Your New Rogue Fancast

civilian!reader

Adrian had only answered your ad because he was desperate to move out of his mother’s house, having been at his last straw with the woman he finally moved out. You were a civilian, he wasn’t sure if you were from Evergreen or where you worked but you didn’t ask questions. And that was enough.

He was weird. Like, really weird. Adrian would come home late and sneak out during twilight hours, usually making far too much noise whenever he returned. But bless his soul, he did try to keep quiet. Sometimes you saw red stains on his clothes in the wash. You didn’t ask about it, you didn’t want to. His friend, Chris, was very intimidating with a face you recognised from somewhere. Adrian tried his hardest to keep you away from the 11th Street Kids, but sometimes the apartment was unintentionally used as a safe house; you were told they were just old friends in town for a few nights.

Your friends tell you to kick him out but despite all his weird little behaviours, he was a damn good roommate. He remembered how you liked your hot drinks and made sure to always greet you with your favourite steaming hot mug in the morning. He would let you change the AC to how you needed it, and would cook dinner as an apology for constantly disrupting your sleep schedule. You were definitely on Adrian’s best friend list, even if it was nearer the bottom.

Maybe one day he’d tell you about his life as Vigilante.

coworker!reader

You had been working with Adrian at Fennel Fields for a few months before you realised he still lived with his mum. He didn’t sound very happy to be under the same roof as that woman and as his co-worker/friend/partner in hell, you couldn’t stand to let him be miserable. So of course you let him stay with you.

Adrian hadn’t stopped thanking you since you let him move in rent-free. Your one simple rule was; no secrets. Well, that could’ve been a problem for Adrian if not for the fact that this deal was mutually beneficial. So he told you about Vigilante, about the 11th Street Kids. Sure, you were shocked at first, but you slowly fell into a routine. Sleep schedules were worked around his patrols, work shifts were covered when needed, you learnt the basics of first-aid just in case his healing properties couldn’t patch up an injury and Adrian had decided he would be the one to clean around the house and make dinners as a thank you for your hospitality. 

Your co-workers at Fennel Fields had started to notice your proximity since Adrian moving in and there was plenty of workplace gossip and rumours but that hadn’t phased Adrian in the slightest. You were the only co-worker of his who actually listened to him and understood his feelings and, let’s face it, weirdo behaviour.

vigilante!reader

Having a fellow crime-fighting roommate was incredibly handy and meant that there was someone who understood you and your circumstance. Adrian had met you on patrol, he had detained a few drug dealers until one of them had pulled a gun on him…at least until a gun shot rang through the streets and you basically saved his ass.

Ever since that day, Vigilante hasn’t left your side. And, of course, that meant Adrian had to worm his way into your civilian life as well. Adrian was the one to come up with the idea of living together. You had gotten hurt on patrol one night and that was enough for him to decide he should move in. He didn’t want you to be hurt alone again and that was that; the start of your budding friendship with your fellow vigilante, now roommate. 

Patrols were now done with a certain teal suit by your side, and your cloakroom now had a dedicated wall to a someone’s beanie boo collection, with your shoe cupboard now storing blood money instead of your boots. His subtle companionship made the long, sleepless nights easier to bear. Boring patrols were now chalk-full of atrociously incorrect animal facts and Adrian’s toothy grin and these carried on into life at home. Lazy morning began with a cup of coffee, evenings ended with tracking various crimes.

11th street!reader

Adrian’s favourite thing about having you as a roommate is the fact you work together. He didn’t need to make any excuses for late nights and you understood his working troubles better than anyone. And it meant you had to be nice to him! Adrian was slightly aware of people’s irritation towards him and of course it upset him, but Peacemaker was his best friend—not them! At least until you moved in.

Having a roomie and a co-worker in one meant another friend to his list. Someone who was forced to learn to more than tolerate him; and it was refreshing. You didn’t hate Adrian, you wouldn’t have moved in if you did. Living together came easy, your routines were perfectly synchronised and your relationship on the field had only strengthened. The 11th Street Kids noticed before either of you two did. Adrian and you were a dynamic duo on every single mission, matching each other’s pace to a t. He had your back and you had his. It was like watching two people who could read each other’s minds. It actually freaked everyone out a little.

The dynamic didn’t change off the battlefield, either. There was a shared calendar pinned onto the entryway wall. The house was scattered with splashes of Adrian’s signature teal paired with corners stacked full of your books. The kitchen was in a perpetual state of organised mess and every weekend was full of home baking to match the shared sweet tooth of you and Adrian Chase. Living with Adrian felt easy, and simple. He was your partner in crime and your best friend all in one.

You were one of the few people in his life who actually understood him. You earned that place as his third best friend (below only Chris and Eagly).

“Yes, this batch is more of the ‘goo’. I figured out the synthetic version of the butterflies' food source, it might not nourish the same as testing was inconclusive. But Goff could not tell the difference.” You explained, holding up the reused honey jar, the liquid inside was very similar yet a slightly different consistency, more greenish purple in hue under the light.  

“Ooh pretty! Nearly as dazzling as your eyes, my precious…” Adrian cooed. 

“Who are you, fucking Gollum?” John snorted at that last one, typing away at his laptop.

“Wow, so we can feed them? Make these alien guys even stronger?” Harcourt said a little incredulously, raising a brow.

“You can use it to barter with them, poison the batches, I'm just the manufacturer.” You shrugged and Harcourt had to concede that was twisted and smart. She was for once impressed and couldn’t hide it.

“That’s good news, keep up the nice work.” Murn gave one of his strange half-smiles, one you replicated in return.

“But also sir this is good news because, I’m on the right track now so if we destroy the cow you won't starve Murn.” You gave a rare smile to someone other than Adrian, your second favourite of the crew which was obviously Murn.

“Oh yeah that's good so he won't…wait, what?!” John began and then faltered with a high pitched what the fuck.

“Hm, what makes you say that?” Murn replied evasively, yet there was a relief in his eyes, like a great weight was about to be lifted.

“You're one of the aliens right? Which is how you already knew their food source was some sort of space bovine creature. If I can get a sample from the creature before we destroy it, I can make an artificial food source for you.” You said with a simple shrug to Murn, the rest of the crew absolutely floored.

“That’s right, now it’s out in the open, let’s get this out of the way. I do not want to invade Earth. In fact there are a group of us who do not wish to see this planet conquered but live amongst you peacefully. It’s cliché but our planet was destroyed and this one can inhabit us, but the only food source left is the cow, nothing else on Earth nourishes us. I doubt even your synthetic version will work, outside of being a diversion.” Murn as always left everyone unable to argue back, reeling in the bombshell he’d dropped. “I need to go discuss next steps with the officer that is helping us, Goff is out there, look alive people.” With that he was gone.

After a long stretch of silence, Adebayo whipped out the, “I can’t believe Murn is an alien…”

“I can.” Harcourt replied, saving face, “he acted strange all the time.”

Adrian shrugged, non-plussed at the reveal, “I kinda assumed he was autistic, like me and my love.”

“Maybe he still is.” You replied quietly, moving onto your next project.

“Wait you’re autistic?” Chris paused swinging on his chair and trying to balance a pencil on his nose to ask Adrian.

“Well yeah, I’m AuDHD and have ASPD.” Adrian looked seriously offended, “How do you not know this as my BFF, I’ve told you a ton of times!” He snapped.

Chris gave a wincing smile with the wild admission of, “sorry dude, I kinda tune the stuff you say out, like a lot of the time.”

“That’s fair enough, I think you have serious ADHD too.” Adrian mused, watching Chris now trying to stack up all of the erasers into a small fort.

“I have what serious what now?” Chris asked, getting a stapler tank in on the action.

Adrian gave up after a battle of sharpeners versus staplers and went back to your side, to check out what else you were working on. “Oooh what’s this one for?” He wondered, looking at the lilac liquid faintly bubbling like a carbonated drink inside the test-tube.

“I thought on the copulation of butterflies and their behaviours, the two things which can distract a butterfly, food and mating. Thus I have combined the synthetic and real food source with the right pheromones, it should create a great lure for the aliens and likely stun them, making your job of dispatching them much easier.” You explained, holding up the beaker to examine the reaction to the small amount of goo you’d added in.

“Woah like an alien roofie?” Adrian marvelled, glasses slipping down his nose.

“No, more like a taser.” You replied, readjusting your glasses up in tandem. “Or you could put it into a dart and use it like a tranquiliser.” Opening up your desk drawer there were small darts, twisting the sealing sleeve, you started to fill one.

“Holy fuck, that’s awesome. You’re so clever!” Adrian shouted, unable to contain his volume at how cool this all was. He shook the table to give you a cuddle, right as you tried to pour the substance out of a test tube, some of it spilling onto your skin.

“Oops sorry!” He quickly got you a cloth to help wipe it up.

“It’s okay, my skin doesn’t appear to be irritated.” You noted, washing your wrist and placing sanitiser and saline solution on the area. “I’ll monitor closely.” You reassured him as Adrian stared down at your wrist, utterly transfixed and wide-eyed, you assumed out of guilt.

“Did you use a new shampoo or conditioner? You smell amazing…” Adrian sighed, drinking in your scent, mop of curly hair latched at your shoulder.

“No I don’t think so.” You shrugged, far too used to his clinginess as you tried to work by now for that to be considered strange behaviour.

But then you started to feel his panting breath, snaking up to the shell of your ear, usually that was reserved for when you two were alone. “Adrian, can you give me some space?” You asked him gently, and Adrian looked like you’d shot him in the gut.

Then some truly strange behaviour occurred, Chris marched over and forcibly pulled Adrian off of you, shoving him away. Adebayo and Harcourt leapt to their feet at that, John following suit behind them.

