wakes him up bright and early and tosses him the mask of the Vigilante suit. Adrian looks at it curiously.
“We’re going out,” Chris says. “To the woods. One last chance to shoot up some appliances and get out the last of any lingering aggression. You were kind of a lot yesterday.”
Adrian reluctantly has to admit that Chris is right. He’d spent a few calm hours playing Animal Crossing with you, just chatting, carefully dancing around sensitive subjects like Alpha presentations and feelings. Then Chris and John had hopped online too for a round of Mario Party. Adrian had gotten a little (a lot) worked up when Chris stole all of his stars.
“Probably a good idea,” Adrian mutters. He thumbs nervously at the edge of the Vigilante mask. “But—I never cleaned the suit. After the mission. I can’t—” He’s been a little preoccupied this week. Just the thought of putting the Vigilante suit on, stained with your dried blood, makes him feel sick to his stomach.
“Ads took care of it,” Chris says, and Adrian sighs with relief, making a mental note to thank her later.
“Okay,” he says.
But when Chris tosses him the Vigilante suit, and Adrian goes to put it on—it doesn’t fit. Just like the rest of his clothes.
Adrian has held strong for nine days now. He has rolled with the punches, taken every hit with gritted teeth, focused on the light at the end of the tunnel and endured.
He watched you get shot. His entire biology altered itself. He endured his first miserable rut. He has lived with this terrible anxiety about how the pack dynamics are going to change, holding onto hope that everything is going to be fine, because he trusts his friends, and he cares about you, and he knows, at the end of the day, that those are the things that really matter.
All the change has been hard but manageable. But now—the Vigilante suit doesn’t fit him the same. And that is the thing that finally breaks him.
Adrian doesn’t realize he’s crying at first. He’s just clutching the material in his hands, shaking, sliding to sit down on the floor at the end of the bed. He hugs it to his chest, hitching with silent sobs.
This suit means something to him. It means everything to him. He has poured literal blood, sweat, and tears into this fabric, into every stitch, molded it to fit him perfectly, to serve exactly the purposes he needs, and—all that work, all that time, is gone. He needs to totally redo it. Start over from scratch.
And until it’s done—he can’t be Vigilante.
When Chris pokes his head in to see if Adrian is ready to go, and he sees his friend in a sobbing heap on the floor, he instantly backtracks into the hallway.
He calls you.
“Hey, Chris,” you say. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Chris says quietly. “He’s upset. I don’t know why he’s crying. But I know I’m not the one who can talk him off whatever ledge he’s standing on. So I’m gonna hand him the phone and let you fix your boyfriend.”
The word boyfriend makes your heart skip, but you don’t acknowledge it. Now is not the time to sort out labels.
“He’s not broken,” you finally say after a quiet moment. Adrian is one of the strongest people you know. He just feels things, so fucking strongly, and he’s really, really good at hiding it. You’ve only seen him cry once before, when Chris left for the alternate universe, and even then, he almost instantly bounced back once the team had a plan to get him back.
“Okay, okay, just—fucking talk to him, okay?”
Chris is panicking a little. He’s been working on managing and processing his own emotions, recently, but when other people have big feelings around him, it still throws him off. He’s only just started learning how to cope with his own emotional breakdowns. Adrian having an emotional breakdown is entirely another story.
“Are you sure I can’t just come over?” you ask, pleading.
Chris hesitates. “You shouldn’t. I want to take him out today to get out the last of his aggression. You heard him yesterday, I thought he was gonna kill me over that fucking video game.”
“Okay, fine,” you say, even though you’re frustrated. “Then just give him the fucking phone and let me talk to him.”
Chris walks slowly back into the bedroom, where Adrian is still on the floor sniffling, tears streaking down his cheeks. He slowly holds out the phone.
Adrian shakes his head. “I don’t want her to know—” Then he sees you’re already on the other end of the line, and he looks up to shoot Chris a look of betrayal. Still, he takes the phone, and Chris leaves, the bedroom door falling shut behind him. Adrian clears his throat and tries to put on a fake smile before he speaks. “Hi.”
“What’s the matter, baby?” you ask softly.
You’ve never called him that before. He wants you to call him that all the time. He never wants to hear you say his name ever again, only sweet, sappy pet names that melt his heart. And maybe, one day, Alpha.
“Nothing,” Adrian lies through his teeth, even as his cheeks flush. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid. Everything is fine.”
“Everything is not fine,” you say. “I’m honestly surprised you’ve held out for this long. So don’t lie to me. Tell me what’s wrong. Let me help you. Let me support you. That’s what—” You pause. “That’s what we do for each other.”
Adrian’s heart constricts. He takes a shaky breath, one hand running over the material of the suit in his lap.
“The Vigilante suit,” he chokes out. “It doesn’t fit me anymore. My body is different now. None of my clothes fit right. I can—I can deal with that. I can replace my wardrobe, I don’t give a fuck. But this—” His voice cracks. “This—”
“It’s something you’ve worked really hard on, for a long, long time,” you finish for him, when he loses the words himself. “And you feel like you can’t be Vigilante without the suit?”
“Yeah,” he whispers, wiping at his face.
“You are still Vigilante,” you remind him. “Nothing is going to change that. You could go out there in your underwear and you’d still be Vigilante. Though I don’t recommend it. Not enough armor, you’d probably get stabbed.”
Adrian laughs through his tears.
“Do you remember what happened when you blew yourself up with that fucking grenade when you faced off with the White Dragon?” you continue. “You gave me a fucking heart attack that day, by the way. But your suit was shredded to pieces, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” Adrian says. “But I fixed it.”
“How many times have you fixed that thing?” you ask him. “How many times have you patched up a stab wound or a bullet hole, or replaced a fabric panel entirely, or polished a scuff or a burn mark in the armor?”
“I do that after every mission,” Adrian says, confused. “You’ve seen me do that. You help me do that, all the time.”
“Exactly, Adrian,” you say softly. “You’re constantly replacing pieces. This is just—that on a bigger scale. And I’ll help you with it just like I’ve helped you with all the rest. We’ll take the pieces of the suit that we can. The buckles and the holsters and the zippers, whatever we can salvage. And we’ll use them to make you a new one. One that fits you as you are now.”
“You’ll rebuild the suit with me?”
“I’m already online ordering materials,” you say, and he does, in fact, hear you clicking away at a computer mouse. “I know you like the kevlar fabric in black. How many yards should I get, a dozen? That way you’ll have some extra for future repairs. And you use silicone for the base of the armor?”
“Yeah,” he says, taken aback that you remember. “In—”
“In black, and white, and the medium teal, because the first teal is too light, and the other one is too dark,” you finish. “I know. Do you need to replace the helmet too? Should I order a size up? Eh, I’ll wait on that til we can take your actual measurements, just to be safe. But I’ll put a rush on the rest of the order so we can get started as soon as possible, okay? Vigilante will be back on the streets before you know it.”
“Promise?”
“Promise. Listen to me, Adrian. Even if the Vigilante suit disintegrated into ash and you could never rebuild another one, it wouldn’t matter. Because Vigilante is not the suit. Vigilante is you.”
“You—you are—” Adrian says. He can’t find the words, his throat feels tight. “You are perfect. How are you so perfect?”
“I just pay attention to you,” you say, a little shy. “You feel a little better, now?”
“I do,” he says, looking down at the Vigilante suit. Ten minutes ago, he was devastated. Now, instead, he’s—excited? Rebuilding the suit is the perfect excuse to spend more time with you.
You’re quiet for a minute. “I’m really glad I get to see you tomorrow.”
“Me too,” he says. It doesn’t feel like enough to explain the intensity of the longing he’s felt over the last week, but he’s never been good with words.
“Go have fun with Chris, okay?” you say. “And I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Won’t be soon enough,” he says. He’s been so fucking patient, but he is so tired of waiting. “I just really want to hug you. I miss your hugs.”
“You can have all the hugs you want, tomorrow,” you tell him. “I promise.”
Twenty minutes later, Chris tosses Adrian the car keys. They’re both wearing their plain clothes. Chris changed out of his Peacemaker costume to make Adrian feel better about the Vigilante suit situation, which he appreciates.
It’s also the first time he’s been back behind the wheel of the Vigilante-mobile. He’s missed it. The simple act of driving his car is one more thing that helps him feel like himself again, and with the windows rolled down, enjoying the fresh air, he feels like he can breathe, no longer suffocated in a stuffy room that stinks of sex.
As they trek through the trees toward the clearing in the woods, Chris stops and turns around for a second, then turns back and continues walking.
“What?” Adrian says, because his best friend is clearly thinking about something.
“You sure she’s your mate?” Chris asks after a moment, a little seriously. “That’s not something to enter into lightly.”
“I know,” Adrian says, quiet, just as serious. “And I know we’re kind of operating on an assumption. Based on—what set off my presentation, and the research that Ads and John did. But—” He thinks about you, and that alone is enough to set his heart racing. “I’ve wanted her for years, Chris, and I thought I would never be able to have her. This is my chance.”
“I’m just saying. If you mark her—she’s your responsibility for life.”
“I know that.” Adrian frowns. Does Chris think he can’t handle it? That he won’t be a good enough Alpha for you?
“It’s one thing to fuck her. It’s another to claim her as yours.”
Adrian grits his teeth at the way Chris talks about you like a fucking object to own instead of a person. Is this bullshit Alpha talk that Adrian only gets to hear now that he’s inducted into some special club?
“You sound like Gut,” Adrian says, disgusted. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Nothing is wrong with me,” Chris says calmly. “I just want you to be sure you know what you’re getting into, and be one hundred percent certain. You’ve only been an Alpha for like a week.”
“She is mine,” Adrian says. “And I am hers. I would—I would want her to mark me back. I know that’s not the norm. That most Alphas mark their Omegas, but don’t take a mark in return. But I would want her to mark me. She deserves a partnership, not some asshole Alpha who just wants to fucking own her—”
“Jesus, she’s already got you wrapped around her fucking finger,” Chris laughs. Adrian growls. He holds his hands up. “Okay, okay. I get it. I’m just saying, that’s a lot. And if you wanted to, you know, explore the world of other Omegas that are available to you, before making that commitment, I don’t think anyone would blame you. I mean, she doesn’t even need to know.”
Chris is laughing, walking several feet ahead of him, and Adrian stops in his tracks, his blood boiling. Because—where the fuck is this coming from?
“I don’t want any other Omegas,” Adrian says fiercely. “I only want her.”
“God knows she’s fucked a few Alphas in her time,” Chris continues, like he didn’t even hear what Adrian said. “Gotta get through those heats somehow, am I right? Never came to me and Emilia for help, but we wouldn’t have said no—talk about a threesome—”
Adrian snaps. The next thing he knows, he’s tackling Chris to the ground.
“Don’t fucking talk about her like that,” he rages, throwing a punch that hits his best friend square in the jaw.
Chris says nothing, just smiles and punches right back, landing a blow to Adrian’s side that knocks the wind out of him. Still, Adrian doesn’t let up, just keeps pummeling him.
The two men roll around on the forest floor, half-wrestling, half-boxing, landing messy blows with their fists and their knees and their feet wherever they can reach, until they’re panting, gasping for breath. Hot rage and adrenaline rushes through Adrian’s veins.
Eventually, Chris finally manages to pin Adrian to the ground, an arm against his throat, a knee on his chest, and he laughs, again, which just pisses Adrian off even more. He would say something about it if he wasn’t heaving, trying to catch his breath, struggling against Chris’s hold.
“See, this,” Chris says, trying to catch his own breath, “is exactly what you are not going to do when you go back out into society tomorrow, right?”
He smiles, and there’s blood in his teeth from the very first punch Adrian landed directly to his mouth.
Adrian’s mouth falls open. “You—you—”
“Baited you on purpose?” Chris says. “Yeah. I did. Because I knew you would snap, and you needed to release the last bit of that pent-up aggression, and I can take it. Are you done now?”
Adrian stops struggling. “Fuck,” he says, his head slumping back into the dirt.
“Sometimes, people are going to say stupid shit about your mate,” Chris says. “And you cannot just assault them. In broad daylight, at least. Do whatever you want as Vigilante. But when you’re just Adrian, you gotta keep cool.”
“Point taken,” Adrian mutters.
“While we’re on the subject,” Chris says pleasantly, “I understand why it happened. You had literally just presented and your mate was hurt. But if you ever growl at Emilia again, the next time I shoot you, it won’t be with a tranquilizer dart. Got it?”
Adrian nods. “Got it.”
“Come on,” Chris says, standing up and holding out a hand. Adrian takes it, letting Chris help him up. “Let’s go blow some shit up. Then we’re meeting up with John at the store to buy you a nice new outfit to make a good impression on your girl tomorrow.”
Adrian smiles. His girl. He likes the sound of that.
At the store, Adrian is a fucking nervous wreck. He’s instantly overwhelmed by all of the choices, which puzzles Chris and John, who were expecting him to make a beeline for the long-sleeved polos, shove a handful of them in the cart, and call it a day.
“I don’t know what to buy,” he says nervously.
“Clothes,” John laughs. “You know, pants? Shirts? Things made out of fabric that cover your naked body? Underwear, if you need that? Is your dick the same size? You know what, I instantly regretted asking that. Please do not tell me, I don’t want to know.”
“It’s a little bigger,” Chris answers for him.
“Why do you know that?” John sputters.
“We had a threesome once.”
“Of course you fucking did.”
Adrian looks at a red leather jacket on a rack. “Should I try this on?”
“Why the fuck would you try that on?” Chris asks.
“It is not your style,” John agrees.
“Respectfully, Economos, you know nothing about style,” Chris says. “There is a raccoon on your shirt.”
“Fuck you—”
“Well, do I need to change my style?” Adrian interrupts their arguing with his internal crisis. “Do I need to—”
John’s face softens when he realizes what the problem is. “Adrian, Alphas don’t have a secret dress code. You can wear whatever you want. Whatever you like and feel comfortable in is fine.”
“I know,” Adrian says. “But I want her to like it.”
“She likes you the way you are. Dad jeans and all. So just stick with your usual, okay?”
“Okay,” Adrian says, still sounding a little hesitant, but things go a bit faster after that, the cart piling high with new sneakers, jeans, and shirts. Still, he holds up every single shirt he finds and asks, “Do you think she would like this one?”
“Yes,” Chris says after the dozenth time, losing his patience a bit. He is not a caretaker, and after a week of this, he’s reaching his wit’s end. He is more than ready to pass Adrian off into your more capable hands tomorrow. “God, you are fucking anxious today. Do we need to go back into the woods and have another fist fight?”
“You guys had a fist fight?” John exclaims.
“No,” Adrian says. “We don’t need to have another fist fight. I'm just—nervous, I guess.” He rubs the soft fabric of another new shirt between his fingers. It’s your favorite color. He knows you’ll like it. He adds it to the growing pile in the cart.
“Normally, I’d say you need to get laid, and you do, but that’s obviously not the solution here,” Chris muses. “You up for a beer?”
Adrian thinks for a minute. “Yeah. Yeah, I could drink.”
So they check out, and half an hour later, they’re sitting at a hightop table at a bar, beers in hand.
“Cheers,” Chris says.
“What are we cheers-ing?” Adrian asks.
“You,” Chris says. “I know the last week fucking sucked for you. But it’s over now. And things are only going up from here.”
At that, Adrian smiles, and the three men clink their bottles together. Chris chugs half of his down almost immediately, and Adrian suspects that this was less about helping him ease his own nerves and more about Chris unwinding after this week.
“It was scary,” John says. “That first day. When we didn’t know what was happening. I’m glad you’re okay.”
Adrian swallows. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That I scared you.”
John furrows his brow, and opens his mouth to respond, but Adrian keeps talking, rambling, because now that he’s clear-headed, he needs to get this out. To make sure his friends don’t hate him.
“I understand if you guys are mad at me,” he says quickly. “I don’t even remember, really, that first night. What happened, or what I did. I just know I was…feral, ish. I don’t want you guys to be, like, afraid of me. I can take that from anyone else. The whole fucking world can be afraid of Vigilante, I don’t give a shit, but I don’t want—you, or Ads—”
“We’re not,” John interrupts. “We weren’t afraid of you, Adrian, we were afraid for you.”
“Oh,” Adrian says, because that thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. “Okay.”
“Enough of the sappy shit,” Chris says. “What did I say? Save it for your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend yet—”
“Yet.” Chris rolls his eyes. “You know what? Go get me another beer. You owe me beers for life, actually, after this week.”
Adrian grins. “If that’s what you want as payment,” he says, and he pushes back his stool and heads up to the bar to grab another round.
As he sits and waits for the bartender’s attention, someone sidles up next to him.
“Hey, hot stuff,” says a female voice. When he turns to his right, there’s an Omega right next to him. He glances around. She is definitely talking to him, but he still points at himself and checks.
“Me?”
“Yeah, you,” she giggles. “What’s your name?” Then she puts her hand on his shoulder, and he tenses.
“Please don’t touch me,” he says, brushing her hand away from him as carefully as he can. He takes a step back, too, frowning.
She flutters her eyelashes. “Why not? You know, I’m in preheat, I’m just looking for someone to help me out the next couple days. You wouldn’t be interested in that?”
Adrian could not be less interested in that.
“No,” he says.
She pouts. “But you’re so fucking hot,” she says. “I could show you a good time.”
She reaches for his sleeve again, and he clenches his jaw. He can feel himself flushing with anger, that this random woman has the audacity to touch him without his permission, when the only person he ever wants to touch him is you.
“I have an Omega,” he says firmly. “Leave me the fuck alone.”
He moves quickly to the other end of the bar, gets Chris his beer, and stomps back over to his friends, slamming the bottle onto the table.
“What the fuck was that?” Chris says. “With that lady?”
“She wanted me to fuck her,” Adrian says bluntly, a little pissy. “She touched me when I didn’t ask her to, and I told her to fuck off. Now I can smell her on my shirt, and I desperately need to go home and shower it off because her scent is all wrong. Drink your fucking beer.”
Chris takes a sip of it, then sets it down on the table. “You sure you don’t need to punch me in the face again?”
Adrian thinks about it. “Would you mind?”
Adrian is only a little bit tipsy by the time he gets back to the trailer, still on edge even though he and Chris had another friendly fight in the parking lot. He stumbles into the bathroom to clean himself up. When he looks in the mirror, he winces. He looks like shit, he thinks, as he presses at the bruise on his cheekbone. It will be gone by tomorrow morning, but it hurts like a bitch right now.
And he still smells her, that random Omega girl, on his clothes. She really must have been in preheat, because her scent is so fucking strong, and she barely fucking touched him, all things considered. But the fact that he’s coming off his own rut, his first rut, probably isn’t helping.
He turns the shower on as hot as it will go and scrubs himself off until his skin is raw and red, until every trace of her is gone. It’s not enough. Sure, it fixes part of the problem, but really—really want he wants is to smell like you. So he dries off as quickly as he can and falls into bed, cuddled up with the blanket you’d given him in the care package. He buries his nose in it and whines. It’s been a couple days, and your scent is still there, but it’s faint. Too faint. It smells mostly like him now.
He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. He reaches for his phone and checks the time.
It’s not that late. You might pick up. And yeah, he’s going to see you in eight hours, but fucking sue him, he wants to hear your voice now.
“Adrian?” you answer, probably confused because you just talked to him earlier today, and he sighs, some kind of relief washing over him just at the sound.
“Hi,” he says, a little pathetically. “I miss you.”
You don’t laugh at him, like he expects. You just quietly say, “I miss you too.” He can hear the smile in your voice. “But I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I just—tonight—” He swallows. “Chris and John took me shopping.”
“Oh?”
“It’s not just the Vigilante suit. None of my fucking clothes fit anymore.”
“You’re telling me that you, Chris, and John went clothes shopping together?” Now you are laughing. “I would have gone with you, baby.”
“I probably should have gone with you. They are so fucking judgy! And I spent the entire time worrying about whether you would like everything anyway, and I wouldn’t have had that problem if you just picked it all out,” Adrian says. “Fuck. I could have just got, like, one outfit for tomorrow and waited.”
“As long as you’re comfortable in your new clothes, I promise you I will like them,” you reassure him. You pause. “You’re rambling a lot. You’re nervous.”
“Fuck,” Adrian says, because of course you would notice. “Yeah. I guess I am. I don’t know if I’m nervous or just…on edge. We went out for drinks tonight. Chris thought I should try being around other people. Just as a test run. Some Omega hit on me at the bar. She touched my shoulder. It took me like, half an hour to scrub the scent of her off in the shower.”
“Somebody hit on you?” you repeat, jealousy roaring up in your chest. “Who? Where? I swear to god I will—”
“Some random girl,” Adrian says. “It was terrible.” He pauses, and his voice drops to a whisper. “I just wanted her to be you. And now I’m back in bed and I wanted to make myself smell like you again but it’s been a couple days and the blanket doesn’t smell like you anymore and—”
“Hey,” you interrupt softly. “It’s okay, Ade. You’re okay. I’ll bring you something new tomorrow, okay? A blanket or a scarf or something?”
