Adrian Munson

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

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

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

God, you’d been so fucking stupid.

A chat box popped up from Adebayo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

“Get in the closet right now.”

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

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

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

“So, what’s going on right now – oh.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Livid, actually,” you lied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Adrian!”

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

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

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

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

“Did I?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Listen I hate to inflate your ego but – ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

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

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

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

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

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

Evidently, yes. 

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

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

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

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

“What are you doing?”

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

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

“Well, yeah. Vigilante fucks.”

“And Adrian doesn’t?”

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

“Adrian – ”

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

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

“Well those weren’t sex.”

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

“That feels…pretty heteronormative.”

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

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

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

“I dunno…homo…homo-freaky?”

“Homo-freaky?” you repeated.

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

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

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

Oh my god, you loved him.

You frowned quickly. “What?”

“Nothing!”

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

“I smile at you all the time.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Speaking of…”

“Well, how do you want me?”

“What do you mean?”

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

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

“Just you, Ade. You’re all I need.”

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

“Where do you want me, Adrian?”

“Desk, I think?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Can I?” 

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

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

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

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

“You can move,” you assured him. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Come for me, Adrian,” you ordered. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re good at that, you know,”

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

“How long were you out here?” 

“Too long.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay, briefing time.”

“What do you – ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adrian bit his lip but managed to nod.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God, you sounded like Adrian. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’d you say?” he asked.

“85? What did you say?”

“85.”

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

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

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

“Hey Ade? New mission plan.”

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

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

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

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

“We were trying to keep things subtle!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I love you, too.”

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

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

“So, about that seam ripper…”

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

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

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

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

bpm taglist: @big-old-boat @bastardstevie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, fine probably wasn’t the right word.

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

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

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

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

You nodded sharply. “Of course I understand.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Emilia,” you sighed, exasperated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of course I do. He’s my teammate.” 

Chris managed to grab you by the forearm.

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

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

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

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

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

“I – ”

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

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

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

“Oh.”

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

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

“Stop it!” he grumbled. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll go.”

“Adrian, you don’t have to – ”

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

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

“The door won’t open.”

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

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

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

That absolute bastard.

“I think it’s locked, Adrian.”

“What?” 

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

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

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

“We’re not twins.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You swallowed hard. “I want to spar.”

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

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

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

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

“Ow!” Adrian hissed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Um, and you don’t hate me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He pouted. “Was that sarcasm?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You stopped talking to me!” you countered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re not going to die – ”

“You don’t know! I might!”

His hips shifted beneath you. 

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t think I understand.”

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

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

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

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

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

“But do you think of you?

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

“What do you want, Adrian?”

“Just to be with you.”

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

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

“I promise.”

“Okay.”

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

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

“Wanna come patrolling with me tonight?”

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

“You want me to come patrol with you?”

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

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

You shrugged. “Not lame at all.”

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

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

“You should let me chase you.”

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

“You want to…chase me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey!” he called after you. 

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

If he could.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You don’t,” he growled. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey!”

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

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

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

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

“Yeah?”

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

You laughed. “If he’s lucky.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you, Vigilante.”

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

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

“Maybe we’re doing this all wrong.”

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

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

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

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

“Just us?”

“Yes?”

“Like…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He blinked slowly. “What?”

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

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

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

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

“What the hell are you talking about?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your heart is beating really fast, Adrian.”

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

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

“I lost count,” he admitted. 

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

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

“Second?”

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

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

“I made you come! It counts!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bpm taglist: @big-old-boat @bastardstevie

Life wasn't easy. It has never been easy for you, the disowned daughter of a prestigious family that didn't obey their orders and refused to marry someone she didn't know. A man at least twice your age.

The war only made everything worse for you.

When you fled home you took as many of your valuable possessions you could carry with you, to have something to sell that could allow you to start anew in another city. Paris was big enough for you to hide and cover your tracks, so it was the safest option.

You had managed to find a two-room apartment, way below the standards you were raised in, but you didn't mind. You would have lived in the sewers, if it had granted you the freedom you desired.

After the first few months of struggling with your new life, trying to understand how you could survive on your own once the money you had gained from selling your belongings ran out, you found a sort of balance. You got close to your neighbours and offered your skills in mending and designing clothes to start earning and create a small turnover — you had mentally thanked your family for indulging your passion for fashion, providing the education you had wished for.

It took you more than a year of small labour to finally buy a little shop two roads away from your small apartment. Your prices were low as people could not afford to buy that many clothes during the war, and repairing the ones they already had, cost them even less.