“Hey sugar tits, how about if you want a real man give me a chance huh?” Chris drawled, combing back his hair with his fingers, giving you a suave square headed smile. “Ya know I didn’t think I liked mousy chicks, but you’re seriously doing it for me.”

“W-what?” You squeaked out.

“Chris that’s not funny, are you high or something?” Adebayo snapped.

“I’m totally clear of mind right now Ads! And I know that I love her, and we’re meant to be together, not stupid fucking thimble over there.” Chris chortled, “they used to call me chimp arm in high school you know.”

“I’ll fucking gut you and flay your skin off to make a muscular lampshade you stupid dumb fuck!” Adrian turned it right up to 11, teeth gnashing.

“Hey dudes, come on back off.” John stood in the way, and you were grateful until he turned to face you expression similarly dazed. “Neither one of you jerkoffs could properly treat her right, she’s a woman of science, and I’m a man of…computer science and tech bullshit!” He yelled, the three of them all entering a strange sort of wrestling lock.

“I appear to have successfully made a serum…I did not expect it to also be effective on humans however.” You gaped at the three men butting heads, taking a full step to hide behind Harcourt, who drew her firearm.

“Back the fuck up.” Harcourt demanded.

“We’re cool…we’re cool.” Chris put his hands up and the other two begrudgingly followed suit. But then they conspired over something in an odd huddle at the far side of the video store, messing around the stereo.

Phil Collin’s In the air tonight began to siphon through the video store. 

“What are those chuckle fucks doing now?” Adebayo asked with a confused frown as the three men were growling.

“Male butterflies can create acoustic signals or pulses to let females know they are searching for a perfect match.” You explained, noting their behaviour was still going down the course of rival male butterflies at mating time, “The pulses sound threatening to other males, mimicking noises bats make while hunting.”  

“I can feel it coming in the air tonight…” Chris began, putting on his Peacemaker helmet and trying to choke out Vigilante who already had his visor down.

“I've been waiting for this moment all my life…” John tried to slip under the radar, shaking at you a pack of magnums out of his wallet that made your eyes widen.

Vigilante whipped out his taser and expertly dispatched Peacemaker, after which all he had to do was growl again menacingly in John's direction in order to get the taller man retreating to the far corner with a whimper, throwing the contraceptives to the dominant males direction.

“Can you feel it coming in the air tonight…” Adrian continued, tossing off his mask again to get his glasses on, grinning as the victor. He rejected the magnum condoms, pulling out his own regular ribbed trojans.

“Oh Lord…” Harcourt and Adebayo grimaced.

“The singing can be done either individually, or groups of males band together to form a choir. This competitive display behaviour is called lekking. Individuals compete with each other, allowing the females to take their pick from the group.” You continued, fascinated by the parallels at play here, your scientist mind not really catching up with the situation proper until Adrian stalked up to you, lust etched on every corner of his face.

“In many species, the female requires the male to perform a dance before she will allow him near. He delicately flies around her, whirring his wings in the hope that more pheromones waft in her direction…” Adrian, the victor, circled around you, performing his world-famous butt dance for you, he was shaking that ass like there was no tomorrow.

“Oh dear,” You sighed as his peach ass tantalised you even more than usual, sparking a fire in your loins like nothing else ever had, “I think the effects are concurrent.” 

“What does that mean?” Adrian sighed back in a dogged pant, setting a string of sloppy kisses at your neck, embracing you in a tight hug.

“It means um I’m feeling the same way and Adrian we should really go somewhere more private...” You moaned breathlessly when Adrian dipped a knee between your thighs and ground against your aching core.

“Yeah, yeah that's great. Let's be alone. You're so smart. Fuck I want you, I need you baby right now, so much it really hurts…” He whined, grinding his hips again, dry humping with purchase at your thigh.

“Okayyyy, let's give you two some space!” With that Adebayo and Harcourt gave full clearance for Adrian to scoop you up and dash out the door.

It probably wasn’t safe having him drive you back to your apartment with that raging erection, but Adrian insisted he was still following all the traffic conditions, and it wasn’t the even the first time.

“I was kinda rock hard that one time you played Love Machine by TV Girl off your Spotify.” Adrian admitted and you gave him a cheeky smile before playing it again.

In your bedroom, the two of you were an interlocking spiral, dancing to TV Girl’s My Girlfriend, Adrian continued the courtship ritual over and over again, dancing and holding you close.

“Need you touching me, close, fuck need you closer.” His hands dug into the plushness of your hips and waist, fingers clawing and flexing.

You gasped at the motion, “The males use their claspers to grab hold of the female, ensuring they remain together.” The dance continued until you both hit the mattress, Adrian lunging to keep you pinned beneath him. There was such a possessive glint in his eye, it made you ache white hot for him, thighs already slick.

“Guarding the female, the male stays attached for a long time to ensure that he is the only one who gets to fertilize the female's eggs.” You continued, mewling when his hands reached up to cup your breasts.

“Ohhh I love it when you speak all science to me foxy lady…” Adrian moaned, not so subtly pumping his clothed crotch between your thighs, the friction agonising.

“The male um transfers a spermatophore packet to the female. This packet often contains a nutritious cocktail of proteins and amino acids that the female uses to prolong her lifespan and support egg production.” You found that repeating your special interests in butterfly mating patterns helped with the anxiety of thinking about what the other effects of this pheromone might entail.

“Ohh fuck I wanna give you my spermatophore packet-thingy baby, yes oh fuck yes, please can I?” Adrian asked hopefully, wiping some drool from his bottom lip. “I'm so fucking hard for you right now it hurts.” He was teary-eyed, face flushed bright red, hot to the touch. You licked your own lips looking down at his obvious desire, throbbing like your own.

“Y-yes you can.” You replied shyly, stripping off your clothes. The state he was in was exhilarating to witness, to say the least. “I'm also feeling the effects and burning or rather aching for you.” 

"Ahh– holy fuck, you feel amazing!” Adrian moans, broken up between sloppy kisses, as you frantically reached down to palm at him. 

It took much longer than you would like for him to unbuckle his belt, pull those combat pants and teal spotted trunks down, and when you wrap your hand around the exposed length of him, Adrian hisses as his entire body involuntarily jerked forward in spasms.

The instant you finally touched his cock, you're gone. Rational thought has fully left the station and there's no stopping now that you can truly feel how achingly hard he is, now that you feel how much he twitches under your hand each time you kiss him back. At his sweet, ragged moans that you rip from his throat, you set a frenzied pace of stroking his shaft, revelling at how the tip leaks into your palm, precum already dripping over your fingers.

Pulling him back by the curly hair, you attach your lips to his neck, sucking a bruise at the softest part of Adam’s apple, making Adrian cry out your name, followed by a loud, “fuuck, fu-ohh fuck let me fuck you, please, baby, please I need to I-“ Begging tears are spilling, trickling down his nose, fogging up his wire-framed glasses.

“I need you too.” You’d started grinding away on his knee, and once you drag yourself off of him and to lay back down, you can see that you’ve left a damp patch at his black Vigilante pants, and a steady streak of his precum has soaked higher up by the utility belt.

Tearing them down to his ankles, because Adrian Chase doesn’t like stuff touching his butt when he pees or fucks, he’s staring entranced with you laying back, legs wide, open and inviting for him.

“Fuck me Adrian,” you plead, granted a thick moan as you lick a stripe up the column of his throat, skin hot under your lips as Adrian clambers over you.

He’s licking and kissing the sweat off your skin, pawing at your tits, “hah ‘m sorry, you just taste so damn good…” Adrian muffled against your sternum, lapping it all up like a dog with the flat of his tongue.

Like a moth to a flame, you’re hot from the pheromones, and Adrian is obsessed with the warmth of your abdomen and core, humping the bed desperately when he dipped lower to lap at your folds, it’s intoxicating more than usual, but Adrian isn’t there for long, needing to be inside you.

“Butterflies present their abdomens for the male to latch onto…” You continued to explain the mating rituals of butterflies, as Adrian enters you to the hilt, a hand held at your stomach to feel himself pressing inside.

“H-how long do butterflies generally mate for?” Adrian eventually wondered, still pumping his hips to diligently drill you. “I don't feel close, but it's been a while…” 

That was an understatement, it had been two hours.

“The process is slow, 12 to 16 hours…” You replied with a thick swallow, not knowing how to broach the topic with him until now. 

“So that means,” Adrian's eyes widened.

“P-potentially yes.” You shuddered back in response. “Likely, if my hypothesis is right with how you and I haven’t orgasmed yet…”

As the night goes on, you’re both not in the right state of mind to keep time anymore, Adrian whimpering your name in a caged tone fervently. He's keeping you flush against his body as close as possible, grip iron tight at your waist.

His eyes are scrunched shut until they flicker open, fixating on you with an intense stare, panting,  “sorry need to keep fucking you, I'm sorry I need this so bad baby…” Adrian dropped his head against those glorious breasts as he caught his breath.

Both of your movements are fast and uneven. You practically writhed beneath Adrian begging for everything he could give you, when his hand shifted to rub against you clit in time with his thrusts, he could feel you clamp down around him. Whole bodies tensing, sounds muffled by tongues intertwining, biting down on lips, shoulders, nails crescent mooning into any reachable flesh in ecstasy.

Adrian has got the most fucked-out look on his face, reflecting your own, green eyes hazy when he grunts, “can stop, I know it's so much, I can’t, but I totally will if you can’t uhh fuck!” 

You realised he's asking for permission to continue, neither of you are in control of this unfettered base lust, yet your wonderful consent king Adrian is still asking. There's a near terrified look on his face beyond the desire and you quickly clash your lips with his, telling him it's okay. 

As he plunges deeper, going harder, you're reduced near to tears, a total mess, nodding into his shoulder to keep the pace. Finally it feels like that sweet release is ready, a bud blooming into an ambrosia.

