#blndsided

"Hey. You're botherin' her." Eli's voice cut through the chatter at the bar, his presence as towering as he was as he leaned his arm against the wooden surface. He tilted his head at the gentleman (using that term loosely) in front of him, a scummy-looking greaseball who'd spent the last five minutes talking off the nice blonde bartender's ear. Against her will. He looked at her with a smile. "He's bothering you, isn't he?"

And he wasn't stupid. Eli could tell when a bartender was listening genuinely and when they were trying to get somebody off their back. The guy, who'd put on way too much goddamn gel in his hair, protested. "Who are you, the goddamn bouncer?"

Eli laughed dryly at this. "No, man, I'm worse than the goddamn bouncer. Now." He cleared his throat and kept his demeanor relatively casual despite his menacing words.

"Just grab your drink and walk on over to your little friends while you still can and leave this girl alone. Alright?"

"Jeez, that kid's an inch shorter than me and built like The Rock," Jamie muttered to Love as the opposing team took the court in preparation to start the game. His hand reached into his bag of popcorn as he kept his eyes on the court. "Did we double check his birth certificate and make sure he's a middle schooler?"

It was the middle of spring volleyball season at Taylor Middle School and the Spartans were on a 7-0 winning streak, coached by none other than Jamie's daughter, Avery. Otherwise, he wouldn't be found anywhere near a gym full of a bunch of sweaty middle schoolers (ugh, God, the smell!) and their questionable parents. Good thing it was the perfect place to people watch, and at least he'd had Love, the parent of one of Avery's players on the volleyball team, to bounce off his silly comments to.

"Listen. If you think he's being rough on your kid, I have absolutely no problem beating up a 12-year-old. Just say the word."

It used to be Skip's.

An M21 sniper rifle with a slightly nicked scope and worn-out leather sling that they'd been meaning to change right before all this shit went down. The only reason the old thing was clean was because Eli was running out of things to do up in this watchtower all by himself, and cleaning that goddamn gun was the next best thing on his list if he couldn't replace its strap.

He hadn't reached for it in a few hours and he thought that was a pretty damn good record. It wasn't like he picked it up all the time with every intent to shoot it, either. He used it as a telescope when he was trying to get the finer details of the forest that surrounded him in the post he'd been isolated in. When Skip head out of the tower all those nights ago (how many was it, now?), he accidentally took Eli's bag, and that bag held the high powered binoculars specific to Deadwood Peak Lookout—the Vortex, no. 3, marked as the third pair assigned to the third outpost within a 200-mile radius of the woods.

But now, he reached for it with his finger on the trigger, eyes fixed at the door. The rifle was just as strong close range even if it wasn't meant for that sort of thing. And it had more bullets than the GLOCK 9 he kept in a tin box under the bed. That one had one left for the one last thing Eli would do.

'bad.' she hated this, hated this sneaking around. she wanted them to be free to just be together. she'd never been afraid of her brother and yet here she was, unable to just go talk to him about any of this. 'i just-- i just want to be able to see you all the time. once a week isn't enough.' it was taking it's toll on her.

A woman can never compete with a gun and a shield, it was something she'd heard her mother say often. Lindsay's father had been a dedicated cop, but he'd sacrificed being a dedicated husband and father to do it. To him the uniform mattered more, and her brother had taken that to heart when he'd gone through the academy. She knew the life, sometimes she even understood it, and she certainly kept any law enforcement she worked with at arms length because of it. Even the ones she seemed to be working with almost infuriatingly often.

"You shouldn't be here." She'd glanced up from her phone as she exited the courthouse, and immediately noticed him standing outside. Regarding him for a few seconds, she went back to scanning through the notifications she'd missed while she'd been at trial. It seemed several happened to be calls from Sawyer. "If this is about a case, I'll give you the courtesy since you came all the way down here. But you're going to have to walk and talk, I'm running late for something. Next time try calling my assistant."

"Are you smelling my shirt?"

The supposed demon-ghost-handsome-devil stood in the doorway to the girl's bedroom, looking down at her. He'd just gotten out of the shower—another thing he didn't need to do but liked to for the sake of normalcy—and was walking in from the hallway, hand holding onto the towel around his waist. A perplexed expression colored his features, water dripping ever so slightly from a cherub-like curl that dangled from his otherwise pushed-back head of hair.

Sure, this was her bedroom and she had every right to do what she wanted. After all, he was the one who invaded her space—even had his suits hung up in her closet and underwear in her top drawer. But it was a little bit strange for her to be doing this, wasn't it?