“I don’t need a blanket or a scarf,” he says. “I just want—I just want you.”
“I know,” you say softly. “That’s all I want too.” You fall silent for a moment. “I wish I was there tonight. I would have told that random bitch to fuck right off.”
“I told her to leave me the fuck alone, because…I have an Omega already.”
Adrian says it quietly, cautiously, like a question. And you answer him like it is one, a smile in your voice that settles some of his anxiety about seeing you in the morning.
synopsis: The first thing you notice about Vigilante is his hands. It's just a professional curiosity. Until it isn't.
gif by @/fangirl48
pairing: adrian chase/vigilante x reader
tags: gender neutral reader, black ops reader, reader is deeply not normal (blame Amanda Waller), mutually obsessive behavior, blood, murder, violence, gore, neither of these people know how to process emotions (but in a cute way), fluff
word count: 5.1k
notes: requested by @bunch-of-bens! title from the billie eilish song "copycat". took me a hot second to crack this one, but had a blast once I did, hope you all enjoy!
For a long time the only thing you knew of the man inside the Vigilante suit was his hands.
A flash of pale skin glimpsed just before he finished tugging his gloves on as you climbed into the back of the truck. A crescent of flesh exposed by the slight bend of his wrist as his gun recoiled. The meat of his palm revealed by the glancing blow of a blade.
His identity was need-to-know, and you simply didn’t. And that was okay with you. You didn’t need much other than to know he was good at his work and you could trust him.
Working in pairs was new to you – at A.R.G.U.S, Waller had always kept you on a tight (and decidedly solo) leash.
But you worked well with Vigilante, becoming a silent and deadly shadow that stalked the night alongside him on missions. Studying his fighting style, learning his patterns, developing a keen awareness of his strengths and weaknesses – it was essential to the job. Studying his hands was just another part of that professional curiosity.
At first, anyway.
It was how you found yourself watching him like he was some mathematical equation to be solved as his gloved hands wrapped around the throat of a target. Your eyes traced the uneven slant of Vigilante’s shoulders as he pressed down. Enough study and you could probably find the slope.
There was something calm and self-assured about the firm grip of his hands at work. A tactical grace. You wondered what it might be like to feel those hands wrap around your own neck. You supposed that was probably a strange thought to be having while those hands were busy pressing the life out of someone. You never had really known what normal was anyway, and being around Vigilante had you having a lot of new thoughts.
When the man was dead, Vigilante stood slowly and dusted his gloves off. He turned around and jumped, letting out a yelp at the sight of you half hidden in the shadows. You pushed away from where you had been leaning against the wall and crossed your arms over your chest.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
You shrugged. “Observing.”
“Okay, weirdo,” he said, but you could see the way the skin around his eyes crinkled, even through his visor. “By the way, I totally, definitely knew you were there the whole time.”
Over time you found that being called up to work with the Checkmate team started to feel something like relief. The team as a whole was competent, if a little too emotional for your taste. But they paid well, treated you with respect, and…you got to see Vigilante in action.
You tried to piece a picture of him together based on the small things you’d noticed. The way he’d tap a pencil between his index finger and thumb during briefings, the way he always pulled his gloves off with his teeth (through the mask, lest you get any ideas about seeing his face), how he’d sometimes forget to take off his Pokémon watch and you’d get to see him unclasp it with nimble fingers and force Economos to hold onto it for him during missions.
Once, on a particularly lucky evening, you got to see both his hands completely bare as he rushed to sloppily stitch the wound across your thigh. He’d ripped the fabric of your pants open for better access and you’d felt, for just a fleeting moment, that your whole world had tilted on its axis. The carefully built understanding of the world was torn open as if by Vigilante’s hands themselves. You were fairly certain he’d mumbled something about not being able to grip the needle right with his gloves on – you couldn’t be entirely sure, you were busy watching your blood coat his strong fingers and committing the sight to memory. For strictly professional reasons, of course.
“You’re such a copycat,” he muttered.
“A what?”
“Last mission I got slashed in the thigh and now here you are, totally copying me,” he said with a huff. You couldn’t be certain if he was joking or not. His physicality was never hard to parse but his tone was another matter entirely. “Like a…”
“Copycat,” you finished for him.
“Exactly!” He was quiet for a long time. You found yourself wishing he would say anything to distract you from the way the calloused pad of his thumb brushed against your bare knee.
“You know, normally I hate the feeling of human skin,” he said quietly, his eyes still profoundly focused on his stitches. You watched him carefully, wondering if he’d say you were different. That he liked touching you the way you were discovering you liked it when he did. It was a foreign feeling for you – one you found made your body feeling surprisingly warm. The first time you’d felt that warmth while looking at him you’d thought you were coming down with a fever. You were starting to suspect it was something worse.
He sat back on his heels and dropped the needle into a small metal dish. His eyes flicked up to meet yours finally and you wondered what color they were beyond the blood red veneer of his visor. For the first time your brain was desperate for detail – to fill in the sketch of him beyond the skills and the suit.
“But, when it’s covered in dried blood it barely feels like human skin at all!”
The night you finally saw his face was on track to be one of the best of your life. Every mission you two had fallen more and more into sync. It was like there was a tangible thrum in the air between you – a taut, invisible rope connecting you.
Vigilante swung the target around by the arm and both your blades sunk into his flesh simultaneously. Your knife plunged with careful and studied precision through the narrow planes of his ribs and into his heart as Vigilante’s blade cleaved cleanly through his spine at the back. Your gaze lifted to Vigilante’s over the target’s shoulder. The heat of his gaze was palpable, even through the mask.
“Dude, that was sick!” Vigilante cheered. Blades pulled from the target’s body which crumpled in a heap at your feet. Vigilante raised his hand, palm towards you and you stared, confounded. You arched an eyebrow and he sighed, grabbing your wrist and pulling your hand up to meet his.
“Have you never high-fived someone before?” he asked, sounding genuinely wounded at the idea.
You shrugged, brain caught like a thread on wondering if he could feel the hammering of your pulse through his firm grip. “Guess not.”
“Well, it’s an honor to take your virginity,” he said as he slapped your hands together. Then he cocked his head slightly. “I mean, uh, your high-five virginity. Obviously.”
“Right,” you agreed slowly. Suddenly, he gasped. “What?”
“What is that?” he asked, bouncing on his toes. You realized suddenly your hands were still pressed together and you yanked your hand back, waiting for the inevitable knife of derision.
“What’s what?” you snapped.
“You were smiling,” he giggled. Giggled. You felt uncertainty rock through your whole being. Instability. Smiling? Your face did feel strange. Tired. Strained. You had thought it was from the punch you’d taken to the jaw earlier.
“You never smile, so, honestly this feels like a badge of honor,” he said, clapping a hand over his chest plate. “First your high-five virginity and now your smile virginity? What’s next!”
You sighed, trying to shake loose the unusual heat in your cheeks. You tightened the muscles in your cheeks and Vigilante reached out one gloved hand and traced the entire curve of your smile like he was carving it into your flesh.
“There it is.”
You could hear the smile in his own voice and suddenly found that your gravitational pull was skewed entirely towards him. Your chest brushed against his while his hand hung in the air near your face. For once you had no plan. You were entirely unused to the distinct feeling of being off-kilter. There were no studied schematics for feeling.
For a moment, you thought you might press your lips to the mask.
Instead, a sudden explosion tossed you both back across the room. The pain of broken ribs was immediately recognizable as you slid down the concrete wall, but there was something much sharper than any other time before mixed in. Vigilante was on top of you before you could even attempt to get your feet under you.
“Fuck, are you okay?” he asked, hands dancing across the front of your suit. They came away glistening. “Shit. Shit. Um, okay, hold on.”
The sound of footsteps had both your heads snapping in the direction of the stairs. You grabbed hold of his forearm, squeezed tightly, and narrowed your eyes at him. “Go. Finish it. I’ll be okay.”
Vigilante reluctantly left you bleeding out after you reassured him multiple times, your arm strategically draped over the shrapnel piercing deep into your side. When he was finally out of sight, you peeled back your obliterated suit to survey the damage. Blood was leaking out around the jagged piece of metal at an alarming rate, but you did what you could to pack the area around the wound, ripping tangled shreds of kevlar and fabric to use in a pinch, holding the whole area together with one firmly pressed hand.
You managed to press your back against the wall and use the resistance to push yourself to your feet, swallowing the urge to scream out against the pain. You fumbled for one of the pockets on your pants, knowing you had hemostatic powder in there somewhere. The wound was probably beyond that but anything would help. You ripped the little packet with your teeth but your trembling fingers dropped it and the powder spilled across the concrete floor.
“Fuck,” you cursed, the word slurred, like fingers swiped through wet paint. You weren’t sure how long Vigilante had been gone but beyond the ringing in your ears you heard no signs of him or anyone else. You had to move.
Shoulder scraping along the concrete until you reached the doorway, you managed to get to the staircase. You stumbled into the railing, bracing yourself, but not fast enough to stop the shrapnel from getting forced deeper into your abdomen.
Pain is a distraction, you could hear Waller’s voice clearer in your head than your own.
You punched your hand into your thigh repeatedly, desperate for the sensation of controlled pain. You just needed to stay on your feet long enough to find Vigilante. The fact that he hadn’t returned had unraveled something in you. If you didn’t know better, you might have thought it was fear.
It wasn’t until you finished dragging yourself down the staircase that you heard a wheezing breath and the sound of your name weakly being called. You followed the sound into a room off the staircase and found Vigilante in a pool of blood. Other bodies littered the room because Vigilante had completed the mission – of course he had.
Except Vigilante’s mask was nowhere to be found and you were staring at a man you didn’t know. Still, you found yourself kneeling at his side, blood soaking through the knees of your pants. You made note of matted curls and green eyes but also the blood that was running from his nose and pooling in the hollow of his neck. Oh, and the blade that had skewered him straight through the middle.
“Oh shit, that looks like it hurts,” he gasped, sitting up slightly, fingers clawing idly at the air near your own wound. You braced him against your knees, trying to keep him from sitting up any further, wincing at the effort. He looked from your wound to his and back again.
“Wait, oh my god, twinsies,” he wheezed, trying to sit up again.
You smiled at him and you could taste the blood on your teeth. “Copycat.”
“You know, you’re pretty through the visor but the real thing is even better,” Vigilante managed through gritted teeth. Then he slumped over, completely unconscious. Your vision blurred at the edges and you reached up to find your face wet before everything went dark.
When you first awoke under the bright, fluorescent lights you reminded yourself not to fight against your restraints. Waller didn’t like it when you returned to her with bruised wrists. But then you looked down at the hospital bed and found you weren’t restrained at all. That was…new. And this, of course, wasn’t A.R.G.U.S..
“You’re awake!”
Tired eyes tracked from his firm grip on your hand up his strong arm, taking in the sight of a strong bicep emerging from beneath the sleeve of a hospital gown. A peek of light blue boxer shorts beneath the hem of the gown dragged your gaze to a pair of strong thighs. He leaned forward, yanking the chair he was in somehow even closer to the edge of your bed and he propped his chin on his arm, folded alongside the edge of your bed. You combed over the sharp line of his jaw, up to his tousled curly hair and settled finally on a verdant pair of eyes. He nudged a pair of wire frames up the bridge of nose by ducking his face into the crook of his elbow.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, brows drawn together. You lifted a hand to smooth it away but gave up halfway through. His grip on your hand flexed and pulled your attention back to where the two of you were firmly joined.
“You don’t like the touch of human skin,” you said, as if he needed the reminder. Your voice cracked, throat traitorously dry for more than one reason.
“Oh!” he said, seeming surprised. He, too, turned his gaze to your intertwined hands. “Firm touch is good.”
“Firm touch is good,” you repeated.
“Okay, copycat!” he cackled. You couldn’t help but look at him again. He was attractive, even you could identify that. You had thought so, back in the warehouse, but the brain was known to imagine a lot of things when low on blood. There was something inexplicably soft about him that you could never have anticipated. Something that you liked. You were glad he wasn’t all hard edges and furrowed brows and dark, soulless eyes. You’d known plenty of killers like that. Killers with hard mouths and grasping hands. Vigilante was different.
“I don’t know your name,” you said suddenly. You scooted up slightly in the bed. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“It’s Adrian!” he exclaimed, like it was a secret physically fighting its way out of him.
“Adrian,” you repeated, weighing the name in your mouth.
“But you can totally call me Vigilante still if you want. Unless we’re in public together, then you should probably call me Adrian. Because of the whole secret identity thing,” he rambled.
“When would we be in public together?” you asked, genuinely curious. You were defenseless against the sudden idea of the two of you together in public, holding hands. What kind of civilian clothes did this Adrian wear? It would be helpful intel to complete the image. Purely tactical input.
“Oh. Good point.” You couldn’t help but notice he seemed disappointed.
You gave his hand a squeeze. “I like Adrian.”
“You do?” he asked, perking up, leaning closer towards you. His chin was now propped on your arm instead of his own.
“Yeah.”
He looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead he reached for the water on the tray beside your table and extended it towards you. “You should really hydrate, by the way.”
You nodded and sipped at the water slowly as he picked at the blanket with his free hand.
“I’m really glad you didn’t die, you know,” he said after a long moment.
“It would have been inconvenient, I’m sure. Having to train someone to replace me. It can take a long time to find someone you’re compatible with,” you replied. He cocked his head slightly.
“Well, yeah, I guess. But I meant more like I’m glad you didn’t die. Not just because we’re compatible in the field, you know?” You weren’t sure you did know. He squirmed slightly in his seat. “Because I think we may be compatible out of the field, too.”
Uncertainty coursed through you, as you tried to reason what he might be saying. The strange, taut feeling in your stomach was back.
“You healed fast,” you said, eyes assessing him for injury as was habit. Something that felt safe and normal and practiced. In fact, he looked completely unscathed. Kind of unfair, actually.
He shrugged, a silly grin on his face that you might have chalked up to a kind of sheepishness. “Harcourt thinks I might be metahuman.”
“Increased healing ability is often an indication of metahuman characteristics,” you agreed. Adrian dragged his lower lip against his thumb.
“God, it’s so hot when you talk like that,” he gushed.
“Like what?”
“I dunno. Like you. Kind of science-y and distant. I like it,” Adrian said quietly.
“You do?” you asked.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding emphatically. You felt yourself leaning towards him, but the movement pulled at your stitches. You must have winced because concern flickered over Adrian’s face and he launched himself from his chair onto the side of your bed, making space for himself against your hip. His hand pressed gently to your abdomen.
“Oh, good, you’re awake!” Adebayo cheered with a smile from the doorway. You moved to pull your hand away from Adrian but his grip did not relent. That made you inexplicably warm again, heat high in your face.
Economos cleared his throat. “There was a significant spike in your heart rate on the monitors. We just wanted to make sure everything was okay and that Adrian wasn’t like smothering you with a pillow or something.”
“Why the fuck would I do that?” Adrian asked, sounding genuinely wounded.
Economos shrugged. “Only like a month ago you were saying you were worried we’d want to replace you and that you were willing to do a duel to the death.”
“You’re flushed,” Adebayo said, crossing to the bedside to touch her hand to your cheek. “Temp reading is normal, though.”
You didn’t have an explanation. Adebayo and Economos exchanged a look.
“Adrian’s not bothering you, is he?” Adebayo asked gently.
“Hey!” Adrian protested.
You released a pent up breath. “No. It’s…nice.”
“Well, now that you’re awake why don’t you go get some rest, Adrian?” Adebayo suggested. Adrian rolled his eyes.
“No thanks,” he huffed. “Last time we were apart we both ended up here!” Then he looked up at you with big eyes, sitting upright. “Unless? You want me to go?”
“I don’t,” you said quietly. “Unless you are planning to duel me to the death the second they leave this room.”
Adrian’s eyes widened somehow further and you resisted the urge to stick your finger into the crook of his dimple. “Was that a joke?”
You felt the corner of your lips twitch. “I think so.”
“Ohmygod,” he gushed. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to the back of your clasped hands. It didn’t really much matter to you that he accidentally kissed the back of his own hand instead. “Another one for the virginity checklist!”
“The what now?” Adebayo asked, then she shook her head violently. “You know what, I don’t actually want to know.”
It was that easy. You and Adrian just simply wouldn’t be apart anymore. Once you were a little more healed (you’d probably gotten off bed rest a little too soon, but it was at your own insistence) Checkmate agreed to take you on full time, and Adrian took it upon himself to make sure he was the one who showed you around. And brought you coffee. And got you up to speed on missed meetings. And made sure you were always assigned to missions together. And sometimes held your hand firmly under the conference room table.
Adrian also made it his mission to find and introduce you to simple things, too. Simple joys of existence that you had never had the chance to know, all those years kept up in labs and secure facilities, broken out of the box only when Waller wanted to play.
“Dude, you’ve never played Wii Sports?” he gasped, practically launching himself off of the couch. You found it endearing that he still called you dude even after you two had begun fucking (Adrian kept calling it “making love” – you weren’t sure about all that, but whatever it was? You liked it). You found a lot of things about him endearing, an emotion you had heretofore been unfamiliar with.
Adrian was repeating holdonholdonholdon as he raced about the living room, setting up some sort of gaming console beneath the TV.
“What is this?” you asked when he curled your fingers around a slender piece of plastic with buttons down the front. His fingers lingered and that warm feeling came back again with a vengeance.
“A Wiimote.” You only blinked back at him. “It doesn’t matter.” He turned back to the TV and then back to you again, and you watched with a tightness in your throat as he curled his hands into fists and then braced them against his hips. “I lied, it does matter. It’s a Wii remote. A remote for the Wii. But they combined it into one word and hence – ”
“Wiimote,” you replied, nodding in understanding. You were too afraid to ask for clarification on what a Wii was exactly, but Adrian hauled you to your feet and pecked a kiss to your cheek.
“Can I say something?” he asked. You nodded. Rarely did he ask for permission to speak. “Thank you.”
“For what?” you asked, genuinely puzzled.
“For not thinking I’m weird. For letting me do silly stuff like teach you about Wii Sports, but, like, also totally serious stuff like letting me have sex with you.” You watched as his hand gripped the controller tighter, the tendons of his hand straining beneath the skin. Your mouth filled with saliva suddenly. Another new sensation to make sense of later.
Your eyes flickered back to Adrian’s green ones and you realized he wasn’t done quite yet. “You’re like the coolest person I know.”
“Temperature-wise?” you asked, arching an eyebrow. Adrian bent over and laughed, his hands pressed between his knees.
“Definitely not temperature-wise, because metaphorical-temperature-wise you’re so fucking hot,” he said. You nodded like you understood.
“Well, metaphorical-temperature-wise you’re also hot, Chase,” you countered. It was true – he was an objectively attractive man. “Also, I really take umbrage with the idea that I’m letting you have sex with me.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly. “How would you describe it, then?”
“I would describe it as I look forward to and like having sex with you,” you replied with a shrug. Adrian’s eyes darted back and forth between yours and you couldn’t quite parse what emotion he was experiencing. He surged forward, dropping the Wii remote so he could take your head in both his hands and kiss you deeply.
He pulled away panting, his forehead pressed to yours. “Can I say something else?”
His thumb dragged along your cheekbone and you found yourself only capable of nodding.
“I feel kind of insane when I’m around you. And I’m not totally sure, but I think it might be love. It’s like my heart is the gun and your finger is on the trigger and you could pull it and kill me at any second but I like that,” he said, deadly serious. Was that what love felt like? You didn’t have enough time to properly consider it because he kissed you on the nose and then let you go.
“Okay, so your remote should be in pristine condition because I’ve never actually played Wii Sports with anyone else before. But! I think you’ll be really good at Wii Tennis, because I’m really good at Wii Tennis and we’re good at a lot of the same things, just like how we’re both good at murder and sex!”
He smiled as he turned to boot up whatever a Wii was and you felt those muscles draw taut in your cheeks again, a little less sore this time. Adrian gasped suddenly, eyes wide as he turned back to you. “Let’s check that Wii Sports virginity!”
You two shouldn’t have worked. But you’d leave quiet gaps in conversation for him to fill, and he treated you like you hung the moon and all the stars and not like someone who was raised in a lab to kill. In fact, he always laughed when someone else on the team had any sort of comments about your strange behavior, or your blank responses. Because to him the strangeness wasn’t absurd – it was just you.
“Why do you look at him like that?” Peacemaker asked once, while he was standing beside you in the Checkmate communal kitchen. Adrian was wedged between Adebayo and Economos, showing them something on his phone.
“Like what?”
“Like you want to dissect him.”
You dragged your eyes to Peacemaker, who flinched slightly. You were used to it. “I don’t want to dissect him. I want to do the opposite of that. Whatever that is.”
“You love him?”
“Is that the opposite of dissection?”
Peacemaker seemed to contemplate the question. “You know, I’m not sure it is.”