This time your orgasm isn’t a single wave of pleasure spreading from your core, it's a relentless wave after wave violently crashing constantly and each lasts longer than the last. 

At that he's moaning into your mouth, eagerly meeting your tongue with his, both of you utterly exhausted yet kissing like it's the first time, it’s the air you both need to survive. 

His moans start to pick up in volume and frequency, coming from a place deeper in his throat. Adrian is close, you know the signs. He followed shortly after your final wave, thrusting with abandon until he released inside you. It surprises him more than you with how thick it is, you note that it’s broken the latex and Adrian bolts up and quickly helps clean you off despite how tired he looks.

“Sorry, that was crazy, that’s so much, um do you need anything else?” He asked anxiously.

“I don’t think so.” You murmured, smiling at how considerate your boyfriend was.

“Was that how the butterfly aliens fuck do you think?” Adrian asked, returning with some bottles of water.

“I’m not sure, however if I had to give a case study that reminds me of how the pheromones worked, I’d say the Morpho peleides, it’s rather elusive.” You took a long sip, enjoying the cold water with your still hot flushed skin.

“Lepidopterists know very little about the courtship of, Morpho peleides, the blue morpho, I once saw that the centre morpho female sometimes act as a beacon, releasing pheromones to make a designated mating area, directing her kin to carry out their biological imperative. Males and females all mate in a cluster.” You continued, thinking on how your colleagues all behaved so strangely earlier from the pheromones. You’d definitely need to keep the test tubes more stable when back in the office.

“Like a butterfly orgy?” Adrian asked, getting you and himself a very much needed hydrolyte packet.

“Yeah I suppose.” You nodded, snuggling into his chest when he rejoined you in bed.

“Neat!” Adrian grinned, the two of you falling back to sleep not long after, utterly exhausted.

The next morning was interesting for the rest of the gang to say the least. 

“Morning there, beautiful.” Chris grinned, ready to see who he'd banged out the last few hours with. Surely it had to be Harcourt. Although he felt a bit funny, had she topped? 

“Dye-job beard?!” He squealed, holding up the satin hotel sheets up past his nipples.

“Yeah it’s not my ideal situation either.” John muttered at the nickname, rolling over to put his glasses on.

“...you know what actually, nice.” Chris rescinded as John stood up and wordlessly trudged to the bathroom. “You’ve got a real sexy sleeper bod there EconoGOAT. Total Harlequin novel lumberjack vibes.”

“We will never speak of this again.” John stated flatly, trying to wash memories of last night coming back to him off in the sink. 

“My lips are sealed,” Chris grinned, lighting up a toke. “Want a hit?”

“Fuck, yes please.” John nodded, settling back in bed with a deep sigh.

Back in the office there was an awkward air, not that you and Adrian overly noticed it. Chris and John apologised profusely for their transgressions and also couldn’t look one another in the eye most of the day. At dinner, of course at your regular haunt, Fennel Fields, Chris turned to Harcourt and Adebayo.

“So…did you two feel the effect of that sex pollen?” He asked, swinging his fork up at them both from his zoodles.

“More of a sex perfume.” Adrian corrected him.

“Whatever. So did you two ya know…bump uglies?” Chris made a terrible hand gesture.

“It’d be bumping beauties and no, you overgrown shaved ape.” Harcourt clapped back with a hand gesture of her own, flipping him off.

“I went home to my wife.” Adebayo said, rolling her eyes.

“And mama has toys.” Harcourt scoffed at Chris’ still questioning gaze in her direction.

“Why what did you two get up to?” Adebayo turned it around on Chris and John, who stared at one another before turning bright tomato red.

“I picked up some chick at a bar.” Chris lied, coughing into his fresca.

“It’s called the internet.” John lied, unable to even finish his monster energy.

“Huh weird, cause I saw you two leave the same hotel before we all met up.” Adrian beamed, “what a funny coincidence, Chris with a hot chick and John jerking it with the free wi-fi!”

“Y-yeah super funny…weird coincidence…” Chris and John replied robotically.

Murn walked through the glass doors and joined you all, not needing to keep up the fabrication that he needed to eat human food, he didn’t have to put up with sitting around at a meal anymore. Upon sitting in the booth his nose wrinkled in disgust.

“Ugh, you all smell terrible!” He retched, lurching right back from everyone.

“Huh, I guess it doesn’t work on the alien butterflies.” You scribbled that down in your observational notepad.

“So you made anti-alien stink bombs?” Harcourt suggested.

“I’ll still stick em with some fart darts!” Adrian grinned goofily.

“Fuck yeah dude!” Chris high-fived the hell outta that one.

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tag list:

The first thing that hit her was the smell as she walked into the apartment. 

The second was the fact that the kitchen light was on, and said smell seemed to be coming from the kitchen. Not where Adrian would put take out for them if that was the surprise. 

No, Adrian was standing in the kitchen, in one of her aprons, a mess surrounding him, and his lovely wide green eyes locked in on her as if she was catching him committing a crime. 

Which all of this crazy in her kitchen was. 

“You’re back earlier than I thought you’d be?” he squeaked out, raising his tone near the end making it seem like a question. 

“It’s eight on a Wednesday, if anything I’m later than I should be. What are you doing?” she said, setting her bag down as she walked around the kitchen, observing the chaos closer. 

“I’m doing great, how are you?” he tried. 

“No, Ade. What are you doing - not how are you doing,” she insisted, and he sighed, eyes suddenly more interested in the floor than her. 

“I’m cooking you dinner,” he mumbled, and she couldn’t help but laugh. It came out sharper and meaner than she meant it to, and Adrian’s eyes snapped to hers filled with hurt. “I am! I took a class and everything! Look!” he cried, moving to open the oven. Sure enough, there was a lovely looking chicken atop some (un)evenly cut vegetables. 

“What the fuck, where did you buy that?” she said, looking at him and he furrowed his brows. 

“The grocery store? Are you feeling okay, babe?” he said, moving to press a hand on her forehead, and she rolled her eyes. 

“You’re telling me you cut, seasoned, and spatchcocked a chicken all by yourself?” she repeated. 

“Yes! I did and I just need like 15 minutes and we can eat!” he said, clearly deciding to ignore her negativity as he lovingly bumped her out of the way and closed the oven. “Go change, let me serve the food, please.” 

She watched with a dumbfounded expression as Adrian continued to move through her kitchen with a strange confidence. She had watched the man burn one of those mac n cheese cups after he forgot to add the water, and here he was roasting a whole chicken and vegetable spread like it was just another ordinary day. 

Despite feeling like she’d woken up in another dimension, she moved slowly out of the kitchen and to their room. She changed out of her work clothes into an old ratty t-shirt and Adrian’s boxers that he never wore and really only had for her to wear around the house. 

She moved back to the kitchen, eyes locked on Adrian’s movement as he focused on the food and his plating with more intention than she had ever seen from him. It was once he was moving the plates to where they usually eat dinner that she finally caught his eyes. His smile did not quite reach his eyes as they bounced around from her to the plate. He shuffled ever so slightly as he paused. 

“Are you hungry?” he asked, sounding almost small. 

“Yeah,” she said, simply taking one of the plates from him, admiring. While some of the skin looked soggy, overall, the chicken looked really good. “It looks good,” she said as they walked over to where they normally sat for dinner. Her eyes focused on the plate. 

“It’s a roasted chicken with vegetables and I did use a packet for the gravy so I kind of cheated there. I also cheated because I just grabbed ice cream for dessert, I know you would normally actually make us something for dessert too but in the class I took-”

“Adrian, no this is…great. It’s just unexpected,” she said softly, cutting off his rambling as he watched her take the first bite of her food. She was pleasantly surprised. By no means was it the best roasted chicken she had ever had, but considering Adrian made it, she was extremely happy with it. 

As she kept eating, Adrian seemed to relax more and more, finally digging into his own food. 

“I’m pretty sure I’ve spatchocked a guy in real life,” Adrian said, mouth full of roasted vegetables as she started coughing. He immediately threw his utensils down and moved to rub her back, clear panic on his face as she reached for her water bottle. 

“What the fuck?” she said between deep breaths.

“Yeah, like when I was at the class I realized that this butchering shit is easy, I do it all the time. The actual cooking was the hard part, but the knife skill I had on lock,” he said with a modest shrug and she smiled at him. 

“Why are you taking cooking classes? Adrian, I never mind cooking for us,” she said. “Hell, I never mind when we order out either.” 

She watched him closely. Adrian was never really good at hiding what he was feeling on his face - it was half the reason she was sure he had a mask for his Vigilante costume and not something similar to Chris. He looked almost bashful and nervous for her reaction; she hadn’t seen him so timid with her in such a long time. Sure, she gave him a hard time but now he normally would give her a knowing smile and play along with her, knowing that she loved him instead of becoming a nervous wreck. 

Right now he was a nervous wreck.

“I just…you’re always taking care of me. I wanted to do something for you,” he said gently, eyes not meeting hers as she melted slightly. 

“Oh Ade,” she said, and he shrugged, continuing to pick at his plate. 

“I just never want you to feel like you have to do this for me, I can take care of you and us too,” he said finally looking up, still not at her, but enough that she knew he was watching for her reaction out of the corner of his eye. 

“Adrian, I know that,” she said, her words probably sounding harsh to anyone who wasn’t Adrian. “I know that you can take care of me, and you do, like all the time!” 

“But I don’t cook-”

“Adrian, I like cooking. I enjoy getting to cook specifically for you, it’s like…my love language. Making sure you’re fed is important to me, and if it’s my food, that’s even better. You know what you do for me? You drive me around town, you buy groceries, you wash my hair on days I feel too low, you order food when we have nothing to cook. You take care of me. You don’t have to learn to cook just to do it for me. Besides, if you really wanted to, we can just cook dinner together sometime,” she said, moving so she was able to plant a gentle kiss on his cheek, a grin growing on his face. 