Still, despite how bleak the world had turned out to be, having something to occupy your days helped you keep your head and mind above water. Sometimes you barely left your shop, working at night providing a sense of comfort and calmness around you that quieted your inner turmoils. You often went back to your apartment when dawn was starting breaking in the sky.

It was during one of those nights that someone entered your shop way past midnight, probably attracted by the light still on reflecting on the curb outside in the street.

"I'm closed at the moment," you said at the man in front of you, your hand slowly going under your desk to get the knife you always hid there out of safety. You never had to use it before.

"Yet your door was open and you're still here. Working."

The stranger had a nice voice, smooth as velvet and way lighter on the consonants than any person you'd encountered before. He sounded melodious.

"There's no one around at night in these streets, especially not out to buy clothes."

The man was standing in the middle of the room, eyes on you with a colour so unnatural you wondered if it was simply a trick of the lights.

"And yet here I am."

You tilted your head to the side. "You want me to believe you're not here to rob me or attack me, but you're interested in my services?"

The man stepped closer to the counter, the only piece of furniture standing between you. "You don't seem very scared for someone who believes I'm here to commit a felony."

"I accepted the fact that if anyone were to come here at night was to harm me, and I couldn't really stand a chance," you replied, shrugging your shoulders slightly.

"Fascinating."

"Not really." He was still staring at you, those unblinking eyes fixed in yours. "So, are you actually here for my clothes?"

A slow blink.

"I have a theatre company down in Pigalle. Some of our stage costumes are quite old and we need replacements, would you be willing to design them for us?"

This time it was your turn to stare. A part of your brain was telling you you should be scared of the man in front of you, yet no fight or flight instinct was kicking in.

"I can do it. Have you set a budget?"

"Money is not a problem," the man said with a slow movement of his hand. So elegant. "I'll have someone deliver our necessities tomorrow night."

He turned around swiftly, moving towards the door as a way to tell the conversation was over.

"Wait," you blurted out quickly. "Can I at least know your name?"

"Armand."

In a blink he was out the door and out of sight.

---

That became your new life in the following months. Someone from the Théâtre des Vampires would come once every week with new requests or to mend a few costumes. Usually, it was Celeste or Estelle, but sometimes Santiago appeared. The girls were nice and they stayed long enough to keep you company till late in the evening. Santiago, on the other hand, always looked at you as if he wanted to eat you. And not in a nice way.

Armand never showed up again.

Estelle had told you he was their maître, so you imagined he must have been too busy with their plays to bother to come. You didn't mind, you were just curious to see him once more.

That's why it took you by surprise when you saw him enter your shop one winter night, almost six months after the first time.

"Good evening, monsieur."

"Good evening, mademoiselle."

The side of your mouth twitched into a small smile. "How do you know I'm not married?"

Armand stepped towards one of the shelves where all the new fabrics were on display, his eyes scanning them carefully. "We have made some progress in the last century, yet a married woman still wouldn't be as free as you are."

"I see," you commented, placing down the dress you were busy sewing before Armand came in. "And does this bother you?"

"Not at all," he replied, firmly, his attention still on the fabrics. "Having a common man try to tame you would have been the worst outcome for you. Your pretty head always so luminous would have dimmed in less than a year in marriage."

A quiet gasp left your lips at his words, stunning you into silence. How could he know about this?

"Why are you here tonight?" you asked, your voice surprisingly stable given how you were actually feeling.

Armand finally turned to look at you, his amber eyes like a beam in the night. They were truly unnatural, no trick of the light as you initially thought.

"In a couple of weeks we'll have the première of our new show, I would like a new suit fit for the evening. I want your impeccable taste to dress me."

His request almost surprised you more than his previous words. You weren't expecting him to come to you with a commission.

"It would be my pleasure," you said, picking a sheet of paper from one of the drawers below the desk. "You can write down your measurements. Have you chosen a fabric?"

Armand turned back towards the shelves, his hand caressing a specific piece. "I'd like to have it in this colour."

You left your spot behind the counter to reach him and see clearly his fabric of choice. You were standing less than two feet from him, his scent tickling your nose but you couldn't point out the fragrance. Tobacco and something spicy.

"That's mummy-brown. My favourite shade of this colour." You looked at him, your eyes scanning his figure. "It would go very well with your complexion."

Armand was staring you down. From up close he was even taller than you thought, you only reached his shoulders.

"I trust your judgement," he said, his attention fully on your face. "But I'd like you to take my measurements. I want the suit perfectly tailored, and previous dressmakers didn't have your eye."

You blinked quickly, taken completely off-guard. "Yes, of course. We can do it now, if you have time."

"All the time you need."

"Follow me, then."