The two of you were running late to Friday night work drinks. Partly because every time you had tried to put on an item of clothing while getting ready, Adrian was determined to take it off again. And partly because Adrian had spotted a flock of ducks on the way and wanted to feed them and tell you that a group of ducks was called a waddling, actually.
Around the corner from the bar, Adrian came to a sudden stop, causing you to nearly collide with him.
“What’s wrong?” you asked, when he turned to you with a panic-stricken expression, his hand letting go of yours. You found you did not like that sensation at all, but kept it squarely to yourself.
“I don’t want you to feel like we have to let everyone know about us,” he said, words tumbling out of his mouth. You didn’t have the heart to tell him you suspected they already knew. At least Peacemaker did, and you had observed very early on if Peacemaker knew something, so did everyone else. But the thought of Adrian being kind enough to be concerned tugged at your heart. That old thing had been working overtime lately.
“Okay,” you agreed. “We can ‘play it cool’.”
And it was totally playing it cool to reach up and adjust the collar of his rugby shirt.
“Why are you saying it like that?” Adrian laughed, bumping your shoulder.
“I feel like I’m saying it totally normally,” you continued to argue as you two made your way into the bar.
“You don’t do anything normally,” he replied with a smile. “That’s what I love about you.”
You knew you were still figuring it all out: what it meant to be a part of a team, what it meant to have a life in the civilian world and not just one in the shadows, what it was like to have friends – people who cared if you lived or died. And most importantly, what it was like to have Adrian.
Adrian stayed by your side all night. Close, but not touching. Occasionally you’d reach for your drinks at the same time and your hands would brush. Adrian’s fingers gripped one leg of the stool you were perched on, slowly dragging it closer towards him as the group got more drinks in and he was feeling bolder. His sneaker was wound around the bottom rung of your stool and his thigh, warm and strong, was pressed against yours before long. You could feel his stolen glances lingering longer and you knew he was searching for you to put up the red light. You knew he would pull back the moment you did. But you didn’t want him to.
You watched him idly fold straw wrappers into delicate little structures that now lined the sticky tabletop, gifting them to his friends around the table as the conversation and the night stretched on. He placed a slightly lopsided heart in front of you.
Economos was in the middle of a story about Rick Flag Sr. when you turned to look at Adrian and found him already looking at you, eyes sparkling in the dive bar light. How were you supposed to resist a face like that?
“Adrian,” you breathed his name but he was already moving, answering your call. You leaned forward and he met you halfway, arms circling your waist as you pressed your lips against his. The two of you nearly knocked the high top and your stools over in your eagerness to kiss. Faintly, you heard Economos complaining but it didn’t matter because Adrian was biting down on your lower lip, his hand fisted in your hair.
“John, you owe me twenty bucks!” Adebayo declared. “I still can’t believe you took that bet after seeing them in the med bay together.”
“I don’t know! I thought it was some weird psycho bonding thing!” John exclaimed, tossing his hands up and nearly upending his beer in the process.
“Alright you two, cut the PDA,” Harcourt groaned.
“Aw, I think it’s kind of sweet,” Chris chimed in, elbowing Harcourt. “Creepy, but sweet.”
Adrian pulled back from you, grinning wide. “PDA virginity?”
“Check,” you agreed. You raised your hand and Adrian gave you a high five before slotting his fingers through yours and letting your entangled hands fall back into the space between you. A small commotion broke out at the table between everyone all at once. You found it almost made you smile, though, you suspected those were reserved just for Adrian. For now.
There was a small pulse, pulse, pulse of his hand, squeezing firmly, rhythmically, as if he wanted to assure you he was still there. As if you could forget.
synopsis: Adrian has spent his entire life thinking he's a Beta. Then one traumatic mission turns his life upside-down, and he realizes he might finally get to have the one thing he's always wanted: you.
tags/warnings: 18+ MDNI, omegaverse dynamics (talk about mates, heats/ruts, etc), alpha!Adrian, omega!reader, medic!reader, 11th street kids is a pack, mission gone wrong, reader injury (bullet wounds), desperate and needy and protective Adrian just the way I like him, (I have never written omegaverse fic before be nice to me lmao)
word count: 5k
notes: It is finally here thank you so much for your patience I know I have been teasing this for weeks lmao I am anticipating around seven parts to this one!! MAJOR thank you to @embeanwrites and @snowyathena for the beta read and all their help brainstorming and editing <3
The 11th Street Kids are not your typical pack.
Chris and Emilia, two bonded Alphas that butt heads as much as they care about one another. Ads, John, and Adrian, three Betas who gladly follow their lead, even when things get messy. And you.
Black ops work tends to attract a particular type—Alphas and Betas. You’re a bit of an odd one out as an Omega, but you’ve determinedly proven yourself capable of the work time and time again. Still, you’ve never actually been out in the field. You’re a medic, and you stay behind at headquarters, ready to help when the team gets back from missions, fixing Emilia’s shoddy emergency-med work that keeps them alive en-route to you.
“That is not how you pack a fucking bullet wound, Emilia,” you have said countless times. Or “Jesus Christ, how many times, Adrian, have I told you to leave the knife in after you get stabbed?” Or “What kind of drug did you accidentally inhale? If I was in the field with you, maybe I would have seen it and been able to tell—”
And you are itching to get out there and help. You’ve been begging for months. Even if all you do is stay in the van with John, you can do more, be there for the team more effectively, if you are out there in the field with them instead of waiting at the Checkmate office or whatever temporary HQ has been set up for long-distance missions.
Still, Chris and Emilia have been reluctant to let you—as the only Omega of the group, they tend to baby you, maybe a bit too much. But you’ve been there through it all—the butterflies, the alternate universes, standing on the sidelines as quiet, caring support for the others.
Being a good friend to Chris when he desperately needed one, after he got out of prison. Reminding John of his value when he’s feeling unimportant. Helping nurse Em back to health after Coverdale Ranch. Standing by Ads when her relationship with Keeya was falling to pieces. Comforting Adrian when Chris made the dumbass decision to fuck off to Nazi land. Welcoming Fleury, Bordeaux, and Judomaster into the pack with open arms and managing everyone’s emotions as the group adjusted to the three new Betas added into the mix.
But you’re more than a caretaker, and you’re ready to prove it.
“I am not a child,” you insist when Chris tries to bench you, yet again. “I have just as much training as the rest of you. I can handle a gun. I can handle myself. I am a professional, and I am qualified.”
“We need you here.”
“John gets to go with you all the time!” you cry. “He might be a Beta, but he’s a bigger pussy than I am!”
“Hey!” John protests.
“Sorry,” you mutter, not sounding at all sorry.
“She deserves to go,” Adrian cuts in, from a few desks away. “She’s worked just as hard on this as the rest of us. You can’t keep treating her like glass because she’s an Omega. I know you have this weird Alpha need to like, take care of her or whatever, but she’s also more than capable of taking care of herself. She takes care of the rest of us all the time.”
You’re grateful to have someone on your side. Adrian is your best friend, and he never lets anyone give you shit for your designation. You’d asked him about it once, and he’d said something vague about his shitty Alpha brother and not wanting to be like him.
If he was an Alpha, he’d be the perfect one, in your eyes. He never gave a shit about social convention, he understood you better than maybe anyone else in the world. You catch yourself wishing some days that things were different.
Emilia sighs. “It’s not that. You know we respect you. You also know that your designation makes you a target.”
“So we’ll keep an eye on her,” Adrian says. “She’s not going to go out there alone. If we’re watching her back, and you know we will be—”
“Fine!” Chris says, giving in. “You can come on the mission tomorrow. But Adrian stays with you the whole time.”
“Gladly,” Adrian agrees.
“Thank you,” you say delightedly. You hug Adrian, and he laughs.
He hates it when anyone else touches him, but—he’s never minded it from you. You smell nice. He takes the opportunity as you wrap your arms around him to quietly tuck his head into your neck and inhale, right where your comforting scent is the strongest. He hopes it lingers, for the rest of the day. On his clothes, on his skin, in his hair.
Adrian might be a little bit in love with you. A lot a bit in love with you, actually. But that doesn’t matter. He’s never had a shot with you anyway. He’s not an Alpha, he can’t give you what you need.
But he can give you this. He can watch your back so you have the chance to go out in the field with the rest of the pack, like you’ve always wanted.
“No problem,” he says, trying his best to pretend that everything is okay. That it doesn’t kill him a little bit inside when you let go, step back, move back to your desk.
He watches you and swallows hard, and tries really, really hard not to be consumed with irrational jealousy.
Jealous of whatever Alpha, one day, will get to keep you to himself.
Jealous of his alternate self, who he spends every day trying not to think about. Who you will never meet, thank god, because—he was an Alpha. And he would have been able to be with you, in a way Adrian never can be. Maybe—maybe he was. He had a mark. Right there, high on his neck. Adrian hadn’t been able to stop looking at it, couldn’t help but wonder. The question had been on the tip of his tongue the entire night, but he kept deflecting—talking about Pokemon and cloud-men and shag carpeting, skirting around the question he really wanted to ask, because he was too afraid. Because if it was you—if the only thing keeping him from you is his fucking designation—
He snaps himself out of the thought. It’s never happening, not for him. All he can do is take advantage of the time he has with you now, before some asshole Alpha steals you away to another pack. So he pastes on a smile, saunters up behind you, and taps you playfully on the shoulder.
“Better go practice your aim,” he teases. “Make sure you’re 100% field ready—”
“Oh, fuck you,” you laugh, but you start walking in the direction of the weapons room anyway. “Come with me?”
He follows you with a smile on his face. He always will.
Everything goes sideways fast. Your informant fucked you all over. It’s an ambush.
Adrian has heard pained or panicked shouts from everyone—Chris, Harcourt, Ads, Economos. He ignores them all, because he was given a prerogative from his Alphas. To protect you.
“Stay here,” he tells you, hands on your shoulders, pushing you behind him, away from the danger. “Stay here, stay low, stay behind me. Do you hear me?” You nod, eyes wide as you look up into his visor.
“Okay,” you agree, cocking your gun. “I’ll do what I can from a distance—”
“No, don’t waste your ammo,” Adrian says. He hands you his guns, instead, and draws his machete. “In case—if they get closer, you need to defen—”
“I got it,” you assure him, accepting the weapons. “Go, Ade, I’ll be okay.”
So he stays focused, takes out as many attackers as he can, slashes out with his machete, chopping off limbs, sending blood spraying through the air while you shoot from higher ground, just behind him. He doesn’t stray far, keeping you in earshot, no more than a quick sprint out of reach.
There’s some part of him that feels sickly satisfied, like he always does, as the bodies hit the ground. There are dozens of them. Far too many. Whoever sent them here is going to die, he decides. Whoever put his pack at risk like this, whoever put you at risk like this.
Even still, this is what he’s good at. The killing. It’s what he enjoys. He’s smiling under his Vigilante mask as he looks at one of the last assholes in his vicinity and slashes out. The guy gets off a couple shots, but they fly wide, missing him. Adrian laughs as he shoves his blade through the guy’s neck.
Adrian looks back at you to check in, to crack a joke about how of course your first field mission goes right off the rails, and—you’re not where you’re supposed to be. You’re not where he left you. His eyes dart around frantically until they land on you, and he breathes a sigh of relief, but the feeling only lasts a moment. You look at him, in that split second, frozen with shock.
Then he sees the blood soaking through your uniform. He watches you go pale, a hand pressed a wound he’s too far away to see clearly, and you hit the ground. His blood runs cold. He can smell your blood on the air—your scent, familiar, but also wrong. Tinged salty and metallic, thick, like he can taste it on his tongue.
The transformation happens in an instant.
Adrian goes fucking ballistic.
Something takes over him. Something vicious, and aggressive, and panicked, and he yells your name, but you don’t answer him. Two more people try to corner Adrian, and he doesn’t even bother with a weapon. He just snaps their necks. Then he races to you, bolts as fast as he can, his heart pounding harder than it ever has.
His vision is already tinged red by the Vigilante visor, but it goes even redder with rage when he sees you slumped on the ground, lifeless. His knees hit the ground beside you, and he rips his mask off. It feels hard to breathe in it, suddenly, as he looks down at you, strangled by the strongest fear he’s ever felt. His hands reach frantically for your face, and he says your name over and over again, interspersed with pleas, as he tugs you into his lap.
No, he thinks, he shouldn’t be moving you. He needs a medic, he needs you, but—he curses. Goddamnit, fuck, what would you tell him to do, what have you trained him to do when the others get shot—
“Put pressure on it,” he tells himself out loud, but even as he does it, his voice is shaking, his hands are shaking, because he never, ever, thought he would have to use this knowledge on you. “God, please, wake up, look at me, please—”
“Adrian,” says a voice behind him, and he turns and bares his teeth, brandishing his machete defensively.
“It’s me!” Emilia says, holding her hands up. “It’s me!”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Adrian logically knows—it’s Harcourt. Harcourt isn’t going to hurt you. But even as he lowers his weapon, something feels bad. Wrong. And when she reaches for you, to assess your injuries—
“Don’t fucking touch her,” Adrian snarls, gloved fingers digging into your skin, shielding you from the threat that his body is telling him is right there.
“What?” Emilia says, completely caught off guard.
Adrian turns back to you, tense with fear and worry. His hands press harder against the places you’re bleeding from—your shoulder, your side near your ribs, trying desperately to stop the flow of blood even as it soaks into his gloves. “Come on, wake up, look at me—”
You blink awake only briefly, your eyes unfocused, but you say his name, very softly, and your weak fingers clutch at the buckles on the front of his uniform. The possessive feeling roars back up Adrian’s throat times a thousand, drowning out everything else. All he knows is protect and need and mine.
“They’re all dead,” Chris says behind him, breathless, and Adrian tenses up again without knowing why. “I think John’s arm is fucked up, we need her to set it—” Then Chris’s eyes land on you. “Oh, fuck—she doesn’t look good, we gotta get her out of here—”
Adrian sees Chris’s arms reach for you, and he growls, something deep and primal and uncontrollable. A sound he has never made. A sound he shouldn’t be able to make. Chris freezes, bristles, looks at Adrian.
“What the fuck was that?” Chris says, more confused than angered by the intensity emanating off of Adrian in waves.
Then Chris takes in the whole scene. The way Adrian’s clutch on you is so tight it might leave bruises. The way he hunches over you protectively. The way he snarls when Chris looks at you for a moment too long.
Chris pauses. He inhales. His eyes go wide, and he takes a giant step back.
“Holy fucking shit,” he says. “Adrian—”
“Whoa, what the fuck is going on?” Ads says, confused as hell. John stumbles up behind her, also looking confused, nursing a wound of his own on his arm. They both look worried when they see you unconscious on the ground.
“You smell it?” Chris asks Emilia, and her brow furrows. She sniffs the air, and her mouth falls open.
“Holy shit,” she whispers. “Oh my god. Is he—”
“Ads, I need you to run to the van and get me a tranq dart,” Chris says, voice low. “Now.” She does as he asks without asking any questions.
“Adrian,” Emilia says softly, trying again to approach, even slower, calmer. “I need you to let me look at her injuries. I’m not going to hurt her.” She pauses and thinks, tries to rephrase into the particular words he needs to hear right now. “I’m not going to take her from you.”
But it’s no use. He’s too far gone for logic. When Emilia reaches forward, he panics.
“No,” Adrian says desperately. “No, no—she’s mine—”
His eyes are wild, unfocused, filled with such animal fear and rage and need that it’s clouding every other feeling. He’s vibrating, shaking, breathing hot and heavy, on the verge of falling over entirely into animal instinct, of going completely feral.
“Please, let me help—” Emilia says, trying to gentle her voice and approach again slowly, and Adrian snaps.
“Get the fuck away from her!” he shouts. “Don’t—”
As soon as Ads returns and hands Chris the tranquilizer gun, he shoots. The dart hits Adrian right in the neck, and everything goes dark.
When you wake up, blinking blearily, Adebayo’s face comes into your field of vision. When you turn your head to the side, Emilia is sitting at your bedside, holding your hand.
“Hey,” she says, sounding a little relieved. “We were worried about you.”
“What—”
“You got shot. Like, three times,” Emilia says. You look around. You’re in the Checkmate infirmary, hooked up to a couple IVs. Blood, some other fluids. There are a few dull aches in your side, your shoulder, but they don’t hurt nearly as bad as they should. They must have given you the good painkillers.
Your brain still feels a little foggy, though. You try to remember what happened, and it comes back in snapshots. The ambush. The pain. Adrian shouting for you.
Clarity washes over you in an instant, and you sit up in bed, wincing as the movement irritates your injuries in a way even the painkillers can’t mask. “Fuck—”
“What is it, what do you need?” Emilia asks. “Stay down, I’ll get it—”
“Adrian,” you say. You don’t know why, but something inside you wants him, right now, more than anything or anyone else. “Where is Adrian? He was—”
Emilia and Adebayo exchange a look. You glance between them worriedly.
“Is he okay?” you ask, almost afraid to hear the answer, your heart sinking. You got hurt, you weren’t there to take care of him if he got hurt.
“He’s going to be,” Emilia says. “He’s…sick.”
You frown, unimpressed. “Bullshit. Stop fucking lying to my face, please. Adrian has a healing factor. He doesn’t get sick.”
Adebayo sighs. “She’s gonna find out eventually, Em. There’s no point.”
“Find out what?” you demand, starting to get panicky. “If there’s something wrong with Adrian, I want to know, and I want to know now. He’s my best friend, if something happened to him—it’s my fucking job to take care of the pack, and he—”
“While you were unconscious,” Emilia says, “something…unexpected happened.”
“Stop being cryptic and just fucking tell me.”
“Adrian presented,” Ads interrupts, ripping the bandaid off. You jerk back from her like you’ve been slapped.
“Adrian…presented?” you say slowly, your heart pounding against your chest, a pit of dread forming in your stomach. “What do you—”
“He’s spent his entire life thinking he’s a Beta,” Emilia says. “Hell. We all thought he was a Beta.”
“What do you mean? He’s not?”
“Not anymore,” Ads says. “He’s an Alpha.”
You look between the two women in front of you again and let the information sink in. You lay back against the pillows slowly, fidgeting with the edge of the bedsheet nervously. Because this is the kind of thing that could change everything. And the fact that they’re so reluctant to tell you the whole story tells you that it already has.
“Adrian is an Alpha,” you repeat, your voice barely more than a whisper.
“John and I looked into it. Delayed presentation affects less than 1% of the population,” Adebayo continues. “It’s incredibly rare. Usually triggered by the presence of a compatible genetic mate, or a traumatic circumstance.”
Compatible genetic mate. Traumatic circumstance.
“Traumatic circumstance,” you say, a little frantic. “Did he—is he hurt—”
“He’s not hurt,” Emilia says. “All of us got a little banged up. You got the worst of it. When it was over, by the time we got to you, he was freaking the fuck out, radiating Alpha pheromones in waves like I have never seen.”
“You’re telling me Adrian’s life changed overnight because I got shot? Not because of his own traumatic injury, but because of mine?”
The girls are quiet.
“It’s probably more complicated than that,” Ads says softly. “It might be…a little bit of the other thing, too. That’s what me and John are theorizing, anyway. He said—while you were unconscious, he said—you were his.”
A compatible genetic mate. You swallow as you absorb the implication of her words.
“Is he?” you ask, afraid to raise your voice. Afraid to hope. To make it real. “Is he mine, Em?”
“Listen—” Emilia starts.
“Is he mine, Em?” you repeat, your throat tight. “Is Adrian my Alpha?”
Emilia stares at you.
“I think so,” she says softly. “That’s what triggered it. You were hurt, and you’re his, and something inside him recognized that you needed him. He was—he was a mess. He probably still is. When you got hurt, if Chris wasn’t there to keep him in check, bring him back from the brink, he might have gone feral. As it is, we had to tranquilize him so I could treat your injuries. He wouldn’t let either of us get anywhere near you.”
You’re quiet for a minute, feeling strangely guilty. That you’re the cause of all this trouble, throwing the pack dynamics out of whack. But there’s no going back, now, and there’s some part of you that hopes—maybe this is a good thing. Maybe this is the best thing. Because haven’t you thought a million times that you’d wished Adrian was an Alpha? That he could be yours?
If Adrian is yours, though—why isn’t he here? Does he not want you in return? But then you think—if Adrian just presented, for the first time—
“He’s in rut, isn’t he?” you whisper worriedly.
“He is,” Emilia says hesitantly, like she doesn’t want to admit it.
It hurts you, a terrible pang in your stomach, to think about Adrian suffering, confused, alone.
“I want to see him.”
“You are in no condition,” Emilia says, “to be near an Alpha going through his first ever rut. Adrian needs time to adjust to his new reality. Introducing an Omega into the equation when he’s already volatile is not a good idea. And you are hurt. You need to heal.”
“He needs me,” you say, your throat tight. You think you might cry. “If it’s true, if he’s mine. I need to be there for him.”