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes, I’m sure,” she repeated, pulling back in order to finish her plate. “Plus, I’m a little jealous you went to someone else to learn how to cook,” she joked, and Adrian’s eyes went wide behind his glasses. 

“Don’t be jealous! Trust me, you’re a way better teacher and your food is way better. I just wanted something homey and hearty to make for us!” 

“I know, Ade. I know,” she said, laughing as he finally loosened up and started eating. 

“Do you think you could teach me how to make lobster rolls?” he asked, sitting up straight clearly excited at the prospect. 

“It’s funny you think we have the income to play with lobster, absolutely not.”

_

Tag list: 

@trelaney @boogiemansbitch @scarlettrikstr @lanadelreybbgg @sumoattack-gooddog @brianna-merlim @darklandcashpaper-blog @mrsxchase @nbhrhn @kxki-y @jeshomie @countvonklit @nachtfleur @kissesofstars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, fine probably wasn’t the right word.

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

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

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

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

You nodded sharply. “Of course I understand.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Emilia,” you sighed, exasperated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of course I do. He’s my teammate.” 

Chris managed to grab you by the forearm.

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

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

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

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

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

“I – ”

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

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

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

“Oh.”

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

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

“Stop it!” he grumbled. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll go.”

“Adrian, you don’t have to – ”

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

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

“The door won’t open.”

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

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

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

That absolute bastard.

“I think it’s locked, Adrian.”

“What?” 

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

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

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

“We’re not twins.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You swallowed hard. “I want to spar.”

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

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

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

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

“Ow!” Adrian hissed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Um, and you don’t hate me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He pouted. “Was that sarcasm?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You stopped talking to me!” you countered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re not going to die – ”

“You don’t know! I might!”

His hips shifted beneath you. 

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t think I understand.”

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

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

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

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

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

“But do you think of you?

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

“What do you want, Adrian?”

“Just to be with you.”

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

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

“I promise.”

“Okay.”

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

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

“Wanna come patrolling with me tonight?”

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

“You want me to come patrol with you?”

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

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

You shrugged. “Not lame at all.”

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

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

“You should let me chase you.”

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

“You want to…chase me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey!” he called after you. 

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

If he could.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You don’t,” he growled. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey!”

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

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

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

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

“Yeah?”

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

You laughed. “If he’s lucky.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you, Vigilante.”

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

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

“Maybe we’re doing this all wrong.”

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

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

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

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

“Just us?”

“Yes?”

“Like…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He blinked slowly. “What?”

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

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

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

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

“What the hell are you talking about?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your heart is beating really fast, Adrian.”

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

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

“I lost count,” he admitted. 

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

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

“Second?”

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

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

“I made you come! It counts!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bpm taglist: @big-old-boat @bastardstevie

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

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

But first—the Checkmate office. If he’s going to infiltrate a building full of enemies, all on his own without backup, he needs to be prepared.

He’s got a key to the building—they all do—so getting inside isn’t an issue. It’s not even that strange being here so late—there have been dozens of missions since the business started that left the whole team pulling all-nighters. He remembers, suddenly, a night where you fell asleep on his shoulder in the break room. Remembers how his heart had rabbited against the inside of his chest, his eyes gone wide, mouth agape as he stared at you. Marvelled at the fact that you liked him enough to be close to him, that you trusted him enough to sleep in his presence.

His heart flip-flops for the dozenth time that night when he thinks about you now, asleep at home, waiting for him to return. But he swallows down the guilt and makes a beeline for the infirmary through the dark hallway.

Usually you have a pre-packed med kit prepared just in case, sitting at the corner of the countertop, ready to grab and go for emergency situations. It’s not there. Someone else might have grabbed it on the way out the door for a mission recently. Adrian frowns. He’d wanted to be in and out of here quickly.

Everyone has been in and out in a rush over the last few weeks; he knows you’ve spent hours packing and repacking kits and monitoring supply levels. He’s watched you pack a kit enough times that he can do it himself, but he still checks the detailed log you have taped inside the cabinet to make sure he doesn’t forget anything. His heart twists at the sight of your handwriting, but he swallows down the lump in his throat and follows your instructions, hearing the echo of every word in your voice in his ears.

Once he’s done, Adrian heads for his own locker in the weapons room. When he opens it, he pauses again. There’s a picture of you both, tacked inside the door with a dumb Pokemon magnet you’d bought him. His eyes flick away from it quickly, like he’s trying to avoid your gaze, even though it’s just a photograph. But then his eyes drift back to you, like they always do.

Adrian stares at the picture for a long time, tracing the outline of your face with one finger. You’re smiling, laughing at whatever stupid shit he must have said, because he’s always saying stupid shit, but you love him anyway. He’s fucked up countless times since the day he met you, and you still trust him, still love him. 

That’s why he has to do this, right? But looking at your face in that picture, with your bright eyes and wide smile, he hesitates. Is he doing the right thing? Should he just go home now and pretend he never had this stupid thought? Should he crawl into bed and tuck his face into your neck and—no. His resolve hardens. He has never, ever felt this way before about anyone, and he will never, ever feel this way about anyone else ever again. And he is going to do whatever it fucking takes to protect you, protect this special thing in his life from the people trying to take it away from him.

He finally tears his eyes away and starts refilling ammo and tucking weapons into his utility belt. Anything that can fit, he’s bringing with him. His katana, of course, and his favorite guns holstered at his waist belt, but—this one’s going to require the big guns. He doesn’t know quite what he’s walking into, so that means more firepower. He starts emptying the large weapons cabinet, shoving as many machine guns and grenades he can fit into a duffle bag, ninja stars and knives he can throw from a distance—

One of those knives flies out of his hand when he hears the floor creaking behind him. Someone yelps, and in the time it takes for Adrian to turn around and face his attacker, he’s already got another knife out, poised to throw with his deadly aim.

But then, crouched down on the floor, a knife sticking out of the wall several feet above her head, Emilia says, “Jesus fucking Christ Adrian, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What the fuck is wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with you?” Adrian exclaims. “Why the fuck would you sneak up on me when I’m armed to the teeth? What the fuck are you doing here, anyway? It’s like three in the morning!”

“I could ask you the same thing, Chase,” Emilia says, slowly rising to stand, and Adrian clears his throat.

“I was just on patrol,” he lies through his teeth. “I wanted to, um—”

“Looks to me like you’re packing,” Emilia says, and Adrian shuts up. “And I think I know why.” 

It’s then he notices that Emilia has her own packed bag slung over her shoulder, and—is that the emergency med kit he had gone to grab out of your office? He looks down at his own med kit, the one he packed from your instructions, and then back at hers.

She notices Adrian noticing, and her face goes all weird. Adrian is not good at reading people, like, at all, but—he can feel it in the air, something awkward and a little bit wrong. He squints a little, looking at Harcourt’s face, the little frown she’s wearing, the way her eyes are darting over him a little quicker than usual. Suddenly, he realizes that he is not the only one looking like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been.

“Where are you going?” he asks, not quite accusing, but close.

Emilia hesitates, and the silence stretches between them for a moment. 

“Chris told me,” Emilia says, “about the conversation you had earlier. How he told you to stick to the plan, and not do any rash or dangerous shit. He’s worried about you.”

Adrian tilts his head. “So you’re here to tell me to stick to the plan and not do any rash or dangerous shit?” he asks. “How did you even know I was here? Do you have like, secret cameras stashed around the office? Is there an alarm on the door that no one knows about? What’s—”

“No,” Emilia interrupts. “Just—shut up. I’m going to go with you. To Star City.”

Adrian’s heart leaps into his throat.

“Star City?” he says. “What—I wasn’t—”

“You’re a bad liar,” Emilia says. “How the fuck do you work black ops?”

“I’m not—”

“I assume that’s why you’re here, too,” she continues. “To go to Star City. To case the warehouse at the address that John gave us, if not kill all the people inside it. Am I right?”

“Wha—you—” Adrian stutters, trying to recover from the shock of Harcourt saying something so wildly out of character that he feels the urge to check if she’s been taken over by a butterfly.

“Adrian,” Emilia says, “shut the fuck up.”

That’s familiar, at least. Harcourt tells him to shut the fuck up all the time.

“Star City?” he repeats, still stunned.

“I’m done waiting around,” she says. “I can’t take this anymore. Three days is too long to wait for the others to get back. These fucking—” Emilia takes a deep breath, clearly trying to settle herself before she gets too worked up or angry. “These people used to be my coworkers at ARGUS. Fellow soldiers. I trusted them with my life, and now they are threatening my family. They have no fucking honor, or respect, and I am pissed. I am so unbelievably pissed, and I am going to do something about it.”

Adrian stares with wide eyes, almost amazed. He’s never seen Harcourt this…emotional? No, that’s usually a word when people are sad. She’s just fucking angry. Impatient, maybe? Either way, it throws him off. Normally, she’s one of the level-headed ones.

Or maybe she isn’t. Maybe she’s just as crazy and impulsive and furious as he is. Maybe she’s just better at hiding it.

“You’re going to do something about it,” he repeats.

“Stop repeating everything I say.”

“Sorry,” Adrian says, a reflex. He doesn’t mean it. He’s not sorry. His mind is still reeling. “What—what about Chris? Did you—”

“Tell him? No. And I’m assuming you didn’t tell your Omega either, or she would have handcuffed you and not let you out of her sight.”

“I wish she would handcuff me,” he mutters. That would be so fucking hot.

“You horny idiot. Did you tell her you were leaving?”

“I didn’t,” he admits, another wave of guilt washing over him. “I didn’t tell her.”

“Good,” Emilia says. “I don’t want anyone stopping us. Turn your phone off too. I know she’s got your location, because you’re a clingy bitch.”

“What the fuck is happening right now?”