You took him to the back of your shop, where you had mirrors and a stand for clients to step on to make the job easier for you. Armand positioned himself without requiring any instruction from you.

"Would you mind taking off your jacket? I need to see your arms and back to measure you correctly."

Armand did as you asked, placing the jacket carefully on the bench next to him. You barely followed his movements as your eyes were fixed on his upper body.

"Is something the matter?"

You head jerked automatically back towards his face at his question. "No, it's alright. I was just expecting your body to be leaner. I thought you had less muscular mass."

"Have you imagined my body often?"

You bit the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from reacting, willing your face to keep the blush at bay. "That's not what I meant. It's my professional instinct that kicks in when I look at a person, to see what might look best on them."

"Any suggestions for me?" Armand asked, a little smirk forming on his face.

"You don't need it. From what I've seen you're very aware of your commanding presence and you dress accordingly to your status."

"You're being generous."

"I'm being honest. It's your choice to believe me or not."

Without further ado, you got into work starting from his legs, each time scribbling down the measurements on the sheet you had brought with you. The position was a bit awkward when you stopped to think about it. You were on your knees, while Armand's looming and even taller figure was towering over you. You could feel the weight of his power pressing on your shoulders but, surprisingly, that only seemed to trigger a sense of thrill in the pit of your stomach.

Once you were done with his legs, you stood back up to your feet, raising your head to look at Armand, who had been awfully quiet and still during the whole process.

"Do you mind stepping down, so I can take your place?" you asked in your best professional voice. "I need to measure your bust, arms and shoulders, and I'm going to struggle from down here."

"Of course," Armand replied immediately, following your request.

You lifted your leg on the stand as you moved to take his previous position, when you felt Armand's hand on the small of your back help you with the movement. His other followed right afterwards, resting softly on your waist to prevent your body from losing its balance.

"Thank you," you murmured awkwardly. "But I could manage on my own."

Armand's lips quirked a bit in the corner, but didn't comment anything further.

You were the same height now, and close enough for you to fully let his scent invade your senses. It was a unique fragrance, and you could not deny how affected you were by inhaling it inside you. In addition to that, his eyes were mere inches from yours in this position and you noticed for the first time, despite the peculiar colour that no human could possess, how warm they felt when they made contact with yours.

"Is there something wrong with my face?"

His voice brought you back to reality. You diverted your gaze, blinking quickly to get your focus back completely. You fidgeted with the tape measure a couple of times before continuing with the task at hand. Thankfully, Armand's stillness was helpful, your mind now set again on getting all the required measurements you would need for his suit, but you were aware his attention never strayed away from you for a second, so intense it actually felt like a touch on your skin.

"All done," you said, as you removed the tape from the front of his shoulders. You raised your head instinctively to look at him, a loud gasp leaving your mouth at his proximity.

You could feel his breath on your cheek, certain that Armand could feel yours as well.

None of you moved for a few seconds, bodies frozen in the moment as you simply stood there staring at each other. You were the first to step away, jumping down quickly from the stand so you could grab your sheet again and write down the last measurements.

"I'll have your suit ready in a week, is that okay with you?" you asked, giving Armand your back. You didn't know what had just happened, but you couldn't bring yourself to look at him for the time being.

"Yes."

"Do you need anything else?"

"I'd like to invite you to the première of the show, if you're interested in coming to see it."

You stopped writing on the paper at his words, still keeping your back turned. What were you supposed to say? Would it be awkward for you to attend? Santiago tried to convince you a few times, but you always used your work as a fair way to refuse. But it was Armand asking you now, and somehow all the nerves in your body were compelling you to say yes.

You willed your body to turn back around, feeling brave enough to make eye-contact again. "I'd love to."

The words were out in the air now, and you knew Armand wouldn't allow you to take them back. Luckily for you, you had no intention to.

---

The day of the première you spent an awful amount of time in front of your wardrobe to choose an appropriate dress. When you used to go to the opera with your parents, you had always worn your most expensive gown as the occasion was also meant to show off your family's wealth.

You didn't know what kind of show you were about to see, but you had a feeling you should go with a more sober outfit, though still elegant enough to look good. You opted for a cinnamon brown A-line skirt with three red ochre buttons at the top that matched with the silk shirt you had in the same shade of colour.

You decided not to wear any tights underneath. It was a cold night, but you loathed the feeling of their texture on your skin. Your winter coat would be enough to keep your body warm.

You looked at yourself one last time in the mirror and, when you felt quite satisfied with the result, you put on your Victorian boots and left your apartment.

Your walk towards Pigalle was quicker than you thought, the cold air forcing you to speed up your steps as your heels clicked loudly on the cobbled streets. A small crowd was gathered outside the entrance, moving slowly inside the theatre.