“Chris is with him,” Ads says, reaching for your hand and squeezing. “Adrian will be okay, but—he’s wild and unpredictable right now. You got shot. Multiple times. If you went over there, and he ended up hurting you worse, imagine how guilty he would feel.”
“He would never hurt me,” you say, and you know, in your heart, that it’s true.
“You can believe that all you want. I’m not willing to risk it. After he’s…over the hill,” Emilia says, “then you can see him.”
It’s firm. It’s final. And—she is your pack Alpha. What she says goes.
“Can I at least talk to him?” you ask, quiet and nervous. “Please?”
“Let me talk to Chris,” Emilia says. “See how he’s doing. And then maybe we can arrange that. For now, you focus on getting better. You scared the shit out of us. All of us. So let us take care of you, okay?”
You nod, and she squeezes your hand. But you bite your lip and think about how the one person who you really wish was here to take care of you is the one you’re not allowed to see right now.
When Adrian wakes up, he’s sweating buckets, half-naked, strapped down to a mattress in…he looks around. Chris’s old trailer? There’s a sharp, stabbing pain in his gut, and his head is pounding, and god, why is everything so bright and loud?
“What the fuck,” he pants.
“You’re awake,” Chris says. “Good. Sorry I had to tranq you, bro, but you were acting a little crazy.”
“You—what?” Adrian says, bewildered, still a little out of it, trying to blink away the haze of whatever Chris apparently drugged him with.
Then, in a flash of clarity, he remembers what happened. He remembers you, bleeding out in his arms, and the pain in his gut intensifies tenfold, and just the thought of you makes him crazy with want. He needs you. He doesn’t know why, but he does. Instantly, he starts pulling at the restraints.
“Where is she Chris get me the fuck out of here I am not fucking around I will fucking kill you I need her is she hurt—”
“Calm down,” Chris says in his Alpha command voice. Then he remembers it won’t work now. He softens his voice and tries again. “Hey, calm down, Adrian. She’s okay. I promise you, she’s okay.”
Adrian looks at him, still squirming, but present enough to be puzzled, because Chris’s command did not do a damn thing. And a little bit pissed, because he hates it when his best friend uses his Alpha voice on him, like he’s a fucking kindergartender.
“Where is she?” Adrian repeats, low and growling, a command of his own, fueled by the extra power of his recent presentation, the lingering feral energy he can’t contain, and—it works. It shouldn’t, but it works.
“She’s with Emilia and Ads, at her apartment,” Chris says, the words spilling out of him like he can’t stop them. His eyes are wide, his mouth dangling open. “Did you just fucking—use your Alpha voice on me?”
Adrian pauses tugging at his restraints to look at Chris like he’s insane. Because he is. “Use my what? I—dude, why the fuck am I tied to the bed? Why did you bring me here?”
“Because you’re in rut,” Chris snaps. “And I don’t trust you not to go chasing after her. You are out of control right now. And I brought you here because I figured you wouldn’t want your mom around for this.”
Adrian flushes a furious red color. “I am not in rut. I’m a Beta. You know I am.”
“I thought I did,” Chris says. “I believe you thought that too. And then yesterday happened. And you are in rut, and you are an Alpha.”
“I’m not a fucking Alpha!”
“It happens,” Chris says. “People present late in life.”
“I am thirty-four! I would know—”
But even as he says it, he cuts himself off. Because he remembers—his alternate self was an Alpha. So maybe, just maybe, he is too. He just didn’t know.
And selfishly, he thinks…maybe, just maybe, this is his chance. To have you. To love you, the way he’s always wanted.
“You’ve always been a late bloomer, Thimble.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Adrian says, but he swallows roughly. At least, he tries to. His mouth is too dry. “Can you fucking untie me please? God, I’m so fucking thirsty. And itchy, and uncomfortable, and horny, Jesus Christ—”
“Yeah,” Chris says. “Because you’re in rut, Adrian. Your first one. Historically, the worst one you will ever experience. So if I untie you, you have to promise me that you will not run after her. I will tranquilize you again. I know you want her. Hell, she probably wants you. But she’s hurt. She’s in no shape to help you through this.”
“You said she was okay,” Adrian says, panicky. “How—how bad is it?” His breath feels short, his hands are shaking. A terrible, awful guilt sinks in his stomach, adding to the pile of a dozen other terrible sensations he’s feeling right now. “It’s—it’s my fault, I was supposed to protect her. I convinced you to let her go on the mission in the first place. Fuck, Chris, is she okay I need her please—”
“Fuck,” Chris mutters. “I wanted you to be in better shape before—but—goddamnit.” He pulls out his phone and dials while Adrian practically hyperventilates in front of him, trying desperately to yank himself out of the ties holding him down. He tries to bite at the ropes with his teeth, the muscles in his neck straining, but he can’t reach them.
“Emilia,” Chris says. “Put her on the phone.” A pause. “Yeah. I know we said we were gonna wait. But he’s freaking the fuck out. He needs to talk to her.”
“Please,” Adrian says. He tries to get up, but he’s still tied down. “Please, please, I need—”
Chris puts the phone on speaker.
“Adrian?” Your voice rings through the room, and Adrian whimpers audibly at the sound. He closes his eyes and throws his head back roughly against the pillows, trying to take a few settling breaths. You’re alive. You’re well enough to talk to him, at least.
It should make him feel better, but it sends another bolt of agony through him. God, he’s so fucking hard. He wants you so bad. He wants to scent you, he wants to fuck you, he wants, he wants, he wants.
“If I untie you, are you gonna flip?” Chris asks him. Adrian takes a deep breath.
“No,” he says, chest heaving. “Please, just let me talk to her, Chris. Please.”
“You have him tied up?” you cry. “He’s not a fucking animal, Chris!”
“He was borderline,” Chris says seriously. “You were unconscious. You didn’t see how close to feral he got.”
“Untie him,” you demand, and Adrian’s heart skips a beat, hearing you so fiercely defending him.
Chris cuts the ropes, and Adrian instantly reaches for the phone.
“No funny business,” Chris orders, holding it just out of reach, and Adrian starts begging.
“Please give me the phone please let me talk to her please Chris I promise I won’t do anything I just need to talk to her—”
Chris tosses him the phone. Adrian snatches it out of the air, takes the call off speaker, and brings it right up to his ear. When he says your name, it’s shaky, nervous, but also a little bit relieved.
“Adrian,” you say, and half the tension leaves his body, just hearing you say his name, all soft and concerned. Then it roars back as another bolt of pain shoots through him, because—god, he wants you so bad, and he can’t have you right now. A pained noise escapes him, and you must hear it, because you ask worriedly, “Talk to me, Adrian, are you okay?”
“Am I—” He cuts himself off and laughs humorlessly, hissing through the pain. “Am I okay? You—you got shot. I saw you go down, you were—you were bleeding out in my arms. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” you assure him. “All patched up, at least. It hurts like a bitch. But I can take painkillers for that. You…you can’t. If what they’re saying is true. Are you really…”
Adrian rubs a hand over his face, wiping the sweat from his brow. God, he’s so hot, but even as he thinks it, he shivers.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” he says. His voice is hoarse, and he feels like he might cry, he’s so overwhelmed. “It hurts.”
“What’s happening is your body wants you to find something to knot and breed,” Chris says bluntly. “So your sex drive is through the roof. For the next four days, at least, you’re going to be an irritable, horny asshole, and probably feel generally like shit. It’s gonna suck ass, because you don’t have an Omega or a bonded partner to help you through it. Headaches, feverish, dehydrated, oversensitive. This is basic high school sex ed, dude, you should know this.”
“I never paid attention to any of that Alpha shit, because I thought it didn’t apply to me,” Adrian says hoarsely. “How—why is this happening?”
“It’s my fault,” you say, your voice soft and regretful.
“No,” Adrian says, because he hates the thought that you’re blaming yourself for this. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is,” you say, sniffling, and Adrian thinks you might be crying. It breaks his heart. “I’m so sorry. Ads said—she said that late presentation can be triggered by compatible genetic mates and traumatic events, and I got hurt, and it was just—both, at the same time—”
“Mates?” Adrian croaks. “Are you saying—”
But before he even asks, he knows. He remembers the way he felt, holding you in his arms. He feels it again now, his lungs constricting, knuckles going white, pupils dilating as a wave of it washes over him. Possession. Want. Need.
summary: you get a migraine after work and adrian has made it his job to take care of you. (very brief plot)
minors dni! tags: puppy play, collaring/ leashing, cunnilingus, brief commands, soft dom!reader, adrian calls reader ma'am and miss, reader calls adrian pup, pet, and good boy, lots of praise from reader
note: if you ain't a freak this ain't for you baby boo
it was what it felt like an excruciatingly long day at checkmate HQ. you were almost kind of a pity hire but the team knew that you had the gumption to know what you were doing anyways. adrian's begging totally didn't have anything to do with it either. it did. you've had many secretary jobs before—this one in particular was way different. emails upon emails were nothing but the status reports on the team in which you had to report back to harcourt about was a different world. and oh, my god—was harcourt riding up your asshole about whatever you were doing wrong the entire. fucking. day. not to mention the migraine that was shanking your temples. this whole thing was still new to you as much as it was to adrian. your boyfriend was just as frustrated as you were and from how you were acting today–he was getting that feeling from you too. adrian studies you a lot and whenever you had days like this he caught on pretty quickly.
adrian was waiting patiently at home since his shift ended early. your head is pulsing and ears are ringing when you arrive after. it was late and this migraine was killing you. as you set down all of your things you mumble all sorts of obscenities to yourself.
adrian perks up and studies you with a tilt of his head. "you okay, babe?"
"shhhh." you silenced. "hurts." you point to your head and wince.
"oh, okay. gotcha." he whispers. he gets up from his place on the couch and walks to the bathroom to fetch you some ibuprofen from the medicine cabinent; making his way into the kitchen he grabs a water bottle from the bottom drawer of the fridge.
adrian hands you the items with a soft smile. "here. you need anything else, sweetheart? i can get you your pjs and put on some soothing music–y'know like the water one that sounds like it's raining in the ocean?" your boyfriend explains lowly with a sparkle in his eye while talking with his hands. you can't help but think he's describing that one song that's in the background of the ocean themed stimboards he always shows you.
"mm-mmm." you shake your head, washing the pills down with a gulp of water. "no music. less talking." you sighed, massaging your temple.
your boyfriend walks towards you in a sort of suave manner with that smirk of his which makes you want to either slap or kiss him depending on the tone he's about to use.
"maybe you just need some pleasure to distract you from the pain." "let me take care of you, miss." adrian says in a serious cadence. he slowly inches down as he caresses your sides—making his way to his knees. and god was the eye contact between you and adrian intense. this is serious business for him. adrian takes off your shoes one by one and kisses the top of both of your feet. a gesture to remind you that he worships every part of you.
within a moments time you've moved to the bedroom. you are sat on the bed and adrian's gotten on all fours in front of you with a teal leash and collar in his mouth. he's dressed you in your favorite pajama set only to undress a part of you again. adrian chase—always so desperate to please and willing. you pet and scruff up your boyfriend's hair before taking the teal colored items from his mouth. "who's a good boy?" you coo, pinching his chin to look up at you. "me. i'm a good boy, miss." both of your voices are low and the whine in adrian's is almost soothing enough to cure migraines months into the future. you smile at him with a click of the collar and the snap of the connection from the hook.
usually the leash is only for when adrian gets ahead of himself in which he often does; it grounds him. for right now he's in control of what he wants to do with you. at least until he gets on your nerves. "kissies." you command softly. adrian stands on his knees–pecking you on your lips and showering your face with kisses. "oh, such a good boooy." you pet his curls. if you asked him to jump he'd simply do it and/ or ask how high if he was feeling "bratty" that day. "scoot up, miss. let me make you feel better, hm?" you nod and do just that. while making room for him on the bed you tuck a pillow under your head. adrian gets to work immediately by getting up and kissing you soothingly in between your thighs and lower abdomen—positioning himself on his stomach as he massages your hips. he sinks into your already soaked cunt with a hum, slowly sucking and kissing it. "mm.. tastes so good." he moans, gazing at you with blown out puppy dog eyes. adrian licks a long stripe from entrance to clit—lapping and sucking with a continuous pattern for a hefty few minutes as you get wetter and wetter until you are soaking the blanket from underneath you. "i'm your pet. fuuuck, i'm your pet." adrian whines as he's dry humping the mattress in his grey sweatpants. yeah, you know the ones where adrian constantly catches you "catching print" when he wears them. whoops! you look over and catch adrian humping the mattress; you tug on the leash. "no cumming until i do. got it, pup?" your voice stern and low. "nghhh, yes, ma'am. sorry." adrian whimpers.
by now your head is fuzzy and the ringing in your ears from the migraine has died down. best distraction ever while the ibuprofen kicks in. "did you know that a dog's mouth is cleaner than a human's?" your boyfriend muffled in between your thighs, voicing a smile. you sigh with a hint of annoyance. "okay so, that's definitely not true." your brow furrows. "it's not like yours is any better either, adrian. you've got a dirty mouth, don'tcha?" you tease, gripping his hair and forcing him to look at you—lips swollen, mouth soaked and all. "hey, i'm right!" adrian whispers with a rasp of hurt in his tone. "well, i'm not fact checking. keep going before my migraine gets worse, pet."
the blonde groans and kisses the top of your clit with an eye roll. he'll definitely be arguing with you about this later.
adrian begins lapping and tonguing your entrance—panting and humming with pure ecstasy. "nnnghhh. mmmlahhlahh. ahhh." he whimpers and moans. the lewdness of adrian's sounds could genuinely put you into a fucking coma if you weren't careful. "ahhh, that's it. you're doing amazing, pup." you moan, tugging on the leash with one hand while pulling on his curls in the other. "i'm your good boy. mmm, always." "just. ahhla. for laahaala. you. mmnnghh." and then he feels you clench around his tongue, keeping his head steady with your hand in his hair. you are so close and he knows it with how much your back is arching.
you tug onto his curls and move his mouth to the direction of your clit. "m' so fucking close, baby. please. so good for me. s' proud." you whine. the praise is almost too much for adrian—his hips rut faster into the mattress as his lips latch onto your incredibly swollen clit, working himself up to catch your orgasm. adrian continues the same pattern as he did earlier, rutting into the mattress as you get closer and closer. "just like that, addy." you sigh, petting his hair. it doesn't take much until you both are at the peak of your climaxes. you tug on his leash and pull him close into your cunt as you cum all over his face. "mmm... thlump. thlump. can i cum now?" "oh, please." adrian whimpers as he tastes and cleans you up. "mhmm." you hum an answer as you continue petting and caressing him, letting your boyfriend continue his lapping and licking. "thank you. mmnnnghh, thank you, miss." now he's making a mess in his sweatpants, cumming in the soft and ever so comfortable fabric. "that's my good boy." you purr, gasping for air as your own everlasting overstimulation and intense orgasm makes your eyes water. goddamn was that migraine you had nothing but a memory now.
you unclip the leash from adrian's collar and set it down beside you. after adrian cleans you up—he's already crawling towards you, laying by your side as his head nuzzles into your chest. "did i do a good job?" adrian smiles and showers you with kisses, twirling your hair through his fingers. "mhm." you scrunch your nose, messing with your boyfriend's hair and pinching his cheek. if the 11th street kids ever found adrian like this—the embarrassment he'd feel would be enough to kill him. he wastes absolutely no time at all as he reaches over you and grabs his phone from the nightstand. "look. it'll relax you, babe." he says, practically shoving his phone in your face with a video on his phone. yeah, you know the one. adrian has you watch the same ocean themed stimboard he was talking about with the tingly music. you aren't the biggest fan of the ocean persay but you would be lying if you said that the visuals weren't soothing.
after the video is finished playing adrian pampers you some more. he suggests showering with you so that he can clean you off himself. he's the type of partner to think that if you do anything yourself when you are feeling sick that you'll "die."
synopsis: Adrian likes to yap a lot. Usually you don't mind. You just really, really wish he would stop yapping about spiders.
tags/warnings: pure fluff, humor, arachnophobic!reader, quiet/shy reader, Adrian talks too much, Judomaster has a pet tarantula
word count: 2.8k
Currently working on the Vegas wedding bonus episode of i don't want to miss you like this and also an omegaverse!Adrian x reader multichap fic but wanted to provide something in the meantime <3 please enjoy. As always thank you for the beta @embeanwrites!
Adrian never shuts the fuck up.
Most of the time, you find it endearing. You’re not particularly chatty, yourself, so…it’s kind of nice, to have someone constantly filling in the silence. To know that he’ll ramble on for ages about anything and everything, and you don’t have to feel pressured to contribute to the conversation.
There’s also the fact that he’s got a nice voice, and he’s pleasant to look at. Half the time, you’re not even listening to what he says, just staring at his mouth and daydreaming. But that’s beside the point. You could listen to Adrian talk all day. You do, a lot of the time, because once everyone else in the office realized that you didn’t mind it, they started shoving him off onto you, constantly.
You became quick friends. He yaps, you listen to him yap. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
You just really wish he would stop yapping about fucking spiders.
You do your best to tune him out when he brings them up, but he loves the fucking things, and he talks about them all the time. Whenever a tiny one manages to make its way into the office, someone calls over Adrian to deal with it, because he will happily trap it in a cup and bring it outside, chatting to it the entire time. He talks to them like little buddies.
Ads found one just this morning crawling across her keyboard, and summoned Adrian to deal with it, and now that you’re on lunch, he’s rambling about his spider rescue of the day.
“He was so cute!” Adrian says. “Just a tiny, itsy-bitsy guy, like the one from the nursery rhyme. He had thin little legs, but he was quick. I almost didn’t catch him before he scrambled off!”
“I’m glad you got him,” you say weakly, and you mean it, because if you knew there was a spider loose in the office right now, you might have had to feign a stomach virus to go home early.
“The little guys are so adorable,” Adrian says. “I mean, not nearly as cool as the big ones. Did you know—the biggest spider in the world eats birds?”
“That is not fucking true,” says Judomaster as he comes into the break room, making an immediate break for the snack cabinet where you keep a stash of Flaming Hot Cheetos in stock for him. “It might be called a Goliath birdeater but it does not actually eat birds. It eats other bugs and worms. Sometimes frogs. They liquify their insides and suck them dry like vampires.”
Your stomach churns, even as Adrian’s eyes light up with excitement.
“Vampire spiders?”
“Spiders can fly, too,” Fleury reminds him on his way out of the room. “Using electricity. And make milk.”
“Right!” Adrian says. “We learned that from a spider facts article! Even though I already knew that, actually, I’m a spider expert. I totally knew about the vampire spiders too, by the way. But—I didn’t know that you can buy spider milk at Whole Foods, did you know that?”
You’re still stuck on the fact that spiders can fly, and liquify the insides of their prey, two facts which you really did not need to know, because now you’re going to have a nightmare about a giant, flying, blood-sucking spider.
“That is also definitely not true,” Judomaster says bluntly.
“Fleury said it was,” Adrian argues.
“He’s as much of a moron as you are, then,” Rip says, munching on a Cheeto.
“Why do you know so much about spiders, anyway?” Adrian grumbles.
“Because,” Rip says. “I have a pet tarantula.”
Adrian stops, his jaw hitting the floor. “No you do not.”
“Uh, yeah, I do.”
“Please let me meet your pet spider,” Adrian begs. “I take back everything I’ve ever said about you being tiny and annoying. Oh my god, what’s his name? Your spider? What’s his name?”
“Her name is Ruth.”
“Oh my gosh, I’m sorry,” Adrian says. “I should not be assuming your spider’s gender. That is so not feminist of me—”
“Females are bigger,” Rip shrugs. “And they live a lot longer.”
“I totally knew that,” says Adrian, who absolutely did not know that.
“You have…a tarantula…named Ruth?” you say faintly.
“CanImeethercanImeethercanImeether—”
“I’ll bring her to work tomorrow,” Rip agrees.
“FUCK yes,” Adrian cheers.
You feel your hands start trembling, and you move them under the table to hide it.
You work black ops. You cannot admit to your coworkers that you have debilitating arachnophobia.
Looks like you will, in fact, be faking that stomach virus, because if you showed up to work tomorrow and a tarantula crawled across your desk, you might actually throw up everywhere, or have a heart attack and die.
“You okay?” Ads asks you as she sits down next to you. “You look like you’re gonna be sick.”
Apparently, you don’t even have to try that hard to soft-launch your fake illness. You try not to look grateful that someone else started your little white lie for you.
“Don’t feel very good,” you say weakly. “I think I’ll go home early.”
Ads feels your cheeks with the back of your hand. “You are a little warm.”
Yeah, from embarrassment, you think. Adrian’s excited smile quickly drops into a concerned frown.
“I can drive you,” he offers immediately. “You shouldn’t be driving if you’re sick, it’s dangerous.”
“I’ll be okay, Ade,” you say softly. “It’s just a headache.”