“What’s happening is I’m agreeing with you, for once,” Emilia says. “Not sure what that says about my sanity. But we are going to go, and do the recon ourselves, and if we have the chance—” She nods at the knives in Adrian’s hands. “We’re going to kill as many of them as we can.”

The drive takes six hours. Adrian had wanted to drive, but Emilia snatched the keys right out of his hand without a word. She lets him mess with the radio, at least, not complaining about his fidgeting from the passenger seat like she normally would. She’s lost in her own thoughts, for once.

But Adrian can’t bear the silence.

“Why did you do it?” he asks.

“Do what?” Emilia asks, a little annoyed. Probably because he opened his mouth to talk. It’s odd, working with Harcourt like this. They’ve never gotten along great to begin with.

“You let her go on that mission with you,” Adrian says. “And you didn’t tell me. She didn’t tell me. Why did you do it?” Maybe he’s still harboring some bitterness about it. Seems like a good time to address it. She’d never talk it out like this if they weren’t trapped in the van together.

“Why am I doing this, Adrian?” she asks tiredly. “Why do I do anything? For the good of the pack.”

“But—”

“And she is more than capable of doing mission work,” Emilia continues pointedly. “In case you’ve forgotten, I am the one who has been training her, since the accident. We’ve been in the workout room, in the weapons room, multiple times a week. She has improved significantly. Yes, she got hurt once, but—I realized, after that, that keeping her behind in the office where she’s safe is doing a disservice to her. We will always want to protect her. We are Alphas, and she is an Omega. But she also deserves to protect herself, and if you would just pay attention, you would see how ready she is. You’re blinded by it, sometimes. This weird macho need to protect her. But if I overcame it, so can you.”

Adrian doesn’t have anything to say to that, but his mind is swirling. Maybe she’s right. Maybe he’s smothering you, the way he’s been acting. Maybe he’d feel better about it if he joined you in your training sessions, if he saw with his own eyes what you’re capable of.

It’s mostly silent, for the next few hours. They left at five in the morning. The first message comes in at eight.

Adrian disabled the tracking services on his phone—not that it will do much. You and the others aren’t stupid. You’ll be able to figure out exactly where he’s gone pretty quickly, especially when they realize that Emilia is gone, too. But he left the device on. He couldn’t bring himself to cut off his line of communication with you entirely.

His phone buzzes in his pants pocket, several times in a row. He pulls it out and winces. You’re calling him.

“I told you to turn it off,” Emilia says. The buzzing stops after a few moments when Adrian doesn’t pick up the phone.

“I disabled the tracking!” Adrian argues. “I didn’t—I can’t—what if she needs me? What if there’s an emergency, or—” He clenches his jaw as the phone starts buzzing again.

“It’s a distraction, Adrian,” Emilia says. “If we’re gonna do this, we gotta do it right. Turn it off.”

The buzzing stops again, but then the texts start rolling in.

Omega 💙: Did you come home last night?

Omega 💙: Adrian?

Omega 💙: I thought we were doing better after we fought why did you disappear on me?

Omega 💙: Did you disable your location????

Omega 💙: Here I am trying to check on you and make sure you didn’t fucking die in a dark alley on patrol last night

Omega 💙: Are you hurt??

Omega 💙: ANSWER THE PHONE

Omega 💙: Adrian I don’t care if you’re still upset about our fight let me know if you’re fucking ALIVE please

Omega 💙: Alpha please

Adrian’s chest grows tighter and tighter with every message that pops up on his screen. He should text you, at least. Let you know he’s okay.

“Leave it, Adrian,” Emilia tells him.

“I just need to let her know I’m okay,” he says to Emilia, and starts typing, but then—

Omega 💙: You son of a bitch

Omega 💙: I just talked to Chris and Emilia is gone too

Omega 💙: Where the FUCK are you I KNOW you’re together

Omega 💙: If you’re doing what I think you’re doing I am going to kick your fucking ass

Omega 💙: Please don’t do anything stupid

Omega 💙: Please come home

The phone starts ringing again, and it doesn’t stop. Nothing more than a split-second moment of silence before the vibrating starts anew.

“Don’t make me fucking take it from you and chuck it out the window,” Emilia says.

Adrian swallows roughly. “She’s freaking out.”

“Obviously,” Emilia says. “Did you think she wasn’t going to freak out?”

At that moment, another call pops up on his phone, not from you, but from Chris. He tilts the phone in Emilia’s direction, and her firm, stern expression falters for just a moment. If he’d blinked, he would have missed it. But then her jaw sets again, and she turns back to the road.

“Turn the phone off, Adrian,” she says, her voice a little shaky.

Your name pops up again, another incoming call. He stares at your profile photo for a long moment before he powers the phone down, trying to ignore the stab of guilt in his stomach.

“They aren’t stupid,” Emilia says. “They’ll figure out where we went. But let’s hope they aren’t dumb enough to follow us.”

Adrian glances down at his blank phone screen. He’d known this was going to happen. He’d imagined it as he packed his bags, as he got in the car, as Emilia started the van and took off out of the Checkmate parking lot. You waking up, realizing he’s gone, freaking the fuck out.

He would be doing the same, if it was you. If he woke up one morning and you were gone. He’d lose his fucking mind, call you over and over again, send the same exact barrage of texts. He’s doing the same thing to you right now that you did to him, when he got back from his mission with Chris and couldn’t find you, realized you were on your own mission with Emilia. Exactly what you promised to never do to him again, he’s doing to you now. The terror of not knowing, the anxious worry about your mate’s safety.

He wonders if you’ll ever forgive him for this.

“Stop moping,” Emilia says, drawing him out of his guilt-ridden stupor. “Get your head in the game, Adrian. We’re gonna be there in twenty minutes.”

“Are we doing the right thing?” His voice cracks a little when he asks.

“We’re doing what needs to be done.”

Adrian hums. “Are you sure?”

“Why the twenty questions?” Emilia turns away from the road to glance at him briefly. “It’s a little late for second thoughts. You were all hyped up about this when we got in the van.”

He had been. She’s right. It makes him feel a little better that he’s not doing this on his own. He’s not sure if it’s a selfish thankfulness that he won’t be alone on the receiving end of your anxious fury when he returns home, or a righteous pride that Emilia Harcourt agrees with him for once. But…

“Do you remember when you picked me up from jail?” Adrian asks after a moment. “The first time we met? Well. The first time we met when I was Adrian. Not Vigilante.”

“I do,” Emilia says carefully.

“I told you—I think I made everything worse, that day.” He swallows. “I did make everything worse. Am I doing it again? Am I making everything worse?”

Emilia sighs and looks back at the road. It’s not an annoyed sigh, or a pissed-off sigh, or any of the other familiar ways that Harcourt exhales air from her lungs when she’s frustrated with Adrian. It’s a new sound. A little tired, maybe thoughtful.

“You act without thinking, a lot,” she says. “A lot of times, that means you’re taking risks. Not considering all the ways things could go wrong. You act on instinct before logic.” She glances sideways at him again. “That’s a very Alpha trait. I don’t know if it’s impatience, or just the desire to protect the pack, and the people who we care about, but—I feel it too, right now.”

Adrian knows this about himself. That he’s impulsive, that even when he fucks up, he’s doing what he thinks is right. But his moral compass is all kinds of fucked up. It’s a little reassuring, if strange, to know that Harcourt is on the same page that he is.

“Besides,” she continues, slightly grim. “If there was ever a time for a risky play, this is it.”

Just a few minutes later, she pulls the van up and parks curbside outside a tiny diner. Adrian looks between her and the restaurant, confused.

“Come on,” she says. “We gotta fuel up before we go on a murdering spree. You’re buying.”

For the first time since he left you last night, the corner of his mouth quirks up into something resembling a smile.

“I’d be buying even if you were buying,” he comments. “Considering that my Vigilante blood money pays your salary—”

“Oh, would you shut the fuck up!”

Two and a half hours later, Adrian is fed, suited up, and arming himself in the back of the van, ready to drive over to the address John had found. It’s an abandoned warehouse, apparently. Not unlike the Glen Tai bottling company that the butterflies had taken over.

It’s weird doing it in the middle of the day. It was back then, too, attempting subterfuge in broad daylight, while there were clearly people at work inside the building. For so long, he was only Vigilante late at night, tackling the kind of criminals that only showed themselves under the cover of darkness.

“Should we wait?” he asks. “Until later tonight?”

“We could,” Emilia says. “But if we go in now, we’re less likely to trip an alarm. Their building is probably unlocked during the day, for agents to come and go.”

“True.” He hadn’t thought about that. “But, if we want to go through all their shit and find out what they’re up to, it will be easier to do that when nobody is there.”

“Well,” Emilia says, “what exactly was your plan? If you came without me?”

Adrian unzips the waist bag attached to his utility belt and shows her what’s inside.

“Is that a fanny pack full of grenades?” Emilia asks incredulously.

“Yeah,” Adrian says, like it’s obvious, laughing. “How else am I supposed to carry multiple grenades at once? I only have one grenade holster on my utility belt—”

“Okay, whatever, I—that’s not the point. You fucking psycho. Why the grenades?”

“To kill the bad guys,” Adrian says. “Duh. Are you feeling okay? I feel like that should be obvious.”

“We are covert black ops, we don’t blow shit up.”

“You don’t blow shit up,” Adrian counters. “I blow shit up all the time. Besides, the more bad guys I take out with a bomb, the less we have to fight off individually. It’s safer that way. Less aura points, but, ya know, what can you do.”

“What?” Emilia sputters. 

“Like, it’s less cool,” Adrian explains. “Normally I would totally go in there guns blazing, but I kinda don’t want to get killed? I have an Omega to get home to, now.”

Emilia gapes at him. “You—” She pauses, looks at Adrian’s earnest expression, and sighs. “You really have changed, haven’t you.”