Your assigned seat was in the fourth row right in front of the stage and, as you waited for the show to start, you looked around the place to commit it to memory.

It was smaller than the theatres you used to attend and less opulent, which you took as a good sign. It was very dim lit though, the dark walls casting a shadow on all the audience. As you studied the upper levels on your right, your gaze stopped at the figure standing against the wooden banister taking in the scenery below.

Armand.

His attention shifted towards you in a second, giving you a small nod as a welcome that you returned with a small smile. It was interesting to see him in his element, as it had been the other way around until now.

When the few lights around the stalls were switched off, you diverted your gaze. The show was about to start.

You didn't know what you were expecting to see, the poster outside not giving much away, but surely not small plays all circling around death. And all brutally executed.

You resisted the temptation to look up at Armand in judgement, as you weren't getting the reasoning behind such macabre choices, though you were sure it was clearly showing on your face.

Everything changed with the last scene. You frowned as a young girl came running on stage screaming. Normally you would say she was truly giving all of herself in the act, but deep down you knew she wasn't performing.

The girl was really frightened.

You leaned forward slightly, your eyes moving around on stage before settling on Santiago busy bewitching the audience with his monologue. That's when it happened. You saw two fangs shining in his mouth a second before they came down to bite violently on the girl's neck.

This wasn't a play. It was real. You didn't have any proof of that, but your brain had already decided that was the only possible truth.

As the girl supposedly fainted in Santiago's arms, you finally turned to look at Armand. You found his eyes already on you as if he was waiting for your reaction. It made sense now why everybody in the company had eyes so unnatural, because they were.

Because they were all vampires.

You stood up from your seat quickly, almost running out of the theatre. It wasn't out of fear that you were leaving before the play ended, that was what was scaring you the most.

The scene you had witnessed excited you. The idea that you'd been interacting with creatures that could have ended your life in a blink sent shivers of exhilaration down your spine. The fact that you had been alone with Armand, his face close enough to bite your neck if wanted to — but didn't — was awakening something deep in your core you had never had a taste of before.

You realized your body was taking you to your shop. It was closer to the theatre, and it was your shelter in a way that your apartment could never be. You needed to be in a safe territory, because you knew even without seeing him or hearing him that Armand was following you.

You entered the shop slamming the door behind you without stopping to see if it would actually close or not. You didn't turn on the lights in the main room, opting to wait in the back where you had taken Armand's measurements a fortnight before.

You switched on the two lamps you had in the corners of the room to have a clear enough view of your surroundings. You had hoped to have enough time before his arrival, so that you could slow down your breath and heartbeat, but you weren't so lucky.

The steps were light but you managed to hear them anyway. Or better, Armand wanted you to hear them. Still you were not prepared at the effect the sight had on you, the moment he stepped out of the dark. His grim shadow projected on the walls behind him thanks to the light of the lamps.

"You know the truth."

"Yes."

Your voice was barely above a whisper, and still ragged.

"You're scared."

"No."

Armand tilted his head to the side, amber eyes blaring even brighter than usual. "Prove it."

You went to him, your body not hesitating once as you sidestepped the stand in the middle of the room to reach him. You stopped right in front of Armand, your gaze meeting his as they seemed to be compelled to do each time you were to share the same space.

"Look into my eyes, Armand. Do you see fear?"

You made it sound like a challenge. It was probably a stupid move, a move someone would do if they didn't have a single regard for their own life.

Still, Armand did as you asked. He was scanning your face for an answer, so profoundly you could almost feel him inside your head. Maybe he was.

The silence stretched, your breathing starting to pick up again in anticipation. You could feel your fingers twitch next your sides as you waited.

Armand was on you before your mind could start to process his approach. His lips crashing against yours in a rough kiss as one of his hands got tangled in your hair, while the other went to the small of your back to press your body closer to his.

You followed out of instincts rather than experience, taking a hold of his face and shoulder. His tongue slipped in your mouth the second you parted your lips to breathe. He was devouring you in a way you should have expected from a vampire, and you were struggling to match his rhythm.

Armand broke the contact first. His eyes searching for yours while he pushed your body backwards, placing his hands on your hips to direct you. You back met the table you had against the wall before he lifted you to sit on it with frightening ease.

"You never say or act the way I expect you to. It's maddening how you can disrupt my balance by simply existing."

You were so disoriented by the whole situation you weren't sure if he was giving you a compliment or insulting you.

"Are you going to kill me?"

Armand let out a breathy laugh, the air touching the skin of your face softly. "Do you think I would be standing here between your legs if I wanted to kill you?"