“What if you’re having a stroke! Or you have a brain tumor! Or—”
“Or she’s tired, and she needs some sleep,” Emilia says as she enters the room. “Go home, kid. Take tomorrow, too, if you need.”
“Thanks,” you say softly. You stand up slowly, and Adrian scrambles out of his seat to help you up.
“Let me walk you to your car, at least, and carry your stuff,” he says, taking your hand and walking you through the office, making a pit stop at your workstation. “Just your bag at your desk, right?”
“Adrian, you don’t have to—”
“I want to,” he says. “Please.”
“Okay,” you give in. “Yeah. Just my bag. Thank you.”
He holds the door for you as you walk out to the parking lot, and opens your car door, too, tossing your stuff into the passenger seat.
“Do you need anything else? I can run to the store and get you some medicine or soup or ginger ale or—”
You feel terrible for making him worry. He frowns as he looks down at you, rambling off a grocery list of things you might want or need, and you just—hug him. He stops talking and wraps his arms around your shoulders immediately, returning your embrace.
He’s never touchy with anyone else, but you are, and he’s never minded. You listen to him talk too much, he accepts your affection. When both of your cups are spilling, the other one is there to catch the overflow.
“I promise, if I need anything, I will call you,” you say, your nose smushed into the fabric of his shirt.
“Okay,” Adrian says quietly, and when you look up at him, he pats you on the cheek fondly. His hand is so big it covers almost your entire face. “Feel better. Quick. Economos doesn’t like it when I talk too much. He’s a sorry placeholder for you.”
You smile.
The next day, you wake up early and stare at the ceiling for a long time, thinking about whether you’ll be able to suck it up and go into work. Then you think about how much shit you’ll get from the entire team when they find out about your stupid phobia, and you shoot Emilia a text and tell her you’ve got a fever.
Not a minute after the start of the work day, Adrian texts you.
Harcourt says you’re still sick?????? Are you dying??????????????
Please don’t do that it would ruin my life actually 🧜🧜🧜
You feel a little guilty for making him worry.
I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about me. I hope you enjoy meeting Ruth today.
NOOOOOOOOOOO you’re gonna miss Ruth 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
While you might not have Adrian yapping away in your ear, he texts you. All day. Nonstop. Your phone buzzes, and buzzes, and buzzes, like he’s filtering his stream of consciousness right through to you, riddled with far too many emojis. There’s no such thing as an inside thought with him.
You have a fever, right?
I’m googling your symptoms 🔎
According to 18th century witches, you might need to try bloodletting
Do you have any leeches? 🐛🐛🐛
I could probably get some for you at a pet store let me look it up
The office is freezing I think it’s because you’re not here 🥶
Like one less person’s body heat, you know?
But idk it’s never that cold when Ads is out sick
You just make me feel warm I guess
That’s weird I should probably get that checked out 🤔
Harcourt is yelling at me for being on my phone ☹️
You snort at that one. Get off your phone, then!
But I’m talking to you!!
The updates are nonsensical and constant, just like Adrian’s usual ramblings throughout the work day. You start to look forward to whatever batshit crazy thing he’s going to say next.
Then comes the jump scare—Adrian texts you a picture of him holding Rip’s tarantula, and you shriek and nearly drop your phone. The thing is massive, taking up Adrian’s entire large palm, and—you felt his hand on your face only yesterday. That spider is literally as big as your head.
“Fuck no,” you whisper furiously, and you instantly delete the picture. But Adrian just keeps chatting, text after text coming through one after the other.
She is so friendly and nice and fuzzy
Maybe Judomaster doesn’t actually suck that bad
But I asked him if Ruth could stay in the office and he said no 😕
This is still like the best day of my life
Well
It would be
If you were here too
Something about that last message gives you pause. You have no idea how to respond, so you just…don’t. You let it sit for a few hours, and take your impromptu “sick” day to get some chores done, like tackling the pile of laundry that’s been building up in the corner of your bedroom for an embarrassingly long time, and just…relax. Plop down on the couch to watch some mindless television, take a midmorning nap to catch up on sleep after your last long, exhausting mission.
Around noon, you’re scrolling through a food delivery app, considering what to order for lunch, when you’re startled by a loud banging on your front door.
“What the fuck,” you mutter, and when you get up and look through the peep hole, you’re even more confused. You swing the door open. “Adrian?”
His fist is still raised in midair, where he was pounding on the door, and he looks at you with wide eyes. “Hi!”
“Hi,” you say slowly. “What…are you doing here?”
“I came to check on you!” he says brightly, holding up a brown paper bag. “It’s lunch time, I brought you some soup!”
“You left work and drove all the way over here to check on me?”
“Harcourt told me I could,” he says. “I think I was getting on her nerves. I thought about just climbing up your fire escape and peeking through your window, but I decided that would be creepy.”
“Good call.”
“So this is me, uh, checking on you. Making sure you’re alive. I mean, I knew you were alive, because you’ve been responding to my text messages, obviously. Except the last one! About Ruth! Did you see the picture? I thought maybe you were sleeping, I know you’re not feeling good—”
“I—what—” You pause. “There’s a tarantula at work, and you’re here instead?”
“Well, you’re more important than the tarantula,” Adrian says. “She was cool, and all, but you’re way cooler. Listen—I was in line at the deli waiting for this soup, for like, forever, and I have to pee so bad can I please use your bathroom—”
You laugh. “Oh my god, yes, why didn’t you say anything! Go!”
Adrian shoves the paper bag into your arms and makes a beeline down your hallway.
You take the soup into the kitchen and place it on the counter, then pull out some bowls.
“Are you gonna stay for lunch?” you call down the hall.
“Sure,” he says. “Oh my god, look at you!”
“Look at me?” you ask, and you look up as Adrian comes into the kitchen holding one of the tiny paper cups you keep on the bathroom counter. He shoves it toward your face.
You shriek and leap backwards.
“Oh my god oh my god get it out of here did you find that in my bathroom I am never going to be able to go in there again fuck—”
Adrian just looks at you, bewildered. “What—”
“The SPIDER TAKE IT AWAY—”
His eyes go wide when he realizes what’s going on. “Oh! Okay.” He doesn’t say anything, just immediately walks to the front door and lets the spider loose in the grassy area near the parking lot, several yards away, while you watch, tense, from the window.
When he comes back inside, you’re still clutching the windowsill, and he’s looking at you curiously.
“You work black ops,” he observes.
“Uh huh.”
“And…”
“And I’m afraid,” you admit. “Of…spiders.”
Adrian stares at you.
“You can’t tell anyone,” you say quickly.
“Why?” he asks, confused.
“Because Chris will call me a pussy until the end of time if he finds out about this! I’ll never, ever live it down—”
“No, I mean—why are you afraid of spiders?” he asks, genuinely. “Spiders are so cool!”
“They are not cool. They are freaky looking and apparently some of them can fly and liquify the insides of their prey and that is fucked up—”
“How come you never said anything?” Adrian says, frowning. “I talk about spiders all the time. I would have stopped if I knew it was stressing you out, or making you uncomfortable.”
“It’s embarrassing,” you whine. “I don’t want anyone to know. That’s why I called out today. I’m not sick, I just couldn’t be in the office at the same time as Rip’s tarantula. I wouldn’t have been able to keep it together.”
“I won’t tell,” Adrian says. “I promise.”
“Thank you,” you say gratefully. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m afraid of ghosts,” Adrian offers. “And demons. I generally do not fuck with paranormal or witchy shit. I think it’s terrifying. Chris thinks it’s goofy. I’m just trying to make sure a blood curse doesn’t fall upon myself or my family.”
It’s your turn to stare. “O…kay. Thank you? For sharing.”
“No problem,” he says easily. “Everyone is afraid of something silly. And I will protect you from the spiders, if you protect me from the ghosts and demons.”
You smile. “That sounds like a deal.” He grins. “Do you mean it? You think I’m cooler than Rip’s tarantula?”
“What is Ruth gonna do to protect me from the demons?” Adrian scoffs. “Her brain is so tiny. Not that spiders aren’t smart, but—” He cuts himself off. “Sorry. We just established the fact that you don’t like spiders, so I’m gonna shut the fuck up about spiders.”
“You can talk about spiders all you want,” you say softly. “As long as you stick around to take care of any creepy-crawlies for me.”
“I can do that! I’ll need to run home and grab some stuff from my mom’s, though, if I’m gonna move in and be your spider bodyguard. You don’t have a guest bedroom, though, right? I guess I could sleep on the couch—”
Your eyes widen, and your face goes hot. “Um—wha—I did not mean move in. I mean. You’re skipping over a couple really big steps there, Ade. Maybe…we start with dinner?”
“Dinner?” Adrian repeats, confused, looking in the direction of your kitchen and pointing. “But I just brought you lunch—”
“I mean,” you interrupt. “Dinner, like. A date.”
Now Adrian’s eyes widen. “Oh! Oh. I would…like that. Yes. We should. Get dinner.” He looks at you with blatant shock. “You really want to go on a date with me? I never shut up.”
“Well, yeah,” you say shyly. “I like it when you talk.”
“I like you,” Adrian says. “When you talk, or when you don’t talk and you just listen to me, or you hug me. I don’t like hugs from other people but you do it right. You don’t squeeze too tight, or make me feel trapped—”
He stops talking when you do just that—hug him just the right way, gentle and firm, not too tight. He pats your head, like he always does, and he smiles.
synopsis: After breaking up with Adrian Chase, you find your dating life thwarted at every turn by Evergreen's own Vigilante.
pairing: adrian chase x reader
tags: stalker vigilante, possessive & jealous adrian (wait maybe this also works for your suggestion @genuinelygemini!), that being said - generally lots of antics and humor, angst, fluff, (but it's adrian so there's still murder), reader kind of matches vij's freak, brief sexual references, language, attempted mugging, gun violence
word count: 9.1k (sorry I got carried away)
note: (Based on this request from @danversxwasabi <3) as I'm not sure what's going on with the tumblr reblog/comments/notes situation this is a reminder that all my work is also cross-posted on my AO3 (I'm actually going to be changing my username there to match here soon!)
You were fairly certain that Vigilante was cockblocking you.
If you were being technical, your suspicions had started a few months ago, when you’d gotten back on the market after a particularly painful breakup with –
Adrian Chase had been…Adrian Chase had been the perfect boyfriend. Until he wasn’t.
You’d met just over a year ago, when Adrian waltzed into your coffee shop just before closing, a gleam in his eye and a demand for “something that’ll keep me awake. For like, a really, really long time. I want to get punched in the face with caffeine.”
It was said with the particular intensity of a man who definitely didn’t need caffeine ever, but you’d indulged him anyway.
“Have you tried cocaine?” you’d asked, a small smirk on your lips.
“What? No! Cocaine is like…” he’d lowered his voice and leaned over the counter, scowling. “Very illegal.”
Then he leaned back abruptly as if burned, and looked you up and down. “Why? Do you do cocaine?”
“Not my scene,” you’d replied, your turn to lean forward conspiratorially. “But I can make you something just as efficient. We’ll have you practically vibrating out of that little dad outfit of yours in no time.”
And that had been all it’d taken. Six shots of espresso and a criminal amount of vanilla syrup over ice with milk. You’d expected to see his face plastered on the morning news for a caffeine overdose. Instead, he became a regular, always in right before closing. Sometimes he’d stay and chat with you until the shop was closed up for the evening and then he’d insist on walking you to your car.
Which became you two sitting in your car and talking for hours.
Which, one particularly cold evening, became you two making out in your car. (You’d finally had to be the one to initiate - Adrian couldn’t pick up on a goddamn signal if his life depended on it.)
Adrian decided you were boyfriend and girlfriend after that, always said with a beam of pride and like it was one big mashed up word: “boyfriendgirlfriend”. As if he was afraid if he didn’t say it fast enough that would be the exact amount of time you’d need to break up with him. You weren’t sure how much say you’d actually had in the matter of becoming boyfriendgirlfriend, but it was weirdly nice, actually. After the last several years of fuckboys and ghosting and “not putting labels on things”. You’d had a gnarly past with dating - you’d probably be a serious contender for Guinness World Record for Most Times Someone Had Been Cheated On. And Adrian knew that. And Adrian Chase was built different.
Until he wasn’t.
At first, that was a good thing.
Sure, he was obsessed with you in a way that was sometimes vaguely disconcerting, but he loved you. Hard. You weren’t sure he knew any other way. He loved his friends hard, too. They were basically all a package deal. You never quite understood how they all became friends? They were like a random grab bag of people flung together by circumstances that were entirely unclear to you, no matter how many times one of them gave you a half-assed explanation.
And really, the problem with Adrian Chase had been a slow build. The issue had always been there, it just became more and more prominent over the year you were together until there was simply no ignoring it.
He had been hiding something from you.
You’d never confirmed he was cheating, not like you had with all the others. There was no smoking gun: no incriminating texts accidentally sent to you, no “hey girlie” DM from some stranger, no friend who’d seen him at the club making out with someone else. There was just...something. Something not right.
He’d go radio silent for long stretches of time, which was uncharacteristic of a man who often sent you over 100 texts a day. He’d be evasive about what he was up to when he wasn’t with you or at work. Once, you’d gone to Fennel Fields to drop off his jacket that he’d left at your apartment when he left “for work” only to find he wasn’t scheduled at the middling Italian restaurant at all.
The final straw had been when you’d woken up in the middle of the night to find his side of your bed empty. He didn’t come back for three days.
Then he’d shown up at your door in the middle of the night, soaking wet from the rain, his eyes brimming with tears, a set of scratches down his cheek. He looked like some cat that had come skulking back to its owner after discovering the alleycat life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
And you’d hated that his pained expression made you feel anything at all. That your heart squeezed tight when you looked at him. That his choked, desperate pleas had been almost convincing. But you’d learned your lesson the hard way in the past and you weren’t willing to repeat your mistakes. The risk of Adrian breaking your heart all over again was insurmountable.
Worse still was the fact that the anger never came - only the sorrow and the loneliness. You’d stayed awake for nights after, wondering if you’d made the wrong decision. Because Adrian wasn’t like the others…right? He’d adored you. Worshipped you, even. The way he looked at you like you hung the moon and stars…
Either way, he wasn’t being honest with you. You had to hold tight to that certainty.
Adrian Chase: i’m so sorry please forgive me
Adrian Chase: i can’t explain but I promise i’d never hurt you
So you’d spent an entire weekend drinking Three Buck Chuck (you didn’t give a flying fuck if inflation made it $4.49, it was still $3 in your heart) and repeatedly washing every fabric in your apartment until none of it smelled even remotely like Adrian Chase. You’d stood numbly over the washing machine, bottle in hand, and willed yourself not to cry.
If only it were so easy to wash your brain clean.
Unknown Number (Possibly: Adrian Chase): you were right to break up with me
Unknown Number (Possibly: Adrian Chase): i won’t bother you again
But time heals all wounds, right? And time was certainly making a valiant effort at it.
Your best friend had made you re-download Hinge, your coworkers at the coffee shop had all consulted on your profile, and you were officially back on the market after much protest and turmoil. Of course, dating would require your heart to be “in it”, which it certainly was not. But some casual dating to take your mind off of things surely couldn’t go amiss.
That was, of course, until Vigilante showed up.
The first time seemed like pure coincidence.
It just so happened that Vigilante was in a foot chase with some low level criminal or another and ended up knocking over the outdoor dining table you had been sitting at with your first Hinge date. That could happen to anyone! Especially in godforsaken Evergreen.
In the end, it was actually kind of fortuitous that Vigilante had shattered a perfectly good table in your lap. Your date had turned out to be some kind of red pill loser who listened to Andrew Tate like it was mindful meditation. He had just been going on about “low value females” when glass and ceramic and wood exploded and spared you from another second of any of that bullshit. You were…weirdly grateful to Vigilante?
He stood up from the table, dusted himself off and held out the purse to a woman standing breathless on the sidewalk a few feet away. He kicked the purse thief in the ribs for good measure, waved at you and started to take off.
“Wait!”
You weren’t sure why you said it. You stooped to collect the hunting knife that’d fallen off his…utility belt?...and offered it to him. He came back and reached for the knife, but for some reason your fingers had been unable to let go. At the time you’d chalked it up to some kind of panic response - your brain synapses simply weren’t firing correctly. Shock. Or something. It was only later that the real reason became startlingly clear.
You’d been struck by the odd desire to keep him close.
“Uh…thanks, citizen?” he said with a clumsy attempt to disguise his voice. You released the knife into his grasp unwillingly.
“Why do you sound like that?” you asked, crossing your arms over your chest.
“Like what? I don’t sound like anything. I just sound like me. Vigilante.”
“No,” you replied, shaking your head. “Why are you doing a weird voice? You sound like Yoda swallowed Kermit the Frog.”
“That’s…no I don’t!”
You paused for a long moment, trying to place the vaguely familiar insistence in his tone. “We’ve met before.”
“N-no we haven’t,” he said lowly, a tremble in his voice. “Because I - I would definitely remember meeting you.”
It was strange, how you felt a little dejected that he didn’t remember that night. In his defense, it had been over a year. Probably a little after you and Adrian had originally started to become friends, actually.
You’d been walking home one night and he’d appeared out of nowhere - handed you the earbud you hadn’t realized had fallen out of your pocket about two blocks prior and then just…stayed. Walked you home in a companionable quiet (which you remembered thinking was weird, because all the reports you’d heard and the late night Reddit posts you’d read about him mentioned how chatty he was) and disappeared the moment you were safely in your apartment with the deadbolt slid into place.
At the time you’d thought: he probably did that sort of thing all the time, right?
Of course, now you knew better.
That first date had ended with your date looking back and forth between you and Vigilante, before calling you a “freak bitch” and leaving you splattered in salad dressing with a check to cover.
What, in all likelihood would have technically been the second time Vigilante crashed your date, you’d gotten ghosted instead.
So maybe you decided to have a drink or two while you waited for what had clearly become a total, radio-silent abandonment. And maybe you’d not eaten anything beforehand because it was supposed to be a dinner date. And you’d fucking driven yourself there but your ass would be walking home.
It was probably for the best - you were pretty sure you’d only matched with the ghoster because he had glasses that reminded you of Adrian.
Of course Vigilante was standing in the parking lot when you tripped out the front door. You walked straight past him and straight past your car and you didn’t even bother to look to see if he was following. Somehow, you knew he was.
He fell into step beside you silently, somehow feeling not like a threat, but a gentle comfort. A wordless offer of companionship.
“I imagine you’re not on any dating apps, Vigilante, so you don’t get it, but it’s fucking bleak out here,” you complained. “There are no good men left on this Earth. I finally had one who was good and he still managed to let me down in the end.”
“How?” came the gruff, muffled, accented reply. You stumbled on the uneven sidewalk and your hand flew to his bicep just as his hands wrapped around your waist. You didn’t pull back, you just stared up at him, hoping maybe your drunk self would see something your sober self couldn’t.
“It’s…hard to explain,” you replied, scrunching your brow as you studied his featureless face, head tilted back slightly to look up at him.
“Try me,” he said, his voice painfully soft. For not the first time you wondered what the man under the mask was really like. You reluctantly released your hold on his arm, and, in turn, his fingers drifted away from your waist. You started walking again, weighing whether there was any harm in unburdening your heart to Vigilante.
“Adrian was the first guy I dated who really and truly made me feel loved? Like I never doubted that he adored me. And I think because of that I was willing to overlook some things for a long time. And then suddenly one day I realized he’d disappear a lot, or be vague about where he was or sometimes he was straight up lying to me. And it didn’t matter how much I thought he loved me because his actions proved that maybe I shouldn’t have been so certain,” you explained, really focusing on your words, wondering in the back of your brain if you sounded like a drunk idiot.
When he didn’t say anything, you continued, “I’ve dated more than my fair share of guys who cheated or fucked around and even though I felt so certain Adrian wasn’t like that, there was still this doubt in the back of my mind that overweighed everything else. Maybe he wasn’t cheating but I’d given people the benefit of the doubt in the past and always been sorry in the end. Cheating or not - which, I’ll be honest, I find really hard to believe he was cheating because of the way he’d…um, actually you don’t need to hear about that! Uh, cheating or not, he was keeping something from me.”
Vigilante’s decisive lack of response kept your drunk mouth running. “I think the worst part is I maybe miss him? Or, not maybe, I know I miss him. I think about him all the time even when I try not to. I even miss his quirks – of which he had many, let me tell you! But I guess that’s what happens when you love someone that much. And now I’m worried maybe that was the best it’ll ever get for me and it’s gone and I fucked everything up forever.”
You could feel his gaze on you but you didn’t indulge it. You were too busy thinking about the thing you knew you shouldn’t say, the most painful, stupid, ugly part of it all. “The worst part is that it makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me? That there’s something inherently unlovable about me baked into my DNA or something. Why else would all these guys cheat on me, or lie to me, or whatever? Like there must be something fundamentally wrong with me. I’m the common denominator.”