“Yeah.”

“Less aura points,” Emilia mutters under her breath. She shakes it off and asks, “Okay, Mr. Safety First, then what’s the plan?”

“Well, if we’re going in right now, while everyone’s in the building—I can sneak up onto the roof, crawl into the ceiling vents, and drop the bombs on them from above.”

“That’s a good way to get yourself killed. Those grenades are tiny, but they still pack a punch, and once the place is on fire, the smoke will drift upwards directly toward you. So that plan would be a no, no matter how much you want to feel like someone in a heist movie.”

“First you don’t let me have my chainsaw kill, and now this,” Adrian says accusingly. “You just don’t want me to be cooler than you!”

“I want you to not die,” Emilia says mildly. “Anyway. We’re not going right in for the kill—”

“What do you mean? Isn’t that like, the whole fucking point of us coming here by ourselves? To just end this and get it over with?”

“Yes, but in order to ensure our own safety, we need to do some recon first. Observe. We decided not to wait for the others, but that doesn’t mean we can get sloppy and cut corners or skip steps.”

Adrian sighs. “Fine. What do we do, then?”

Emilia’s mouth quirks up. “I think we can still use one part of your plan, at least.”

“The grenades? We can blow the doors open?”

“No,” she sighs. “The vents, you moron.”

Sneaking up onto the roof is more difficult than Adrian thought it would be.

He and Emilia canvas the street quickly and quietly, a super-fast driveby to help them scope out the surroundings before they make a move. The warehouse is in the middle of a random block. 

They had been hoping to clamber their way up to the roof of a neighboring building and, as Adrian put it, “parkour our way over there,” but several of the other buildings around it have been demolished, probably for safety reasons. It’s way too far for them to jump.

The warehouse itself is in rough shape too, like it’s days away from a “CONDEMNED” notice being slapped on every door and window. The paint on the sides of the building is peeling, a lot of the glass windows look cracked, if not outright boarded up, and there’s graffiti all over it.

“Fucking graffiti artists,” he mutters.

“Why do you even care?” Emilia asks as she parks the van a few blocks over.

“Graffiti is illegal, Harcourt! A law is a law!”

“I think most of the world, including you, has more important things to worry about right now. Let’s stay focused, Chase.”

“These people have no pride in their work, is all I’m saying. If they did, they would kill the people who keep drawing on their building. It’s not theirs to draw on, no matter how shitty it is already!”

“It is pretty shitty,” Emilia allows. “Our building is so much nicer. No wonder they’re trying to kill us off. They’d probably steal our customers and our office.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not fucking happening on my watch,” Adrian says darkly. “What do we do now, since we can’t get to the roof?”

“We still gotta get up there,” she says. “The vents are our best bet to not get caught while there are people in the building.”

“How?”

“Don’t you have a grappling hook or some shit?”

“Of course,” Adrian says, like that’s a perfectly normal thing for a person to have.

“We can use it like a zipline from that taller building the next block over,” she says, pointing. “The one with the red roof, I think it’s an apartment building.” Adrian follows her line of sight and smiles wide beneath his mask.

“We really are going to be like spies!”

Emilia sighs.

It’s late afternoon by the time they sneak their way up the fire escape of that nearby building. They had to change back into their civilian clothes, since they were going to be in plain sight for so long—even though they’re tucked away in an alley, shadowed from view of the main street, it’s a hike, ten flights of stairs up from the ground, and they’re bogged down carrying duffle bags with Adrian’s Vigilante suit and all their weapons and supplies. Harcourt wears a baseball cap and sunglasses, in case one of Leon Sullivan’s people drives by and notices her bright blond hair.

Once they get to the rooftop, Adrian drops their duffle bags to the ground so they can sort through their things and gear up. He pulls his suit back on as quickly as he can. Something about not wearing it in such close proximity to the enemy makes his skin crawl, and he feels instantly better when he puts it on.

It helps that the suit smells a little bit like you.

From there, it’s quick work to send Adrian’s grappling hook flying across the distance between buildings. He yanks it tight until he’s certain it’s hooked onto the ledge of the warehouse rooftop, then knots it tightly onto a metal anchor he attaches to the brick ledge of the building they stand on top of. Emilia plucks at the taut rope, testing the tension and sturdiness, before nodding her approval.

“Alright,” she says. “This is it.”

“This is it,” Adrian nods.

“Before we go in there,” Emilia says, “if one of us gets captured, the other gets the hell out of there. We go home, we tell the others what happened, we share what we learned, and then come back for a rescue. I don’t want this whole thing to be for nothing. Understood?”

“Understood,” Adrian says soberly.

“Your earbud is on and working?” Emilia checks. Adrian taps his ear over her mask and nods. “Good. Ladies first.” She gestures at their makeshift zipline.

“You’re the lady,” Adrian says, confused.

“Just fucking get over there.”

“You just want me to go first in case it doesn’t work,” he accuses.

“You got me,” Emilia says, throwing her hands in the air. “You’re the one who’s all gung ho about being a spy, you fucking dork.”

Adrian frowns petulantly. “Being a spy is cool as fuck.” He wishes, for a half second, that you were there, because you would agree with him. Or, at the very least, you would humor him.

But then he remembers exactly why you’re not here, and the guilt flares up again. Instead of making him doubt himself, though, it only hardens his resolve. He’s doing this for you, for the whole pack, to keep everyone safe.

He’ll be able to tell you that when he goes home. After you finish yelling at him, of course.

With that, he hangs on to the rope and zooms down to the roof of the warehouse, crashing into the wall with absolutely no finesse before pulling himself over the ledge and stumbling to his feet. Being a spy is harder than the movies make it look, apparently. Emilia’s not far behind him, landing with much more grace than he did.

“There’s no way this fucking building is up to code,” Adrian mutters, looking around at the damp, moldy infrastructure around the roof.

“Focus,” Emilia says. She’s whispering, but he can hear her clear as day through the earpiece. “We are not here to inspect them for building code violations. We are here to gather intel. Come on—looks like the air vents open up to that panel over there.”

“Okay,” Adrian says. “Fine.”

He finds the panel that she’s talking about and swings open the metal doors as quietly as he can. It’s not big enough for both of them to fit side by side; they’ll have to climb in one at a time.

“Ladies first again?” he asks, one foot already in the metal tube. His boot clanks against the metal and he winces. Harcourt does too.

“Yeah. You’ll have to go slow to stay quiet,” she says. “I’m right behind you.”

The inside of the vent is cramped and uncomfortable, but Adrian powers through, dragging himself forward inch by inch. He tries not to think about what a pain in the ass it will be to do this backwards on the way out. 

Sound echoes through the building. Some are familiar, like the rattling of bullets, fresh ammunition in boxes being carried across a room. Others are not—voices he does not recognize that set him on edge, too far and faint to hear clearly. He follows the sound.

Emilia stays about a yard behind him. The vents are supposed to hold air, not human bodies, so they try to make sure not to put too much weight on the thin layer of metal beneath them at any one spot.

“They’re on to us,” someone is saying below. Adrian holds up a hand to signal to Emilia to stop crawling, then points downward. She presses her ear directly to the metal, and Adrian strains his own ears to hear better.

“Our agents are good,” says the voice. “Years of experience. There’s no way this many of them are getting caught or going missing by accident. We’re being targeted.”

Adrian grits his teeth. Yeah, asshole, because you targeted us first.

“It’s Harcourt and Smith,” says another man, his voice deeper and raspy. “I had been hoping that incident a few months back would take them out entirely, but it didn’t work.”

“Incident?”

“I fed them bad information,” says the man. “The Omega in their pack got hurt pretty bad, which set them back a bit, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve figured out we were behind it.” Adrian practically lights on fire with fury when he realizes it’s Leon Sullivan beneath him, speaking so casually about the way you’d almost died. The way he’d almost killed you. He clenches his hands into fists so they won’t start shaking.

“We can set another trap for them,” says the other man. “Find their weak spot. Target the Omega again, maybe? If we capture her, we can lure them here. Get a ransom out of them before we kill them all.”

Adrian can’t stop it, now, the way he’s shaking with rage. His breath comes in fast pants, fogging up his visor. No fucking way is he letting these dickbags touch you again. He’d die before he let that happen.

“Stay calm,” Harcourt whispers behind him. “She’s home. She’s okay.”

“We need to warn them,” Adrian says back, his voice trembling in a quiet murmur. “She’s—she’s home alone, she needs protection, what if they beat us there—”

“Shh,” Emilia says. “Listen. Maybe they’ll spill more details.”

The men have started speaking more quietly, now, though, and it’s harder to hear.

“Inch forward,” Emilia orders. “Get closer, see if you can hear them better.”

Adrian does as she asks, shuffling himself forward on his elbows.

His mind is spiralling. Every horror he’d imagined about the pack enemies targeting you, about needing to keep you safe—he was right about all of it. He wishes he wasn’t. He needs to go home, he needs to go home right now and never leave your side. He won’t even sleep until they take out these bastards, because someone needs to keep an eye on you. He’ll sit on the end of the bed like a guard dog with a gun. He’ll do whatever he fucking has to do, he’ll—

He’s too caught up in his panic, imagining every worst case scenario, that he doesn’t hear the way the metal groans as his palm presses into the metal beneath him.

Adrian’s heart leaps up his throat as the vent gives way and he tumbles through the air, hitting the ground with a noisy thud, a loud avalanche of his own spiralling limbs and shoddy old building material. Then he’s looking up at the ceiling, surrounded by twisted, bent metal and crumbling drywall pieces.

Then he hears the familiar click of a gun’s safety being flicked off. He slowly turns, and for the first time, after months and months of agonizing, anxious staring at the man’s dossier, he meets the eyes of Leon Sullivan.

