She felt sick and dizzy and her body was tingling all over and a burning knot was growing in the pit of her stomach. Her heart raced as she felt Pauling’s lips touch her neck. Every touch felt like an explosion of sensations and she didn’t want it to stop. 

She didn’t reciprocate the actions, not really knowing how. She kissed a boy one behind her high school a few years back. It was gross and wet and sloppy and nothing at all like this. 

She felt her back press up against the wall, felt Pauling against her, smelled the shampoo in Pauling’s dark hair. She felt Pauling’s hand creep up under her shirt and gasped at the touch. And then Pauling stopped. 

Klaus broke the simplest rule: don’t sleep with the boss. Perhaps Pauling wasn’t the boss, but her ranking was much higher than his. She probably had the power to fire him or extend his contract further, making him stay longer in the hellish job. And what if the Administrator found out? 

This situation had to be dealt with carefully. Klaus quietly crawled out of bed, dressed himself and began to feed the cats like any other day. If she asked, he’d make up some kind of lie and hope she’d buy it. 

   “Okay. Okay, good. Okay... So I was out running a couple of nights ago, around the base, as far as we’re allowed to go. And I came across...” Scout paused, giving himself a couple of extra seconds to think this through.

   “Ya kno’ what, Miss P? How ‘bout I just show you?” The runner ran a hand over his head and down his neck while the other arm gestured for Pauling to continue down the corridor.

   This was probably stupid.     No, it was definitely stupid. 

   But it was too late to go back and forget all about it. He’d gotten attached... And it stressed him out and made his performance less successful in the field. His focus was elsewhere and he knew this would become a problem if it continued.

   Scout stepped up to a door leading to a small storage room none of the team ever really used, simply because it was too small. He put his hand on the doorknob and sighed, pushing the door open and turning on the lights. Further in stood a sad attempt of a homemade baby play den and inside it... six coyote puppies.

                                                    ——–Send “📂“ for a  headcanon! ——–

“Nice to see y’made a full recovery. Didn’t expect ya to react so much to that lil’ concoction of mine, though.” Sniper had felt somewhat guilty about the bad trip he’d put her on, hoping there’d been no psychological (or physical) damage that remained after the fact. 

@callmepauling moved from (X)

“You were really goin’ out on a mission in this weather? On that?” Scouts brows drew together, a small frown of concern replacing his sunny smile. He knew that the things Miss Pauling did were important, and had to be done rather quickly sometimes, but to not have what she needs to get them done, and to do it safely, whether on the mission itself, or on the way to and from, seemed a little unfair. “Man, I sure hope the boss lady ain’t gonna be cross with ya for being late. It’ ain’t exactly your fault the jeep is broken, and the weather bein’ shit.” He knew Pauling could take care of herself, but he couldn’t help but feel a bit protective over her in that moment. It was a side effect of having so many siblings, he guessed.

“I’m pretty sure Engie‘ll have gas you can use, but maybe you should ask ta borrow his truck? I’m sure he’d let ya, and it’s a hell of a lot safer than trying ta drive that thing around.” He didn’t know how long she had been driving in the rain to get where she was, but he really didn’t like the idea of Pauling going out again, not with her vision so thoroughly blocked. “Course you’ll have ta be able ta drive a stick shift. But dat ain’t too hard.” His smile was back in what he hoped was a reassuring manner, knowing that Ms. Pauling had to be stressed at the moment. She may not show it, but how couldn’t she be?

The assistant glanced at Scout with a syringe now between her teeth when she ran out of hands while digging through her bag, her movements freezing a little. She was confused on why this was brought up by the runner in the first place, especially after such a quick getaway to hide in another smaller lab room. They wouldn’t have much time left before someone would find the place they were hiding in and they should be heading off again. All she had done was just grab Scout’s hand and pull him to hide, sparing some time for them by shooting a couple guys.

This mission hadn’t been easy. A place that was supposed to be an abandoned laboratory was actually just a trap full of guys. All they now needed to do was to get away when they got what they needed. And despite Miss Pauling trying to convince herself that Scout would be fine as always with the skills he had, that’s why she took him along too, but yet she still carried worry over him, despite her not liking to admit so. She didn’t want to seem like it hurt that her care was now pushed aside, like she did it just to take down the runner’s ego. That was probably why he brought it up in the first place.

She took the syringe back before she started placing it in her bag. All they needed to do was just to get what it had in it out of here and back to Mann Co.

“I’m not babying you Scout,” she stated simply before closing the zipper of her shoulder bag. She adjusted her glasses before her eyes started searching the surroundings for an escape, her gun tightly in her other hand. She didn’t want to get too deep on that because she just simply was bad at admitting that after all she was doing something to protect the goober.

“Look, all we want to do now is just to get out of here. We got what we needed and we might want to avoid getting into more trouble with those guys. That means we just have to figure out how to get out of here,” she explained as instructions with her eyes not meeting his.

She headed more to the back of the room to find any sort of way to get out through here. The lack of windows was a little unsettling and the darkness was onmy lighted by the couple slightly flickering lights above, yet still Miss Pauling knew there had been worse places she had been in. Way worse.