You felt his gloved hand scrape at your elbow, fingers pressing into the skin firmly.
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” came his quiet reply finally, his voice strangely ragged. You squinted up at him.
“Yeah, well, why would you?” you asked, genuinely confused.
“I…wouldn’t,” he replied slowly, before nodding emphatically.
“Right…”
“Right.”
You weren’t totally sure if he was being confusing or you were just drunk? Maybe both?
You turned and found yourself at your apartment door. You blinked for a moment - you’d been so preoccupied you didn’t even remember marching up the stairs. Wait, did it mean that he did remember walking you home all those months ago? Or you’d just led him right straight there. Again. A total psycho knew where you lived.
“Good night,” he said suddenly in that stupid put-on voice. Your heart leapt into your throat anyway. Were you that desperate?
“Good night, Kermit Yoda,” you taunted, flashing him a smile as you closed the door and you definitely didn’t wobble on your feet. You made an auditory show of dramatically flipping the deadbolt and sliding the chain lock into place.
“Fuck.” You heard him whisper from the other side of the door in a voice that sounded much more real than the one you’d come to know. There was a small thump and you wondered if you looked through the peephole you’d see his forehead resting against the door.
You decided it was better not to know.
You leaned with your back against the door and pulled out your phone. Against your better judgment, you scrolled through your old texts until you found the Unknown Number (Possibly: Adrian Chase) thread that you’d been so good about not looking at. Mostly. You hadn’t had the heart to block him, but you’d deleted his number to remove the temptation. And true to his word he hadn’t bothered you again.
You dragged your thumb along the edge of the screen as you debated. Maybe there would be no harm in just…checking in on him? You were still somehow unaccustomed to the total lack of him in your life after a year that was so full of him. You’d find yourself missing him in tiny ways over and over again, even if you were loathe to admit it. There was a stupid, Adrian Chase sized hole in your heart.
Your other hand drifted into the waistband of your jeans. What if you opened the door and invited Vigilante inside to fill something else of yours? Maybe you could bite into one of those biceps of his and convince him to let you call him Adrian.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. What the fuck was wrong with you? You pulled your hand from your pants, closed your messages and opened Hinge instead.
The second time (ghosting date notwithstanding) was perhaps the strangest of all.
It was quick drinks at a bar downtown before he suggested you two hit the club. You could tell what he was after the moment you’d laid eyes on him, but you didn’t mind. You’d been meaning to fuck Adrian Chase right out of your system (and apparently Vigilante, too) and your date was easy on the eyes, if a little smarmy. You could deal with that if it meant getting railed so hard you forgot your own name. Though, if you were judging by the rhythm of his hips as he grinded against you, you might be out of luck on that front.
“Club’s a front for drug smuggling!” a familiar voice called as it passed you, so casual your brain didn’t process it until a moment later. You barely had time to react before Vigilante was pulling a gun and executing the club owner right in front of everyone. Your mouth dropped open and for a second you swore he was turning back to look at you, like he was looking for your approval.
Then, the club burst into understandable chaos. People went running for the door, shouts filling the room in lieu of music. Someone knocked straight into you and you hit the deck hard. You managed to get yourself onto your knees (the drink-slick floor was not agreeing with your choice of shoewear) when your date’s hand appeared in front of you. You grasped onto it, grateful for your only lifeline, and opened your mouth to thank him when you realized rather suddenly that the hand was gloved and attached to the rest of fucking Vigilante.
“Are you okay?” he asked, sounding strangely breathless.
You yanked your hand out of his and scowled at him. “That was really fucked up.”
“I thought you said drugs weren’t your scene,” he snipped back. Was that some sort of accusation? It felt loaded with a meaning you couldn’t quite parse. The club music was still blasting and you’d just watched Vigilante kill a man in front of your very eyes. Your brain was…not thinking clearly.
Still, it reminded you of something distant. Or someone.
“What?”
“Nothing!” he exclaimed. Then he looked over his shoulder and you both processed that the dead club owner’s security seemed to be getting themselves together, hands reaching into jackets for what you could only imagine were concealed weapons. He spun you around and pushed you towards the door.
“Oh! I ordered you an Uber: silver Honda Civic, license plate JG8566, Jamil has a 4.9 star rating. Get home safe!” he chattered at you before pushing you out the front door and onto the sidewalk. The heavy metal door slammed shut behind you.
The driver of a small Honda Civic waved at you from across the street. He poked his head out the window. “Uber for Vigilante?”
You looked around furtively to see if anyone had heard him and then with a hearty sigh you stepped off the curb.
The third time was the time that really pushed you over the edge.
Your new date had taken you to one of those trendy places-of-the-week that filled a niche so specific you weren’t sure how they sustained a business on “boutique rice pudding”. As it turned out, they didn’t. In fact, it turned out that Rice to Riches was a money laundering scheme.
A money laundering scheme that Evergreen’s own Vigilante had taken upon himself to break up right in the middle of your date. He’d breezed right in the front door, waving at you as he passed. For a moment you presumed you were actively hallucinating. But the sound of a fight in the kitchen had you realizing otherwise. You listened to the sound of fists hitting flesh over and over and by the time your brain was able to properly have the feeling that you should definitely leave, Vigilante was standing at your table.
“Hey!” He was still doing the stupid voice, apparently.
“Hi?”
“So, just a heads up this place was a money laundering front.”
“Okaaaay,” you drawled, uncertain of how you were supposed to respond to that info. “You know, a heads up usually comes before you murder a bunch of people.”
“Oh, I didn’t murder anyone. They’re just uhhhhh out cold. Tied up,” he replied in a way that was utterly unconvincing.
“Jesus Christ,” you muttered. You turned to your date to say something but he was white as a sheet, his fingers still gripping his spoon while his mouth hung open, slack jawed.
“Are you on a date?” he asked flippantly, examining the fingers of his gloves as if he were casually looking at his nails.
“Yes?”
“You sure go on a lot of dates.”
Wait a minute, did Vigilante think you were a slut?
“Three dates is not a lot of dates. And, not that it’s any of your business but…I’m trying to get back out there after a really shitty break up. Is that a fucking crime?”
His sure-fire posture shifted slightly and he crossed his arms over his chest. Your gaze caught on his biceps and suddenly your fingers itched with the memory of them. God damnit. “Maybe it should be.”
Your brow furrowed. Was he fucking pouting? You were indignant, and feeling a little reckless. “Well, then, Vigilante, go on - put that dumbass sword on your back to good use and kill me.”
“Uh…do you two know each other?” your date asked. You blinked at him dumbly - you’d forgotten he was there.
“No!” you and Vigilante snapped at the same time. You stared hard at him, trying to make out anything beyond that stupid red visor of his.
“Look, you seem nice but this has been deeply weird, sooo I’m gonna go,” your date said, but not before taking his rice pudding with him. You couldn’t blame him - for a money laundering scheme the pudding was really good.
You whipped back towards Vigilante as the bell sounded over the front door and the only person with a lick of common sense in the scenario fled the scene.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” you demanded. You clarified before he could shrug it off, “Why are you so hell bent on ruining all my dates?”
He laughed, an awkward, strained sound that devolved into a cough as he clearly tried to disguise the sound. “Um, selfish much?”
“Excuse me?”
“You really think the world revolves around you so much that I’m specifically trying to interrupt your little dates or whatever?” he scoffed, apparently intent on doubling down on his unusual attempt at indifference. “I’m a little busy fighting crime to worry about your inept dating life, dude.”
You narrowed your gaze at him, almost positive he was lying. But the alternative did seem insane. He sighed. “What possible reason could I have for wanting to keep you from dating?”
“I don’t…I don’t know,” you admitted. What else were you meant to say? There was no proof, not really. But you didn’t believe in coincidences.
“Oh, so he’s like…in love with you?” your friend said when you’d finally finished recounting the strangest weeks of your life.
Coffee threatened to spill out of your nose as you choked, “What?”
One of your regulars piped up from their usual table by the counter. “Oh, yeah, no I agree. It sounds like he’s totally in love with you.”
“On what planet is he – oh my god, there’s no way, guys!” you argued, even if the sinking feeling in your stomach said otherwise. Was it possible? And if it was – why? Why you?
You waved them both off. “He doesn’t even know me.”
Even if you were unconvinced of some kind of undying love you were convinced that it was all on purpose. Fate had often been unkind to you in the past, but it was a level of sadism that even you could not believe existed naturally in the universe.
And all of it – the failed dates, the weird, strangely intimate encounters, the skin-crawling feeling of being followed, the gnawing feeling of familiarity – had led you to a totally logical, reasonable plan: set a trap for Vigilante.
So maybe you’d spent maybe a little too much time planning it. Thoroughly vetting the restaurant, the people who ran it, pouring through social media accounts and a background check on your date - certifying that there was no off-hand excuse for Vigilante to crash your date.
No crimes, no drug fronts, no nefarious owners. Just an above-the-board night out with a nice guy. It was your own little challenge to him, a desperate bid to prove your theory right. If he crashed this date you would know for sure that this wasn’t just some weird cosmic intervention and that he was doing it on purpose.
“Are you okay?” your date asked. Alex? Andrew? Adrian? (NO, definitely not.) Fuck. What was his name again? “You seem a little…distracted.”
You dragged your gaze back to him and put on a carefully practiced smile. “I’m so sorry. I am distracted, you’re right. And that’s not fair to you.”
“Anything I can help with?” he offered with a lift of his brows and a small tilt of his head. He took a sip of his drink, waiting for you to fill in the blanks for him. Adam! Adam seemed…nice. And you were…toootally blowing him off. You sighed, defeated, and smiled apologetically.
“It’s going to sound crazy,” you started, raking your hands over your face.
Adam smiled. “Try me.”
You shifted slightly in your seat. “Okay, so you know Vigilante?”
“Vaguely? The costumed maniac who works with Peacemaker and is somehow not in jail?”
You chuckled. “That’s the one. Well, uh, I think he might be – ” In love with me? But you figured that was not the right thing to say on a first date. Was the alternative really much better? “Stalking me?”
Adam choked on his sip of wine. “What?”
“Or it’s total, weird karmic coincidence that he just keeps showing up where I am!” you offered. Adam’s head tilted slightly to the side, bewilderment written across his handsome features.
“How many times has this happened exactly?”
“Four. Give or take. Not counting the time he walked me home like a year ago.”
“Sorry, Vigilante walked you home?” he asked in disbelief.
“Yeah, I know how it sounds.”
Adam’s eyes studied you for a moment before he turned and flagged your waiter down. Damn it, you thought, he doesn’t even need to be here to ruin dates for me. Maybe you’d have to store the Vigilante card in your pocket for some bad date down the line.
But instead, Adam leaned back in his chair and smiled at the waiter. “I think we’re going to need another glass of wine. And what’s the best dessert you’ve got?”
When the waiter disappeared to fetch both things he leaned his elbows on the table. “Okay, start from the beginning.”
Outside the restaurant you two did the awkward dance between lingering and saying good night once and for all. With both your rides ordered the two of you stood waiting, close together. (It was cold! Who could blame a girl?) Adam reached up and tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear.
“Listen, I’m really hoping I don’t get a visit from Vigilante later for this, but, uh, can I kiss you?” Adam asked. His sandy hair was given an orange halo by the streetlight above you both. He really was handsome in a sort of everyman kind of way. Considerate, kind, easy to look at and not Vigilante – you nodded. His lips pressed against yours gently and something that felt almost like guilt twisted in the base of your stomach.
When his car rolled up first he offered to stay with you but you’d waved him off. “Can’t lose you to Vigilante, now can I?”
He pressed a kiss to your cheek and made you promise to text when you got home safe. The second his car disappeared around the block your driver cancelled on you. You’d already waited an eternity and getting a rideshare in downtown Evergreen on a Friday night was a nightmare scenario. Besides, the walk would be good for you. There was plenty to think about on the way home. Like…
Where the fuck was Vigilante?
Maybe you were back to the drawing board entirely. You’d been so convinced he was doing it on purpose, but maybe you’d been wrong? Maybe it really was just all coincidence? What a weird, specific curse to have upon you.
And then you heard the footsteps behind you.
The feeling of being followed was familiar now, unfortunately expected, but when you whipped around the very clear glint of a knife pointed at you, well…that was new.
“Oh!” you managed to squeak out. It wasn’t Vigilante at all. Instead, you were face to face with some guy who was very clearly trying to mug you.
“Jesus Christ,” you sighed.
“Give me your purse, bitch!”
You raked a hand over your face. “Please don’t do this. I’ve been having a really shitty few months and I’m - ”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“Listen, asshole, I’m just trying to warn you. Vigilante has been stalking me so you probably don’t want to fuck with me.”
You didn’t think you’d get to play the card so soon! A strange delight unfurled in your gut. Maybe invoking his name would somehow finally make him appear. Your life in danger would be his very own Bat Signal.
The man faltered slightly before tightening his grip on his knife. “Why would Vigilante be stalking you?”
“You know, man with knife, that’s a really good question,” you said, nodding thoughtfully. The strange sense of calm running through you really should have been more alarming. You felt yourself take a step towards him and his expression shifted into pure confusion. Maybe that was good. Maybe you could actually handle this yourself. Maybe this was like when people gave advice to out-freak your would-be attacker. Maybe –
A single gunshot silenced the rest of that train of thought. Hot blood splattered against your clothes, your cheek, in your slightly open mouth.
“Oh my god,” you managed, frozen for just a moment before bending to spit onto the sidewalk. You lifted the hem of your sweater to your mouth to scrape the taste of blood out of your mouth while you tried desperately not to gag.
“Nice! I’ve been looking everywhere for this guy!” Vigilante cheered, a slight hop in his step as he crossed the street to where you stood.
“Are you okay?” he asked, giving your shoulder a slight nudge with his own. You at least had the good sense to recoil from his touch. His hands shot up to shoulder height, palms towards you in a show of reassurance.
“Sorry! I was running a little late. Did I miss your date?”
“Yeah, you did,” you replied, realizing a moment too late that you sounded a little disappointed. Seriously, what the fuck was wrong with you? “I even got a good night kiss. Which, before you say anything, is not a crime.”
Tension visibly rippled through Vigilante’s muscles. “Was he…was he good to you?”
“He was very nice.”
“That’s it? Just ‘very nice’? Sounds kind of lame to me!”
“Well, he’s not you.”
“Not me good, or not me…bad?” he asked quietly.
You faltered a moment, genuinely unsure. Sure, the stupid, depraved thought had been knocking around in your head for a little while now. That while Vigilante was actively ruining your dating life, at least he was somewhat consistent. At least he showed up for you. And maybe there was something kind of hot about the mask now that you thought about it.
God damnit, you really needed to get away from him before you did something stupid. So, you continued walking towards your apartment, thinking maybe he’d have to stay behind to deal with the body. But instead he just followed along with you like some hapless dog.
“For one thing, he didn’t just murder someone in front of me again,” you said instead of really answering the question.
He put his hands on his hips. “That guy was going to hurt you. You’re telling me you would have preferred I let him stab you in the face over a purse? That would be a total waste of a really good face.”
“No! I’m not saying that, I’m saying…fuck I don’t know, Vij,” you sighed. He froze, a particular tension to his posture. But your brain was busy playing catch up with the fact that he’d said you had a…good face?
“Say that again,” he murmured. Something was so, so familiar about the cadence, the desperation. An impossible thought prickled at the back of your mind and you batted it away.
“Say what again?” you asked.
“Call me Vij. I like it when you say it.”
A shudder rolled down your spine, involuntary and unwelcome. You struggled against the feeling settling in your gut. “Not until you admit that you’ve been trying to ruin my dating life.”
“Why would I admit that?” he scoffed. “Or, um, I mean, uhhh…I told you before, I think that’s a really self-centered way of looking at the world. To assume that just because I happen to show up at all your dates and they happen to be interrupted or end badly while I’m around doesn’t mean that I’m doing it on purpose! And actually, as a feminist, I find that kind of assumption offensive.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes, really! I think all women should be allowed to date whoever they want!”
“All women?” you asked.
“Mhmm!”
“Even me?” you continued to press.
His shoulders shifted slightly. “Yup!”
“And so I should be able to fuck whoever I want as much as I want?”
His entire body went stiff as he seemingly tried to force himself to nod.
“For sure. Yes! Definitely! Go off, diva! Have sooooo much sex. Like maybe even have too much!” he rambled. You just stared at him with wide eyes. Then he laughed sharply, and the familiarity of it ran through your whole body. There was no way… “I mean, can one even have too much sex? Probably not!”
You tilted your head slightly. “Are you okay?”
“Can I admit something?” he asked, the question bursting out of him like he’d been biting his tongue, his voice sounding strained. He waited for your sharp nod before he continued, “I’ve been trying to ruin your dating life.”
You faltered. “What?”
“Yeah, ha, you totally caught me!” He scratched at the back of his neck and again that sense of familiarity ran through you like ice in your veins.
“You know, my friends think it’s because you’re totally in love with me.”
His head tilted slightly and you would have given anything to see the expression on his actual face. “Oh! Well, probably because I am.”
For a moment you could practically smell the short-circuiting happening in your brain. “You…huh?”
He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other as you both stood at the bottom of your apartment complex stairs. “Sorry, I thought it was obvious?”
“Why else are you doing all this?”
“Is love not enough these days?” he joked breathlessly.
Something like panic started to crawl down your spine. You had, of course, considered the possibility, but faced with the simple truth of it you didn’t know what to do or say. So you did the only thing you could think of in the moment - you turned wordlessly and walked up the steps towards your apartment. You fished your keys out of your bag, fingers brushing over the lock before you turned back around to look at him one more time.
It was a mistake.
You couldn’t believe it. You were about to do something so, so fucking stupid. But the theory brewing in the back of your mind needed to be accounted for.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight?”
No sooner had you asked then Vigilante ducked his head down and pressed his mouth to yours, fabric scraping at your chin. You made a noise of surprise, muffled against his mask, as he pushed you back against your front door. All you could taste was polyester and sweat and something metallic. His tongue tried to lick desperately into your mouth but was constrained behind the fabric, now wet and sticking to your skin and his. It was entirely unsatisfying, frustrating even, but still you couldn’t deny the warmth spreading in your stomach.
So you slid your fingers up his suit until you were prying at fabric, pushing it up until his hands grabbed your wrists firmly and made you stop. He pinned your arms down at your sides but still you leaned back to examine the small stretch of canvas he’d allowed you, taking in the pale expanse of his neck, the very bottom of his face. Even in the dim light something about it was familiar.
You leaned forward and peppered kisses to his exposed skin until you reached his uncovered mouth and waited. He surged forward, kissing you for real this time - nothing but wet lips and eager tongues and hot breath and his hands fisted into the fabric of your shirt as he yanked you against him and – oh.
You pulled back.
“What the fuck?” you panted. If you’d felt insane moments before, you now felt the Earth had completely flipped on its axis the moment your lips had touched his.
Because you knew that mouth.
“Adrian?”
“Um…who?” he attempted.
“Take the mask off right now,” you ordered, pulling away from his grasp.
“I can’t, I, uh, well, I’d have to kill you! If you saw my face! Because, you know - secret identity,” he scrambled. Oh my god. How had you not realized it sooner? You really were a fucking idiot.
“You won’t kill me,” you said firmly, crossing your arms over your chest.
“You don’t know that!”
“I do. And besides, I already know what your face looks like, Adrian Chase,” you snapped.
He looked frantically over his shoulder. “Can we please talk about this inside?”
“Why the fuck would I let Vigilante inside my apartment?” you asked.
“C’mon, please don’t be like that,” he whined.
“Like what? Seriously, tell me why I should let a stranger who is a murderous superhero wannabe into my home,” you said, putting your hands on your hips. “I’ll wait.”
“I don’t wanna be pedantic but you did just let Vigilante put his tongue in your mouth, so, I’m not really sure what the difference is?”
You stood your ground. You just wanted to hear him admit it. Because you knew him and you knew he’d cave.
“Fine! Fuck! It’s me, Adrian!” he exclaimed in a rather loud whisper. You rolled your eyes at him and he reached up to take the mask the rest of the way off.
“Jesus Christ, don’t! Don’t do that out here, you idiot!” you gasped and reached up to stop him. You cursed under your breath as you unlocked your door and then dragged him inside, your fingers hooked under the chest plate of his suit. With the door closed behind him and the lock safely in place, Adrian reached up and pulled the mask off with a gasp.
He stared at you with those wide, bright green eyes of his and smiled from ear to ear. “See, you do care about me still!”
You shifted uncomfortably and avoided his gaze directly. You knew exactly what it was like to fall into those eyes and you weren’t totally convinced you’d be able to climb your way back out.
“No, I care about my nosy neighbors seeing me with a wanted criminal.”
“Sure,” he agreed, clearly sarcastic. He fished his glasses out his pocket and slid them onto his face. For some reason, seeing your Adrian - glasses and all - in the Vigilante suit was more befuddling than it was before. Worse still, it was also strangely arousing.