His heart, still pounding, sinks into his chest a little as he stares down the barrel of the gun.

“Adrian,” Emilia says, a panicked whisper. “Are you—”

“Go, Harcourt,” he says. “We made a deal.”

If one of us gets captured, the other gets the hell out of there. And now, more than ever, he needs Harcourt to go.

It’s over for him. He knows it is. But Emilia is his pack Alpha, is your pack Alpha, and he trusts her to look after you when he's not there. He has no choice now.

They’re going to kill him, and you’ll be alone. He has so much he feels like he needs to say to you, still. That he loves you. That he’s sorry.

His earpiece has started to go staticky, and he knows Emilia is scrambling her way back to the rooftop. He trusts that his pack Alpha will protect you, even when he can’t. And that’s all he can think about in this moment. You.

“Harcourt, tell her—” he whispers, but then something sharp stings at the back of his neck, piercing through the kevlar of his suit, and everything fades to black.

Adrian tag list: @justalotoffanfiction @danversxwasabi @clowninavan @adoresami @a-young-g0d @bastardstevie @am-3-thyst @xoxocamis @morguegrl89 @somethin-sparklyy @secretjesterr @seeingdubs @lovenerdywhitemen2 @jeshomie @aerionshipthrust @deamlucem @tlfg-adrianchase @brianna-merlim @amart-e @countvonklit @pieolsen @gingerjane15 @dosyrosyposy @rentaldarling @vigilcourt @hot-bean-juice @sepaaaaa @residentsuperhero

Savage - Adrian makes a fool of himself in front of a pretty girl, but hey, when doesn’t he? She’s weird, funny, and treats him gently, which obviously makes him obsessed with her, and much to his surprise, she seems to like having him around too. Together, they try to carve out a peaceful life, yet her less than perfect family messes up their harmony.

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Cowboy & Piggy - No, Adrian had not been crushing on his colleague. That’s just, like, not true in the slightest. It’s not as if the moment she became available, he said something he could never take back.

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Calendar Girl - When his buddy goes missing, Adrian spends all of his time and energy trying to get her back to him. Because they’re friends, obviously.

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Hercules and Megara - Childhood friends have a habit of drifting apart. Usually, it’s a natural thing. Adrian never wanted to separate from his best friend, but he thought he had to.

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Squirtle Pyjamas - She knows how to calm Adrian down. And wears his clothes. And teases him relentlessly. And knows exactly what to do to rile him up. And knows his deepest secret. But, no, nothing can happen between them. He must resist the temptation to do something about it.

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Spot Over By The Fire Station - After his manager forces him to go to the emergency room for a concussion, Adrian meets an old friend, and she looks worse for wear. He knows he can help with that.

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Hopelessly Devoted - They broke up a while ago, and Adrian still isn’t over it. Chris takes him on a night out, and they get trashed. Adrian never imagined that he’d get up in front of people and serenade his ex, but he did.

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My Favourite Girl - Telekinetic powers can be beneficial every so often. Other times? Yeah, not so much. After a mission gone wrong, her gifts might be godsent. Adrian, however, knows she is godsent, especially with boobs like that.

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Sweltering - It’s far too hot in Evergreen for Adrian to even hide his attraction to Y/N. He tries. And fails miserably. Especially when the guy who delivers her hot tub is so swoon-worthy.

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Wednesdays - While Peacemaker was in prison, Vigilante made another friend, and she had a much lovelier voice than Chris did, and after a takedown, Adrian can’t quite get his thoughts off her.

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What You Deserve - Vigilante has had a long night and just wants to see his favourite girl then go to sleep. Is that too much to ask for?

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Big Strong Guy - No. Adrian is fine with scary movies. He’s fine, okay? That’s impossible; he doesn’t have goosebumps. You’re seeing things. Must be because he's a big, strong guy who doesn’t get scared of shit like that.

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Lucky Number 14 - A work outing lets some things come to light, yet Adrian isn’t there to hear it.

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Last In Line - Getting kidnapped is becoming more of a regular thing for Adrian. Yet, he knows this one. And she definitely knows him.

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The Things You Do For Pussy - Living together means that Adrian’s secret identity isn’t really a secret to her, so she loves to make thirsty remarks about Vigilante whenever she can, and it’s not as if Adrian feels something more than friendship for his roommate, right?

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Waller’s Way - When the new government-issued 11th Street Kid arrives, the team soon finds out why Waller picked her. They don’t really know how Adrian pissed off their boss so much, but he sure isn’t happy with their new colleague.

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Clingy - The Vigilante mobile breaks down, and Adrian needs a hand, transport-wise and socially, it seems. Once his coworker gives him a hand, it sets him off, and there is no going back to the platonic relationship they had before. A relationship that needs to have clear boundaries because Adrian is known to get far too excited to interact with her at any chance he gets.

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Beautiful Things - Since Vigilante no longer has to work his shitty busboy job, and that leaves his schedule wide open for the rest of the day, he soon finds himself frequenting a quaint coffee shop, not only because the drinks there are good, but because he’s grown fond of the woman working there.

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The Distraction - Occasionally, Peacemaker has a solo mission. Whenever these happen, Vigilante has to be distracted so he doesn’t make the solo into a duo. The only person who is capable of that is the girl that Adrian hates… No, that can’t be right. He doesn’t hate her, not really. Quite the opposite, actually.

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The Monarch Hotel - How many times does Vigilante need to get injured before Harcourt finally gives in and hires a medic to help out with the squad’s injuries? Far too many times, that’s how many. When it’s uncovered that a fancy hotel is linked to not only what’s left of the legion of butterflies but also a string of weird deaths and missing persons reports, the only two for the job are lovesick Adrian and the newbie. Will they both make it out of paradise alive?

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Peacemaker Jr - Peacemaker scrubbed all mention of his kid from his file. But when the butterflies find out about her, he must admit to his team that he needs their skills to find her. Then, Chris really requires Adrian’s help to keep her safe, but he’s concerned that his buddy is going to get far too familiar with his daughter. And maybe those fears are warranted.

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On The Road - Peacemaker’s mother fled with her unborn child when Chris was a teenager, and he’d always wanted to find his family again. After annoying Waller, he must send his friends out to help save his family, and Adrian finds out that he is more than willing to throw himself into danger to ensure that Peace’s sister is unharmed.

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Slumber Party - Had Vigilante intended to find the missing mayor’s daughter? No, but he wasn’t going to admit that. He’d completed the 11th Street Kids’ mission entirely by himself and found himself caring for the kidnapped girl.

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Damsel - Vigilante notices a girl and her not-so-nice boyfriend arguing, and just as the hero is about to reprimand the bad boyfriend, she does something unexpected. When she finds him a week later, they come to learn that they mesh quite well. Will that chemistry remain when she knows who’s under the visor?

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Bacon and Bloodshed - When Vigilante came across a crying girl covered in blood, he didn’t expect to have breakfast with her the next morning.

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Reunited and it Feels So Good - After months apart under witness protection, Y/N and Adrian reunite following the defeat of the Butterflies. Both have changed—Adrian’s lost his curls, and Y/N’s sporting new tattoos and a mullet—but their connection is stronger than ever.

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Project Cherub - The 11th Street Kids have been given a new mission called Project Cherub, which seems like something that is completely out of their wheelhouse, and a new member is added by Waller to help them along. Everyone is suspicious of this new arrival, except for Adrian, who is smitten and feels this indescribable tugging towards her.

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Besties - Adrian has a pal that he's known forever and leaves her off his rankings because she fits into a different category in his mind. What that new category is, he's still trying to figure out. All he knows is that he loves her, loves fucking her, and wants her to stick around forever.

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The Greener Grass - Peacemaker loses his phone in a parallel dimension, prompting ARGUS to send the 11th Street Kids to retrieve it. Adrian comes across his hacker girlfriend in an alternate universe and has to confront his beliefs on family and the future when he becomes mesmerised by the new life they live together.

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Hallows Eve - Adrian has a Halloween routine. He's followed it for an entire decade. It's sad, but it's the only way he could think of to deal with his grief.

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Vampires Suck - Adrian has a coworker at Fennel Fields. She's normal, totally normal, and totally into him. He offers to stick around to walk her home, and although she declines, Vigilante decides to do it anyway. After initially being distracted, he finds her bleeding out in an alleyway and seeks the other 11th Street Kids out for help saving her life. Whether they're successful in that mission, well, that can be debated.

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Hallows Eve - Adrian has a Halloween routine. He's followed it for an entire decade. It's sad, but it's the only way he could think of to deal with his grief.

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Her Web Connects Them All - Adrian loves Spider-Man so much that his brain nearly implodes when Adebayo convinces a superhero with a similar power set called Arachne to join Checkmate. He's weird about it – just like the rest of the gang – but she seems to like that.

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The Devil of Evergreen - When the new hacker starts at Checkmate, Adrian makes it his duty to be her dog. Her guide dog, specifically, as the newbie happens to be blind, and he uses everything he's learnt from movies and comics to make sure his damsel in distress is safe. Whether she actually is a damsel, well, that's another thing entirely.

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Adrian 'Vigilante' Chase Masterlist

Jake Martin Masterlist

Jeffrey Steinberg Masterlist

Edward 'Eddie' Munson Masterlist

William 'Billy' Knight Masterlist

Ralph Penbury Masterlist

Robert 'Bob' Floyd Masterlist

Rhett Abbott Masterlist

Robert 'Bob'/'The Sentry' Reynolds

Miles Miller Masterlist

Michael 'Mike' Schmidt

Spencer Reid Masterlist

Scott Miller Masterlist

Requests are - Open

Before you send anything in, here’s a quick idea of what you’re signing up for with my writing. I mainly write female reader inserts and prefer to build full narratives rather than quick blurbs, so expect plot lines and usually a few thousand words. I try to keep it above 2 and below 10k, but a girl likes to waffle, okay? Because of that, requests can take a bit of time, but I always get them done as quickly as I can.