"I don't know. It seems fitting for your kind to seduce your preys before you eat them, makes the hunt more palatable."

"Such a brilliant mind you have."

You gasped the moment you felt Armand's hand touch your leg, caressing the skin behind your knee before moving higher toward your thigh, your skirt rising to welcome him. You knew where he was going and yet you didn't how to prepare yourself at the contact.

Your legs opened wider on their own accord, showing Armand how willing your body was to have him touch you. When Armand reached your centre, he simply let his palm rest against it, his hand covering all of your core.

You were wet. He could feel it through the fabric of your underwear, still you kept still. You let your back relax against the wall behind as you waited for his next move.

Armand moved your underwear to the side, two of his fingers coming up to your clit applying pressure with fast and firm circles. You moaned loudly at the action, more intense than the way it felt when you touched yourself alone in your bed deep into the night.

His rhythm never faltered, each precise flick on your clit eliciting a reaction out of you. A light jolt of your legs, a sweet whimper from your lips.

Without warning, Armand entered you with one of his fingers, the sensation so overwhelming in its suddenness that your back bowed into an arch as if on command.

You could feel your muscles stretch as Armand pressed it to the hilt, his palm making contact with your clit again. He stayed there, giving no sign he had any intention to start moving.

You opened your eyes that you didn't even realise you had closed, and looked at him. As expected, Armand was already staring at you, expression unreadable.

"You've never lain with a man."

It wasn't a question. He knew based on a single finger inside you.

"That's true."

"If you feel pain, you stop me. I'm not interested in hurting you."

You took a deep breath. "And in what are you interested in?"

Armand's eyes darkened as his finger started moving slowly inside you. "Seeing you cry in pleasure."

The tip of his finger curled against a specific spot inside you, the sudden sensation making you open your legs even more. Armand kept attacking the same spot over and over again, as your whimpers started to grow in volume filling the small room.

A second finger joined the first, your walls immediately welcoming the intrusion without any resistance. You could feel your wetness dripping down your skin and on the table below you.

Armand never stopped the sweet torture, only increasing the pace every few seconds. Your breathing was getting more ragged and you couldn't keep your eyes open any longer. The second his thumb started pressing down on clit, giving it quick flicks that matched the pressure of his fingers inside you, you were done for.

Your climax hit like a tidal wave, your whole body trembling in response as your legs locked against Armand's waist. You wanted the feeling to last forever but you wanted to run away from it at the same time. You had fully lost control of your body and mind.

When the intensity slowly decreased, you managed to open your eyes. Armand's gaze already there to provide you comfort, his pupils so large that they were engulfing completely the amber of his irises.

"No tears in your eyes," Armand commented. "Let me rectify that."

You had no time to react — not that your current situation would have allowed you to — as Armand pushed your legs back against your shoulders, your skirt dropping down on your waist exposing your centre fully to the room and to Armand's focused gaze.

"I'll try to be gentle, ma chérie, but my control is hanging by a thin thread," Armand said, voice showing his effort in restraining himself.

"I don't care," you managed to utter. "I want you, Armand."

That was all the permission he needed. In a single, smooth movement of his hips Armand pushed forward. You didn't know when he had pulled his pants down to his thighs, but considering how out of your mind you were during your orgasm, you weren't really surprised you hadn't noticed.

"Armand, fu—"

You didn't get to finish your sentence. The feeling of Armand's length entering you taking all your breath away. You were expecting pain, like in the stories you had heard when you were old enough to understand, but nothing came. Only a crushing feeling of pleasure.

Armand set a brutal pace from the beginning as he saw you get lost in the throes of bliss after the first thrusts.

The table you were sitting on kept bumping against the wall at every snap of Armand's hips against the skin of your thighs. Those were the only sounds in the room, other than your erratic panting and the occasional moan slipping through Armand's lips.

You weren't going to last. Your hands coming up to hold Armand's wrists, while his hands were still gripping the back of your knees keeping you in the same folded position against the table and wall.

The orgasm hit you both at the same time out of nowhere. You let out a scream so loud and raw you struggled to recognise as your own. Armand sinked his nails in your flesh, breaking the skin, a low groan resonating in his chest.

You stayed in the same position for a few minutes, not that you could do much with your body positively drained. Your sight was blurred, wet tears staining your lashes and your cheeks.

"Are you still with me?" Armand asked, lowering delicately your legs back on the table.

You nodded not knowing if you were able to utter a complete sentence.

Armand's hands were moving softly on your skin, trying to stop the tremors in your muscles. "Now that I found you, I think I'm going to keep you."

You blinked slowly up at him, not really registering his words, as you felt your body gradually drifting off.

"Forever."

---