And then it hit you like running headfirst into a brick wall.
This is what he’d been hiding the whole time.
“Why?” you asked, somehow the only word you could seem to muster.
“You’re gonna have to be a little more specific…”
“Why the fuck were you lying to me about this, Adrian?”
“I mean, not to be technical but I was lying to you about other stuff. You never asked me if I was Vigilante!”
You rolled your eyes and groaned. “Well, pardon me for not thinking to ask if my boyfriend is the psychopath running around Evergreen killing people for minor infractions! Adrian, you’re weird but you’re like…sweet weird. You don’t exactly give off psycho-killer vibes.”
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?”
You punched him straight in the arm. “Please be serious right now!”
“Sorry! I couldn’t help it! That song is so funny. Because like, what is this, you know? They’re really asking the right questions.”
“I cannot believe I spent a year dating you,” you sighed.
“Hey!”
“You don’t get to ‘hey’ me! You’ve been living a double life for…wait, was it the whole time we were together?”
Adrian chewed at his lower lip. “Maybe.”
“Adrian!”
“Yeah, okay, the whole time we were together and also like…for a while now.”
Your mind was reeling, trying to deal with the puzzle pieces and details and – oh yeah, the gnawing of your own presumed morality at the back of your brain. The man you loved was a killer. And maybe you loved the killer, too.
“When you disappeared for three days were you…doing Vigilante shit?”
“Oh, ha! Yeah, I was on a super serious top secret mission,” Adrian laughed. Then he took in your expression and he, too, sombered. “I wanted to tell you then. I wanted to explain. That night on your doorstep I planned to…um, but when I came back…when you told me we were breaking up, that you couldn’t trust me, I…I think it broke something in my brain. But I also realized you were right to break up with me. That actually you’re safer when you’re not dating me. I couldn’t live with myself if someone were to somehow trace me back to you. But then I realized that I could protect you as Vigilante, even if I couldn’t protect you as Adrian.”
“I didn’t want to break up with you, you know that, right?” you asked quietly. Something like a glimmer of hope flashed in his bright green eyes. “But I had to protect my heart.”
“What if…do you think there’s a chance you could let me protect that, too?” he asked, voice quiet and unsteady. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”
“Is that what you think you’ve been doing this whole time? Protecting me?” you asked, genuinely trying to understand the way his clearly warped brain worked.
“I know I don’t deserve it, but you do. You deserve the world. Because you’re not the common denominator in a sea of shitty men. You’re like a bright star that everyone is drawn to. And bright lights attract some losers, too and…I think I’m losing track of the metaphor but all I really mean to say is: you’re exceptional.”
Call it weakness, call it stupidity, call it what it was: a kindling breath on a flame you’d tried desperately to snuff out. You loved him.
It was unclear if it was you who leaned forward first or him but either way you found your head pressed against his chest, his arms sure and firm around you.
“I have to ask — how did you know it was me?”
“I had my suspicions,” you laughed. Though clearly not enough. “But I knew for certain the second my lips touched yours.”
Adrian well and truly cackled. He lit up all over, exactly the same man you’d fallen in love with the first time you’d met him. Just with a little…more than you could have conceived of before. Maybe you weren’t ready to admit it to him quite yet, but a part of you clamored to get to properly know Vigilante, too. There was a whole new, strange, thrilling part of Adrian Chase for you to discover.
“I can’t believe you recognized my mouth, dude! That’s kind of insanely romantic if you think about it!”
“Yeah, I’m actively choosing not to think about it, thanks!” you retorted. Then, because for some reason you couldn’t help it, “I mean, I’m very familiar with that mouth’s work, it would be a crime if I didn’t recognize it.”
“Are you flirting with me right now?” Adrian asked, the question half a gasp, half a squeal of excitement.
“No! I don’t know! Maybe a little bit! Fuck! I can’t help it.” You scrubbed at your face with both hands like maybe you’d be able to wipe it all away. “It’s like…in me, you know?”
“What is?”
“Everything about you. I see your face and it’s like you’re hardwired in my skull and in my heart. I could have gone on one hundred dates or none and it wouldn’t have made a difference at all, because none of them were you!” you exclaimed, breathless. You knew Adrian well enough to know you were maybe being too flowery for his very literal brain to fully comprehend.
“Me Adrian or me Vigilante?” he asked, surprising you.
You forced yourself to meet his gaze and then gave a defeated shrug. “Both, I think.”
“Fuck, I think that’s the nicest and the coolest and the hottest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Adrian murmured. He pulled you tight against him by the hips. “Can I kiss you again? I think I need to or else I’ll die.”
You answered him by pressing your lips to his, his chin captured in your hand, fingers pressed firmly into the skin – just enough pressure, not too much or too little for dear, sweet, Adrian. You kissed him hungrily, which seemed to take him delightfully by surprise, if the noises he made were anything to judge by. His tongue scraped over your teeth, and you bit at his lower lip and pulled. His fingers pressed so hard into your hips you thought they might bruise and you also thought you didn’t give a fuck. Adrian’s mouth travelled from your lips to your jaw to your neck. He sucked at the skin just below your ear and you knew he was trying to mark you as his. That was the question, wasn’t it? Were you willing to be his again, knowing what you know?
It was utterly incongruous: your perception of Adrian, the man you’d loved and practically lived with for an entire year versus Vigilante, a man you knew to be a totally cold-blooded, obsessive killer. Did it make a difference if it was in the name of justice? You had seen on the news when he’d been involved with saving the planet from those butterfly alien things with Peacemaker. How was he the kind of guy who could play D&D for hours, and talk incessantly about Pokemon, and kiss you so gently, and also the kind of guy who kicked criminal ass with no remorse and saved the planet from alien invasion?
“What are you thinking?” he asked, pulling back suddenly. He had that gentle, focused look in his eye that you knew all too well.
“I think I should probably be scared of you,” you replied honestly. His tight hold on you loosened almost imperceptibly, but still you felt it. Of course you did.
“I would never hurt you,” he whispered. “Please believe me.”
“I do. And, I also think you’ve permanently fucked up the wiring in my brain,” you grumbled against his mouth.
“Does this mean we’re getting back together?” he asked, and you could practically feel the excitement of the idea thrumming through his body.
“Maybe,” you offered. He deflated slightly. “If we’re going to try and figure this out then there’s no more secrets between us, okay?”
Adrian nodded. “Sick! I mean, now you basically know all my secrets. Except, I guess, about all the drugs and blood money in my basement.”
“The what now?”
He darted forward and peppered your forehead, your eyelids, your cheeks with kisses. Somewhere between them all he managed to say, “Thank you for giving me another chance. I’ve missed you so fucking much.”
“Hard to miss someone when you’re stalking them, Adrian,” you reminded him.
“But I miss you every time I blink,” Adrian breathed, wide-eyed and stupidly adorable and achingly earnest. Your fingers itched for every part of him but you refrained, hooking your fingers into the chest plate of his Vigilante armor.
“I need to hear you say it – no more secrets. We are both totally honest with each other, for better or worse,” you demanded.
Adrian nodded, a wide grin on his lips. “I’ll never keep anything from you ever again. You can trust me, I promise. In fact, I promise on Peacemaker’s life! He’s the only thing I cherish in this life even remotely close to you, so you know I mean it. If I was gonna swear on the most important thing, well, that would be you, but I figured that’s a little counterproductive to the whole swearing on something thing.”
When you kissed again it wasn’t hungry any more. It was slow, it was deep, it was an acknowledgment that you had all the time in the world. Your fingers wove into his curls and pulled tightly, just the way you knew he liked. Because you knew him. He groaned his approval into your mouth and he wrapped around you, practically enveloping you. The next thing you knew his hands were under your ass and he was supporting you so you could wrap your legs around his waist. He carried you effortlessly towards your bedroom, pausing along the way to press your back to the wall and kiss you even deeper, his fingers needy and clumsy at the hem of your shirt. His fingers, still gloved, scraped across the skin of your stomach, reacquainting themselves with familiar territory.
His lips didn’t leave yours the entire time, even as he carried you to your bed and laid you down like the most precious thing on the planet. He leaned over you, hands pressed into the mattress, you hooking your fingers into the straps on the front of his suit to try and pull him as close as humanly possible. Things blurred into a hot, slow, haze of Adrian.
Suddenly, you drew back with a gasp, both desperate for air and with another gnawing question on your tongue.
“Wait wait! You didn’t kill any of those guys I went on dates with, right?”
“Only the first one,” he said with a kind of severity that sent a chill down your spine and had you anticipating the feeling of him between your thighs in equal measure. Then you realized, somewhat dreamily, that Adrian already was in between your thighs. So you squeezed your legs around him tighter – you weren’t letting him go again. Adrian Chase really had ruined you forever.
“And what crime did he commit?” you asked against his mouth, your arms snaking around his neck.
“Being an asshole to the person I love most in the world.”
Then he unhooked your legs so he could slide down your body until he was kneeling at the edge of your bed. His fingers made quick work of your pants and yours pressed into the mattress as he made himself at home between your thighs like no time had passed at all.
Adrian watched you sleep for some time, your limbs tangled with his, you asleep in one of the oversized shirts he’d left behind, the poster of Fargo printed across your chest. The evening had gone better than he could have ever planned. And he had done a lot of planning.
Sure, he hadn’t anticipated your date kissing you, but it didn’t even bother him anymore. But he’d heard what that stupid guy had said to you while he was hidden out of sight.
Can’t lose you to Vigilante, now can I?
Now the mugger had been a total coincidence but one that made him look so cool and tough. He’d saved you from death, not just a shitty date with some stupid guy! Extra points for Vigilante! He’d high five himself if he could.
Adrian moved slowly, making sure not to disturb you in the slightest. He got distracted for a long moment just watching you sleep peacefully, a ghost of a smile on your beautiful mouth.
When he slipped back into the bed he had the Vigilante mask on and your phone in his hand. He cuddled up behind you and then tucked his chin into the crook of your neck. He ensured the flash was off and then took a picture. He opened your texts and found Adam (Hinge) with ease.
He attached the photo and then, smiling from ear to ear, typed:
You lose.
breaking up is hard to do taglist: @sideblogmeanz @danversxwasabi @countvonklit @tlfg-adrianchase @bunch-of-bens @lovenerdywhitemen2 @morguegrl89
gen adrian taglist: @countvonklit @tlfg-adrianchase
(if you want to be on my adrian taglist let me know below! x)
my feed has been filled with pup!adrian or omegaverse!adrian and all i have to say is thank you writers for your service, you feed me well.. it's even brought up some ideas of my own but i should probably finish the six (😭) other fics in my google docs first sigh
synopsis: You and Adrian stumble upon the first major roadblock in your relationship. As you argue about work and worry about one another's safety, you struggle to compromise.
tags/warnings: librarian!reader, library patron!adrian, angst with a happy ending, established relationship, fluff, customer service bullshit, Adrian gets injured, mention of a bomb threat but not actively described, brief cameo from the 11th street kids
word count: 6.5k
part 1: the evergreen public library | part 2: the evergreen public library book club | Masterlist
Thank you @embeanwrites for the beta as always <3
You and Adrian don’t fight a lot. There are a few squabbles, here and there, just like there are with any couple. Neither of you are perfect; disagreements are inevitable every once in a while.
The first real argument you remember happens a few weeks after he moves into your apartment with you.
“Adrian, you cannot keep leaving weapons lying around the apartment. Why do you need so many knives, anyway?”
“Have I ever said anything about your dragon’s hoard of books in the bedroom? No! We both have our vices!”
“My books aren’t going to accidentally stab anyone who trips over them in the middle of the night! Weapons stay in the Vigilante-mobile. That’s final.”
“No,” Adrian insists. “I have to have at least something in the apartment. For protection. Just in case. This is our home, and I’m not leaving us defenseless.”
You soften a bit at his words. Our home. “Okay. We’ll compromise. How about…one weapon per room? That stays in a designated hiding place?”
“I can work with that.”
It’s simple. Over in less than five minutes.
If he’s being particularly stubborn about something, you pull out your trump card and threaten to take his most treasured title away from him.
“Keep it up, and you won’t be my favorite library patron anymore.”
After that, he’ll change his tune almost instantly, and bend over backwards to make things up to you. It’s a dirty trick, but it works. You never mean it, not really, and you make sure he knows that, making it up with cuddles and kisses. You almost wish you would fight more, because the makeup sex is just—so fucking good.
You argue. You compromise. You fuck it out of your systems. Problem solved.
That’s how it goes.
Usually.
It starts unexpectedly, on a random Friday night.
“Hi,” Adrian says, beaming at you as he slides into the booth next to you at Fennel Fields. He kisses your cheek, sloppy and eager, as he drops your usual basket of mozzarella sticks on the table in front of you.
“Hi baby,” you say, turning to kiss him properly, but he’s smiling so wide you’re not even sure you can call it a real kiss. He’s just pressing his face against yours, grinning, and it makes you giggle. “You’re in a good mood tonight.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I had a good day today.”
You start munching on a mozzarella stick. He bends down and takes a bite, right out of your hand. “Adrian! There’s a whole basket right there! Get your own!” Still, you laugh at his antics and take a sip of your drink. “What was good about your day?”
“You first. How was your day?”
You sigh. “Well. It’s tax season.”
Adrian frowns. “Do I need to—”
“No,” you interrupt. “No Vigilante intervention needed. Just extra busy, and people being annoying.”
“Are you sure?” he asks worriedly. “Because you know I don’t mind—”
“I know you don’t,” you say quickly, brushing it off. “But I don’t want to talk about that. Tell me why you’re all smiley.”
“Well, um. I’m quitting,” Adrian says, a bit nervously, gauging your reaction. Your eyes widen and you nearly choke as your Diet Coke goes down the wrong pipe.
“You’re—what?” you sputter as Adrian pats you on the back. “You’re leaving Fennel Fields?”
“I am,” he says. “I gave Dave my two weeks notice today.”
“Holy shit, babe,” you say. “I—don’t really know what to say. I’m really caught off guard right now because I was not expecting you to say that.”
“That’s okay,” Adrian says easily. “I know I kinda sprung this on you. But I got a new job!”
“You got…a new job?” you ask, almost afraid to hear about it.
“Yeah!” he exclaims. He lowers his voice a bit, leaning in close. “You remember that time I showed you my Vigilante lair?”
“I do.”
“And how there was like, seven million dollars in the basement?”
“…yes.”
“Well, after all the stuff that happened with Chris in the alternate universe, and Rick Flag being an asshole at ARGUS, Ads convinced me that it would be a good idea to use the money to start a business.”
“You’re going to…own a business?”
“I’m going to fund a business,” Adrian says. “I have absolutely no interest in being anyone’s boss. So I gave the money to Ads and Harcourt and Bordeaux, and they got everything all set up and official. They bought an office building and everything.” His eyes dart around to see if anyone is eavesdropping, before he says, eyes wide and excited, “I’m basically going to get paid to be Vigilante, now.”
“Oh my god, Adrian,” you say, and you can’t help but smile, because his enthusiasm is contagious. “That’s—that’s amazing, baby. I am so, so happy for you.”
Adrian is still smiling down at you, but he’s gone a little nervous.
“I was worried about telling you,” he admits. “Obviously this isn’t going to affect—us. But I’m not gonna be able to be at the library as much, probably. I’ll still be able to volunteer, like I have been, maybe once or twice a month, but—”
A few months ago, when Adrian first brought up the idea of volunteering at the library, you’d been skeptical. But his monthly Wednesday afternoon sewing class had really taken off. He’s been teaching community members of all ages how to use the library’s sewing machine to make and repair clothes, from teen girls DIY-ing hair scrunchies to older women hemming dresses and skirts.
Somehow, he has managed to charm his way into the older ladies’ knitting group, too. You’re ninety percent sure they just want him there for the eye candy, but you can’t bring yourself to tell him.
“Baby, it’s okay,” you say, putting a hand over his, where they’ve gone all fidgety on the table. “You can’t plan your entire life around being a library volunteer. This is going to be good for you.”
Adrian looks like wants to say something more, but something is stopping him.
“What is it?” you ask.
“I was just thinking,” he says, “if—if you wanted, I mean. You could, too.”
“I could what?”
“Work at Checkmate. With me and Chris and everyone.”
You nearly choke on your drink again, eyes widening with surprise.
“Oh,” you say, trying to figure out how to let him down gently. You worked hard to become a librarian, and you like it. You’re not just going to leave your job because your boyfriend wants you to. “I—I don’t think so. I will gladly help you guys out with anything you need. But I’m not leaving the library, Adrian. You know I love my job.”
“I thought you would say that,” he admits. “But it was worth a shot.”
You know he’s disappointed, so you soften it with a kiss. He accepts it easily, happily, even, and when you pull away, you smile and whisper, “Hey. I love you. And I’m really proud of you.”
Adrian smiles, too.
You think that’s the end of it. You slowly come to realize that it’s not.
Tax season, as you mentioned to Adrian, is in full swing at the library, which means you’re busier than ever at the reference desk and the circulation desk. The phone is ringing off the hook with questions, there’s two times more foot traffic than usual, and everyone who comes in is irritable.
There are volunteers several times a week from the AARP to help people file their tax returns, but people show up at all hours of the day expecting to leave with their taxes complete within fifteen minutes, even though the volunteers are only there on specifically scheduled days that have been advertised for months in advance, and the daily appointment slots are typically full fifteen minutes after you open for the day.
So when Adrian makes a surprise drop-in one Thursday, toward the end of your shift, you want to cry with relief when you see him, just because you know he’s not going to ask you a tax-related question or yell at you for the parking lot being too full.
“Hi, baby,” you smile.
“Wanna see my bookworm?” he asks, trying and failing to be…seductive?
You furrow your brow as he slides his weekly stack of book returns across the counter to you.
“Huh?”
“My dick. The bookworm is my dick.”
You laugh in his face. “Oh, god. That one is terrible, babe.”
“I know,” he says, wrinkling his nose. “I’m running low on cheesy library pickup lines.” He’s been dropping them on you every time he comes up to you at the circ desk for months.
“You do know,” you remind him, “that you don’t have to pick me up. I’m already in love with you. God knows why.”
“You still deserve to be wooed,” he insists.
“You wooed me just fine last night,” you smirk, thinking of the time he’d spent with his head buried between your legs. “More of that. Less of the cheesy pickup lines.”
Adrian grins and leans in closer, lowering his voice. “That can be arranged.”
“Leave me alone, bitch!”
Both of you turn, startled by the outburst from the quiet study. Dawn is there, staring down at a man with her arms crossed, entirely unimpressed.
“Sir, all I did was politely ask you to use headphones if you’re going to listen to music in the quiet study. If you can’t be respectful, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Is that the guy you were telling me about yesterday?” Adrian asks, voice low. His fingers go all twitchy. You put a hand over his.
“Don’t,” you say softly. “We’ve got it handled.”
The guy has been a recurring problem for weeks. Hogging the study rooms and refusing to leave the space for the people who booked them. Complaining loudly about the broken water fountain outside every time he walked in the door, even though you’d told him more than once it wasn’t in the budget to fix it right now. Camping out until the last possible minute before the library closes.
Now this.
“I don’t have any headphones,” the man argues.
“We do,” Dawn says. “They’re available for checkout at the circulation desk.”
“I don’t want your stupid fucking headphones!” he says, growing irritated, standing up and shoving his chair back. “I told you to leave me the fuck alone!”
You nod at Laura, who’s sitting at the reference desk. She’s already got her hand on the phone, ready to call the police if needed, and she picks up the phone and dials while you walk over to back up Dawn.
“Be careful,” Adrian says quietly, but he steps out of your way to let you handle it. You put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and squeeze as you walk past him.
“You’ve already been asked to be respectful, and you’ve failed to do so,” you say calmly to the irate man. “Please leave the building.”
“Fuck you!” the man says, and he spits at your feet. But he grabs his things and leaves, stomping out of the library.
“Did he just fucking spit at you?” Adrian says, outraged, from a few feet behind you. “That’s—that’s assault—” He looks torn between running after the guy and staying to check on you. Luckily, he does the latter.
“He did spit at me,” you say, delighted. “I’d say that’s a reason to ban him permanently, wouldn’t you, Dawn?”
“Finally,” she says. You’ve been waiting for weeks for the man to do something egregious enough to warrant a no-trespass ban. “Has Laura called for the police already?”
“Yep.”
“Perfect. I’ll let you know when they get here and fill out an incident report in the meantime. Why don’t you take a minute and calm your boyfriend down? He looks like he’s ready to explode.”
Adrian is glaring in the direction of the library doors after the irritable patron, fists clenched, frowning. If he were a cartoon character, there would be steam coming out of his ears.
You head back over to him quickly, putting a placating hand on his chest. He takes a deep breath and looks down at you.
“I hate that people talk to you like that,” he whispers furiously. “He fucking—the audacity—to spit at you? I’m gonna kill him.”