I also prefer writing relationships that aren’t toxic. While the reader might have a messy or unhealthy past relationship, I, personally, hate leaving things with a sad ending or with no release of angst. There can be disagreements and fights and such, but I tend to try to reconcile them in the end. Obviously, sometimes this can't be done, so this isn't a hard rule at all and may be something that we communicate further about.

As for the characters I will write for, it will be any that I've already written for. If you happen to want something with a character whose media I haven't written for in a while, I may need to tack on some extra time to refamiliarise myself with them.

What To Include In Your Request

If you're missing one or whatever, I won't hold it against you.

The character obvi

Preferred tropes/themes and the tone you’re after (fluffy, hurt/comfort, slow burn, comedic)

A basic storyline or concept (even vague is fine; just give me something to work with.)

Whether you’re comfortable with or want spicier content (I will write it, but I sometimes find it tricky to make it sound natural, so those fics may take longer. I'm still happy to try though!)

Any specific details or scenes you’d love included and anything you absolutely do NOT want in the fic.

What I Won't Write

This list may grow over time.

Incest, including step-family dynamics

Detailed abuse

Pure 'plotless' smut (not a hard no, just not what I enjoy writing)

Gender swaps or mpreg

Cannibalism

Random AU's (unfortunately, I hate AU's as I don't really 'get' the appeal unless it's a progression of canon. The OG world a character is from is what shapes them and forms them into the character you love; changing that changes them in my mind, y'know. No hate to those who do - it's personal preference.)

Anons are fine, but your request might not be precisely what you were looking for as I didn't know whom to talk to about any creative liberties I may have taken.

—

Times like this, you wished you had a better sense of time, or a stronger resolve to keep a hold on your brain when you’re holding onto Adrian like this.

Earlier, he had perched you onto his lap, his arms around you as he guided you (while simultaneously begging you to just) hug him while he puts it inside you. Now, you were too gone to even try and change position. He was the type of guy to be able to stay in one position for the rest of his life.

"Oh, shit—" Adrian whimpered, his breath brushing against the shell of your ear. His arms that were wrapped so tightly around you, holding you so impossibly close, shook with want. Want doesn't even cover what he feels in the moment. He needs—longs—to just thrust into you a little harder.

But, feeling you quiver around his cock made Adrian think, 'Would it really be an issue if I came inside again?'. "Don't move, don't move."

Adrian was grinding up into you with the smallest hip movements he could do. He could feel the tip of his cock grazing against the most sensitive of parts. A broken whine would rip through your throat at the most minuscule thrust. Your nails dug into his bare back, leaving bright red marks amongst the old and new scars.

"Yes, yes," Adrian stammered. "Fuck.. Right there. You're so beautiful like this-you're always beautiful." At his words, you arched into him, pressing your body against his, as if you weren't close enough. "No—wait, shit. Don't do that, I-I'll cum. Just sit here, sit on top of me. I jus' wanna stay in you longer. Please, fuck, don't move."

He rambled, his words slurring on pleasure and a half-empty mind. He didn't even know what he was saying majority of the time. He just knew that, when he talked, he felt like he could last a little bit longer. A little bit longer, wrapped around your warmth, was all he needed.

Adrian felt your head bob up and down uselessly as a nod. His lips parted to let out a quiet puff of breath as he let his head fall, finding refuge in the crook of your neck.

You drooled a little on his shoulder, fingers clawing at his shoulder blades, just desperate to find something to grip onto and hold. Your mind was gone—melted to oblivion. All you could do was moan pathetically, your noises escaped your throat with a rasp. Dried tear tracks coated your cheeks, your eyelids feeling too heavy to keep open. But, God, you wanted to look at Adrian, even if it was the bruised skin of his neck.

"Jus' gonna keep-ah, shit..! Jus' gonna keep thrusting a little. Hold me, please. Keep holding onto me. Fuck, you're so cute. Thank you for letting me fuck you, thank you. I can't wait to cum in you. B-But, I gotta wait. Gotta wait, gotta wait."

His small thrusts gradually picked up the pace. His tip, which was just gently brushing against your cervix, was now repeatedly hitting your sweet spot relentlessly.

Adrian knew his words didn't match his movements. He knew he sounded silly, but he didn't care. He wanted to chase out one last orgasm from you. Just one more. "C'mon, baby. One more time—cum for me one more time. You got it. Please, cum for me. You feel so fucking good when you let go."

At his words, and the change of pace in his hips, you felt the last of your resolve get whisked away. Your shoulders dropped, though your thighs tightened around his waist.

Adrian felt your whole body twitched as you blessed him with one last orgasm for the night, your strained moan sounding like the sweetest music. He swore he could've came right there.

"Yea, yea," Adrian whispered, "There we fuckin' go. Cum around me just like that." He whined, attempting to talk you through it, but his voice was so shaky and weak, it hardly sounded real. "I'm gonna finish inside you again, okay? Just this last time. I'll try for one more time."

You felt Adrian grind into you with more pressure, his hands trailing down to your hips to push you against his. "Fuck.." He cried, tossing his head back against his headboard. "You make me feel so fuckin' good. I love you, I love you, I love you." Adrian rambled against your skin, his grinding becoming more and more erratic.

Instead of giving you a verbal warning, Adrian shoved his face into your neck, pressing his lips into your collarbone. His arms snaked back around you, holding you even closer, and even tighter. He cursed mentally as he reached his peak, filling you back up all over again, his cum spilling out of you.

As you both came down from the high, you noticed the light in the room began to filter through once more, you knew it wouldn't be the last time.

Adrian suggested that you go somewhere by the docks and you read between the lines that this was a suggestion from Chris. But you didn't mind. If Adrian had asked, you would probably have gone for dinner almost anywhere with him.

You'd go on a date almost anywhere with him. But then, he hadn't called it a date, he'd just said "dinner."

You met him outside the Big Belly Burger on the waterfront, fidgeting with your anxiety bracelet so hard your wrist smarted and your stomach churned. How you were supposed to eat a burger when you were so nervous was a problem you had yet to solve.

Adrian jogged round the corner looking out of breath and, if possible, even more nervous than you.

"Hi, sorry, I'm late, that's bad, I'm sorry. I stopped and I got you —" he held out a bunch of huge sunflowers, their yellow petals bright. "You like sunflowers, right? Did you know, sunflowers always face west?"

"You brought me flowers?" They were beautiful, you wanted to hug them to your chest and then hug him. But in the back of your mind all you could think was 'this is definitely a date'. "You didn't have to do that, but they're lovely, thank you."

Adrian smiled, almost bouncing on the balls of his feet, motioning for you to go up the stairs.

Adrian managed to get you a little booth by the windows, which you assumed was the best seat in what was otherwise quite a bleak and unromantic restaurant.

"Thank you again, for the flowers." You smiled tightly and Adrian tried smiling too before looking out of the window. "Uhm — what are you going to eat?"

"I don't know…I don't know if I actually like burgers."

His honesty made you laugh unexpectedly and you snorted, covering your face with your hands, "I can't believe I did that."

"I like your laugh. But I actually don't like burgers. Why do they always fall apart."

You laughed again, giggling through your words. "Adrian, what do you mean you don't like burgers. This is a burger restaurant!"

"I mean, I don't like them. Chris said we should come here because he brings Harcourt, and now I say it I don't know why I'd listen to him because Harcourt refuses to be his girlfriend and —"

He stopped talking abruptly, blushing fruiously.

"They have ice cream and milkshakes and fries."

"I like fries. "

"Want to split some?"

The waitress appeared and, despite Adrian retreating into his spreading blush, you ordered a plate of fries and two milkshakes.

"Sorry." Adrian sighed, "I don't normally do this."

"Go to dinner at restaurants with food you hate? Or not be able to order?"

"Both."

"Well, nevermind." You shrugged.

"Wait, you're not upset?"

"No, sometimes I can't get my words out either, will you order for me next time?"

Adrian watched your face, narrowing his eyes as if trying to read your mind before replying, "sure."

When the food arrived you could feel yourself bouncing a little in your seat with excitement and Adrian smiled again.

"I really like your food dance too," he used his fork to separate his fries halfway down the plate and picked up the ketchup, adding a line of the sauce in the gap when you nodded.

"I don't do a food dance!"

"You do, but I like it. I like knowing what you're thinking."

You'd never thought of your laugh, your mannerisms, all the things you were used to pushing down and hiding, as communication before. Especially not when you'd spent such a lot of your life being made to feel smaller.

"Good, I like you too."

Adrian blushed again before launching into a lecture on the owl he'd heard outside of his house that week. You listened, basking in the sound of his voice and the newly relaxed atmosphere that surrounded you.

Before you knew it, the fries were gone and you were both finishing your milkshakes.

"Do you want to take a walk?" You offered, dropping a few notes onto the table.

Adrian looked at the bill for a moment, added his own money and then diligently counted out a tip.

"Yeah let's go for a walk."

Awkwardly you left the restaurant, walking as close together as possible, your hands brushing, until Adrian twined his fingers with yours.

In response you squeezed his fingers and moved closer, snuggling into his arm against the colder night air.

"Is this alright? If I hold your hand?"

You walked together quietly, listening to the water lap against the stone wall of the waterfront, your faces lighting up every time you passed a neon sign or boat bobbing against the wall.

"This was really nice, Adrian, I'm glad you asked me out."

"Are you kidding? I'm glad you came out with me."

"Yeah? Maybe we should do it again sometime. You offered, pausing at an empty part of the boardwalk and looking out into the dark water.

"You'd want to go out with me again?"

"Adrian," you turned to look at him, letting your hands rest on the surprisingly firm plane of his chest, "I don't even want this evening to end, I can't wait to go out with you again."