“It’s okay, baby,” you say softly. You reach for his hand, intertwining your fingers, and he tightens his grip instantly. “Hey. My lunch break is in fifteen minutes. Want to go to the diner on the corner? You can go grab us a booth, and I’ll meet you there?”
Adrian seems reluctant. “I don’t—what if he comes back? And tries to hurt you? I should go—my Vigilante suit is in the car, I can take care of him right now—”
“Hush. The police will be here any minute,” you say. “Look, they just walked in.” You gesture at an officer walking in the automatic doors. “I just need to give him a report and then I’ll be on my way. Please stay. Wait til I’m done. We can go to lunch, and forget about all this, and then later, tonight, you can do whatever the hell you want to him, okay?”
“If it wouldn’t leave DNA behind, I would spit on him just like he spit at you,” he says firmly.
You sigh. “I know you would.”
Adrian starts his new job at Checkmate two weeks later, and he loves it.
When Friday of the first week rolls around, you decide to keep up your weekly tradition of going to visit Adrian at work, swinging by the Checkmate office with takeout for the whole team instead of dropping by at Fennel Fields while you wait for him to get off. All is well and good for a couple weeks. Ads and Harcourt give you a tour of the office. You get to know Bordeaux, Fleury, and Rip, and happily extend an invite to book club, even though your boyfriend grumbles about the fact that he doesn’t want Judomaster to come. Adrian shows you his desk, decorated with dozens of trinkets and pictures of the two of you, which makes your heart warm.
He comes home every day beaming, talking about the cool shit he gets to do, and it makes you happy, to see him so happy.
At the library, things are still busy and…well. If Adrian has plenty of things to rave about, you have plenty of things to complain about, but you keep your mouth shut. You bottle things up, keep them inside, don’t tell Adrian about anything even remotely negative that happens throughout your day. You don’t want to bum him out, or stress him out, because you know he worries about you.
Not that the library is an inherently dangerous place, but working with the general public always comes with its risks, and Adrian has a tendency to overreact. Not that you can blame him. He’s seen several incidents firsthand, including the one just the other week. The spitter showed up the next day, shot dead in the local park. He’d been high off his ass. Everyone assumed it was drug-related. You know the truth.
You appreciate it, most of the time. The way Adrian takes care of you like that. But sometimes it feels a little overwhelming, a little bit too much. He’s been coming by the library every time you work a night shift, sitting around, claiming he’s reading, pretending to do something on the computer, when you know he’s really not. He just lingers, glowering at the general public like some kind of unpaid bodyguard. You’d had to tell him off for it last week.
“Adrian, stop being a fucking weirdo. Please don’t make me ban you from the library.”
It’s hard to stay angry, though, because you know he worries about you because he cares. And unfortunately, you’re starting to understand where he’s coming from. With his new job, you’re worrying in return, more than ever.
One Friday, when you walk in and drop a few boxes of pizza on the big reception desk up front, something is missing. You glance around the room and your boyfriend is nowhere to be seen. Usually he’s bounding up to you like a puppy, peppering kisses all over your face until you’re pushing him off you with a laugh.
“Hey Em,” you say brightly, since she’s the closest to you. Chris and Leota are over by the break room, Fleury, Bordeaux, and Rip are already opening the pizza boxes and diving in. “Where’s Adrian?”
“Hey,” Emilia says. “He’s in the med room, John’s taking care of him.”
“Taking care of him?” you repeat.
She pauses. “I told Adrian to call you. Did he not call you?”
“No one called me,” you say, checking your phone, heart sinking in your chest. Did you miss something? Had Adrian called you? You didn’t have any notifications. “What happened? Why is he in the med room? Did something happen—is he—”
“He’s okay,” she says softly, with a little bit of pity. You hate it. “Come on.”
You follow her down the hallway, and your pounding heart settles a bit when you hear Adrian’s loud complaining.
“Ow! Motherfucker, you’re doing that on purpose—”
“Shut up,” John says. “I’m literally almost done—”
Emilia throws the door open to reveal Adrian sitting on a silver surgical table, shirtless, while John finishes stitching up a wound in his left shoulder.
“Oh my god, Adrian,” you say, rushing forward, and John steps out of your way to let you worry over your boyfriend.
“Give them a minute,” Emilia tells him, and they leave you alone, closing the door behind them. You’re not even paying attention, too focused on Adrian, looking at the blood drenching the discarded pieces of the Vigilante uniform on the table beside him, feeling like you’re going to be sick.
“What the fuck—what happened to you—”
Adrian smiles as you reach to cup his face in your hands, your eyes trailing down and latching on the stitched-up bullet wound in his shoulder. “Hi, baby.”
He tips his jaw forward to kiss you, and you let him, but only briefly, only to give yourself the relief and reassurance. Then you pull back and look hard into his eyes.
“Don’t hi, baby me,” you say fiercely. “When were you going to tell me you got shot?”
“When I got home?”
“Wrong answer,” you say.
“Oh,” Adrian says. “Um, for future reference, what is the right answer?”
“As soon as it fucking happens!” you cry. “I would have left work early! I would have—I would have—”
“It’s not a big deal, babe,” Adrian says. “I’m literally fine. You know me. I’ll go to sleep tonight, and I’ll wake up in the morning, and it’ll be like this never even happened.”
“Adrian,” you say, taking a deep breath, trying to calm yourself down, but your hands are shaking, your vision is going blurry, and your throat is starting to feel tight. “You—I don’t—”
“Hey,” he says, eyes widening when he realizes you’re starting to panic. “Hey, it’s okay—”
“It’s not okay,” you say, tears coming faster, your voice thick with emotion. “It’s—you always say how you worry about me while I’m at work. About my safety. But you never think about how I worry about you.”
Adrian’s mouth falls open, and he has no idea what to say, because—he had no idea you felt like this. You know he didn’t, because you didn’t want to tell him. You didn’t want to be an extra stressor for him, when he has an already stressful job, when that extra layer of distraction could mean the difference between life and death.
“Baby, I’m fine,” he says, his voice a little softer. “I’m not gonna get hurt—”
“You are literally actively bleeding in front of my face right now, you big fucking liar,” you accuse, but the words don’t have any fight in them. “You are hurt right now. You get hurt all the time. You get shot and stabbed and fucking—I don’t know—electrocuted! And all it takes is one time, Ade. One unlucky shot, and I come home to an empty apartment for the rest of my life.”
Adrian pulls your head in to rest on the unwounded side of his chest, and when you blink, a few tears leak out. He feels his heart crack a little when he feels the wetness on his bare skin. You hitch in a breath and wrap your arms around his waist.
“Shh, baby,” he says, lips pressing to your forehead. “I’m okay, I promise you, it’s okay.”
“It’s not okay!” you cry, jerking out of his hold. “Whatever anxiety you feel about—me working with the general public, Adrian—it’s a million times worse for me, because you work with actual bad guys. I watch you walk out the door every morning and I have no idea if you’re going to be alive by the time I get home! You put yourself in the literal crossfire every fucking day, and every time my phone rings, I think—that’s it. Today’s the day. It’s gonna be Ads on the other end of the line telling me that you’re gone.”
Adrian cups your face in his hands and kisses you fiercely.
“Never,” he says against your mouth. “Never. I am always going to come home to you. Always, you hear me?”
He pulls you into him again, tucking his head on top of yours. Your tears slow after a minute as you let his touch soothe you, pressing your ear against his chest and listening intently to the beat of his heart.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he murmurs.
“No, I’m—you’re hurt, I should be the one taking care of you right now. Not yelling at you,” you say, sniffling.
You go home after that, and he lets you fuss over him, going through the motions of your nighttime routine until he pulls you into bed beside him. He feels the way your hands are still shaking, and entwines your fingers with his, gripping tight, and bringing your joint hands up to his mouth to press a kiss to your knuckles.
“I’ll be good as new in the morning,” he reminds you, and you nod, offering him a tiny, weak smile.
Adrian drifts off to sleep beside you, his hand still holding yours, but you stay awake for a while, staring at the bloodied bandage on his chest as it rises and falls, trying not to think about what might have happened if the bullet had landed just a few inches to the right, burrowed into his heart.
Over the next few weeks, you continue to deal with minor incidents at work, and you don’t tell Adrian about any of it. The people pissing on the side of the building, the death threats over the broken printer. He’s busy with Checkmate, and now more than ever, you do not need him distracted worrying about you, while he’s out in the field getting knives thrown at him and bullets shot at him.
He asks you a few times, a little suspicious, because he hasn’t gotten any of the usual reports from you. He hasn’t ‘taken care’ of any problems since the headphones guy.
“Are you sure I don’t need to kill anyone for you?” he checks insistently.
“Nope. All good. Nothing more than people being jerks.”
“You know, if you worked at Checkmate, no one would—”
You grit your teeth, because his insistence about this is really starting to get on your nerves. “Adrian—”
“I’m just saying, it would be safer—”
“You work black ops, Adrian. You are literally an assassin. And you’re trying to tell me that your job is safer than mine?”
“Mine is not safer! Yours would be though. You wouldn’t leave the office! And nobody at Checkmate is going to masturbate at their computers,” Adrian mutters petulantly.
“Thank god,” you say, wrinkling your nose. “I do not want to see anyone’s dick out when I drop by on Friday. And you can tell Chris I said that.”
Adrian laughs, and you kiss him, and as his lips trail down your neck and he reaches for the button on your jeans, the conversation is forgotten.
“Mind if I check you out?”
You look away from the shelves with a frown, ready to tell off whoever is so poorly flirting with you while you shelve books in the middle of the stacks on a random Tuesday, but your entire face transforms when you see your boyfriend.
“Adrian,” you squeal, practically leaping at him, and he catches you with ease, laughing. He’d been gone the entire weekend, on a mission, and you’d missed him, damn it. You kiss him, not caring that you’re at work, and he kisses you back firmly, cupping your face in his hands and grinning.
“You’re back early,” you say, delighted.
“I know,” he says. “I missed you, baby. So much.”
“I missed you too,” you say softly, reaching up to adjust his glasses with a smile. “Your books came in while you were gone. The sci-fi ones you requested. Come on, I’ll check them out for you.”
You head back up to the desk hand in hand, and Laura rolls her eyes.
“God, you two are sickening,” she says, but she’s smiling. “Good to see you, Adrian. How’s the new job?”
“It’s great,” he says. “So much fucking better than the stupid restaurant.”
“You’re in the private investigation field, right?” Laura asks.
“Sort of,” Adrian says vaguely.
Laura turns to you. “Maybe we should recommend his company to figure out who was behind the incident on Saturday.”
You freeze. Fuck. You hadn’t told him about that.
“Incident?” Adrian says, eyes flicking back and forth between you and your coworker.
“We had to close down the library for the day,” you say lightly. “So they could call in the bomb squad and do a sweep. Someone called in a threat.”
Adrian’s jaw hits the floor. “What the fuck?”
“They’re still investigating,” Laura says, not noticing the tension between you and Adrian as you look at him nervously. “But it’s crazy, right?”
“Really fucking insane, yeah,” Adrian agrees, staring at you.
“Hey,” you say to Laura. “I think I’m gonna take some personal time, the rest of the day, if that’s cool? I already worked my reference desk shift this morning.”
She smiles. “Go for it girl. Spend time with your man.”
“Thanks,” you say. “I’ll be right back, Ade, I just need to grab my bag.”
“I’ll meet you at home,” he says shortly. He walks out of the library without even picking up his holds. You sigh and check them out before you go, sticking them in your own bag to bring home for him.
When you walk in the front door of your apartment, Adrian is sitting on the couch, waiting for you, every muscle in his body tight and tense. His jaw ticks when he looks at you, but he can’t stop his eyes from flicking up and down your body, like he’s checking you over for damage, for injury, even though he’s pissed.
“You’re mad at me?” you say. It’s not a question, not really. You know he is.
“Yeah,” he huffs. “I’m mad at you.”
“I’m sorry,” you say softly. “You have—every right to be. I should have told you.”
“You should have. Why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t want to worry you or distract you while you were working. If I did—if I did, and I was the reason you got shot, or stabbed, or worse—”
“Here’s a novel thought,” Adrian says. “You could trust that I’m capable of managing my emotions and doing my job! Might I remind you that I literally work black ops? It is a high-stress job no matter what, and I manage just fine.”
“—and I knew you would freak!” you cry. “I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you would freak out!”
“Someone threatened to bomb your place of work,” he shouts. “And you didn’t even think to mention it to me! Obviously I am gonna freak!”
“Adrian—”
“I don’t understand why you won’t just quit,” Adrian explodes. “Come work at Checkmate with us! You’ll be—safer!”
“I am tired of explaining myself over and over again,” you say, frustrated. “I like my job. I love the library, Adrian, and—I worked hard for my job!”
“I know you did—”
“I have a Master’s degree, and I’m not throwing away all those years of schooling to go—be your fucking secretary! I am worth more than that!”
“Oh, so you’re too fucking smart for me, is that it?” Adrian says, and he looks—genuinely hurt.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it, Adrian,” you say, your throat tight.
“It’s not? Because it kinda feels like it,” he says. “You know I only ever finished community college. Law school just—never happened for me the way it was supposed to. And I know how smart you are. I know how lucky I am that you ever even—looked my way. Gave me the time of day. You don’t need to rub it in my face.”
“It’s not about that!” you cry. “I couldn’t care less what kind of degree you have Adrian. I love you no matter what. I just mean—I just—I have dedicated myself to this thing that I love, for so long. Including those years at school, but other aspects of my life too. Just like you have, with Vigilante. I would never ask you to give that up. Not in a million years. I know how much it means to you. And the fact that you keep asking me to give up the thing that I love is not fair.”
His face falls, when you say that, and you think that maybe you’ve finally gotten through to him. But he stays quiet and distant the rest of the evening, lost in thought.
As you go through your evening routine and get in bed, you wait for him to join you, to slip under the covers and wrap his arms around your waist, to kiss you goodnight like he always does. But this isn’t a fight that can be made up with cuddles and kisses, and when you poke your head out of the bedroom door, it looks like Adrian has decided to sleep on the couch instead.
Adrian thinks, only briefly, about sleeping in the Checkmate office, but—he can’t bring himself to do it. To stay that far away. At least if he’s home, he can hear you shuffling around behind the closed bedroom door, can be there in case you need him.
When he wakes up in the middle of the night, there’s a familiar weight settled next to him. You’ve curled yourself up against him on the couch, he realizes, his heart constricting. He can’t resist the temptation, with you so close, pressing his lips to your forehead as he stares down at you and wraps his arms around you tight.
You nuzzle into his neck in your sleep, and he loves you so much he wants to cry, and keep you here, safe in his arms, for a thousand years.
Why does that feel so impossible?
You don’t talk about it in the morning. You don’t talk at all, except to tell him that you love him before you leave for work, like you always do, because that hasn’t changed, just because you fought. He says it back quietly, lets you touch his cheek and kiss him, and watches you go.
When he arrives at work himself, he feels unmoored, and he’s so quiet and pensive that everyone keeps looking at him weird. His energy feels off, and it’s like that the entire week. The two of you orbit around each other at home, coexisting, but not really—intimate. Not really together. It’s awful, the way you’re so close but so far away.
Then Chris grabs him one day, drags him into the conference room, and sits him down at the end of the table.
“What’s happening?” Adrian says, staring at the 11th Street Kids, who are all staring right back at him.
“We’re having an intervention,” Adebayo says.
“An intervention?” he repeats. “I don’t—I don’t do drugs! I don’t even drink that much!”
“Not about that,” Emilia says. “About whatever the fuck is going on with your girlfriend. You need to quit being a dick. It’s a miracle she’s with you in the first place. Fix it before you fuck it up permanently.”
Economos pulls down the white screen on the wall and turns on the projector.
“You made a fucking PowerPoint?” Adrian asks, astonished.
“He’s been working on his skills, it’s better than the Project Butterfly one,” Chris says. “Still pretty shitty though.”
“Fuck you, asshole,” John says to Chris. Then he looks at Adrian and flicks to the first slide, which reads Reasons You Need to Do Better: 1. BOOK CLUB. “You’d better work this shit out, or the vibe is going to be so off at the next book club meeting.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Adrian whispers.
“All she told me,” Ads says, “is that you guys were fighting. She didn’t say what about.”
“Work,” he says, frustrated. “We’re just—worried about each other. She freaked when I got shot a couple weeks ago. And I freaked when I found out that there was a bomb threat at the library and she didn’t tell me.”
“Holy shit, really?” Chris asks. “Do they know who—”
“No,” Adrian says bitterly. “I already checked. I would have fucking killed them already. And it—it kills me that she keeps going back there, when they don’t even know who—I don’t understand why she won’t just come work here with us—”
“She’s her own person, Adrian,” Ads interrupts. “You don’t get to tell her what to do.”
“I just want to protect her,” he says desperately. “I need her to be safe! If she would just come work here, and I would know where she is, and—”
“That’s not protective, Adrian,” Emilia says. “That’s toxic.”
“Fuck,” Adrian says, pressing his palms into his eyes so hard he starts seeing colors. His throat tightens. He wants to cry. He wants you.
“Dude,” Chris says. “She was dealing with all this shit at the libraries she worked at for years before you ever came along, and she’ll still be dealing with it for years even if you never talked to her ever again. It’s like—part of the deal. If she can cope with the fact that you’re constantly getting shot at, I think you need to learn to be okay with the fact that she occasionally gets yelled at by grumpy assholes.”
“You know her,” Economos says. “And Dawn and Laura too. They are more than capable of holding down the fort over there.”
“And when there’s something really, truly wrong, she does tell you about it,” Chris reminds him. “How many people have you killed for doing illegal shit at the library?”
“I don’t know,” Adrian says. “A lot.”
“You are protecting her in every way you can,” Adebayo says carefully. “But you also need to trust her to protect herself.”
They’re right. He knows they are.
“Okay,” he says hoarsely. “What do I—what do I do? What do I say to her?”
Adrian goes home from work early that day, and he sits on the couch in the living room and waits, staring at the front door, waiting for it to open.
When it finally does, he stands up immediately, and then feels ridiculous, just standing there in the middle of the room, staring at you. You look startled when you see him, setting your bags down and letting the door shut behind you.
“Adrian? What are you doing home alre—?”
The sound of your voice snaps him out of his trance, and he starts talking at you immediately, anxiously, hands wringing together in front of him. He wants to reach out and touch you, so badly, but he’s not sure if you want that right now.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry that—you felt like you couldn’t tell me about shit that was going on at work, because you were worried about how I would react. I’m an adult, and I need to manage my emotions better—”
“I’m sorry too,” you say. “And I understand. You worry about me because you love me, and I feel like I haven’t really been hearing you, or addressing the root of the problem, or trying to find a compromise—”
“I do love you,” Adrian interrupts firmly, his eyes wet. He wipes at them quickly. “I love you. I love you more than—I’ve ever loved anyone. But I also need to trust you, and I haven’t been doing that, and I’m sorry. I should have dropped the issue the second you told me to, not kept bugging you.”
“I forgive you,” you say quietly.
A weight lifts off his shoulders, instantly, when he hears you say that, and he slumps with relief, because—he really thought he’d fucked up this time. In a way that he wouldn’t be able to fix.
“Thank you,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”
You open your arms, and his heart swells. He doesn’t hesitate, striding across the carpet and scooping you up into his embrace until your feet are dangling above the floor. You laugh, just a bit, overwhelmed by his intensity, and he closes his eyes, grateful for the sound. He hasn’t heard it in days. He feels like he’s been starved for it.
“Look at me,” you say, and he does, his green eyes blinking open to meet yours. You kiss him, quick and soft, and his heart pounds just as hard as it did the first time he kissed you, in the parking lot of the library, his Vigilante mask clutched in his hand, his head stuck through the window of your car.
“I missed you,” he whispers.
“I don’t want you to keep feeling like this,” you whisper back. “All anxious about me going to work. So what is something reasonable that we can do to make this easier? For both of us?”
Adrian sets you down gently, but doesn’t let you budge an inch, keeping you close.
“Maybe…” he hesitates. “Maybe when you come by on Fridays, to Checkmate, we could spend an hour or two training together?”
“Training?” you repeat.
“I can teach you some basic self-defense,” Adrian says. “Enough that I know you’d be able to hold your own against any worst-case-scenario crazy people that might come into the library. And I know you’re not going to start—carrying a gun, or anything, but. A taser? Or pepper spray? Or—”
“Let’s start with the self-defense training,” you interrupt with a smile. “Okay? I think we can make that work. One step at a time?”
“Okay,” he agrees, grinning.
“No more fighting,” you say, your hands coming up to grip firmly in his hair. Your head tilts back as you stretch up, reaching for him. “This week was so terrible. I missed you.”
Adrian gives you want you want, his lips meeting yours, the movement fueled by days of missing you.
“No more fighting,” he repeats, and you jump up, hitching your legs around his waist, to let him carry you down the hall to the bedroom.
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