#megvinsay

There were names everyone in Los Santos knew. The Fake AH Crew. Geoff Ramsey. The Vagabond. Brownman. Lil J. Jack Pattillo. Mogar. Ruby. Dollface.

 Everybody that wasn’t stupid knew to fear those names.

 Gavin knew these people of course, but he also knew a few others. He knew Michael Jones: his loving, angry boyfriend. He knew Lindsay Jones: his funny, heart of gold girlfriend. He knew Meg Turney: his adorable, sarcastic second girlfriend.

 But honestly, he knew he probably should have connected the dots sooner.

 5.

 It was a lovely day and his lovers were out doing their jobs like usual. Michael working as an electrician, Lindsay being a tax accountant, and Meg being an assistant some rich guy who worked at a fashion agency. Everything was normal.

 Just how Gavin despised it. He hated not being able to find a job in the city and he hated being so bloody alone all the time. Sure, playing Xbox games with old friends was fun, but he wanted something to do. Every day he cleans, does the dishes, grocery shops, plays Xbox until his boyfriend and girlfriends get home. Same routine every damn day of his life.

 At least today he was getting out of the house to do something other than shop. He was meeting Dan for lunch. Some bullshit hipster place that Gavin didn’t really want to go to but is going anyway because he doesn’t have any other choice.

 The uber to the place was as usual and the lunch was surprisingly good. Dan talked about some girl he was seeing and Gavin bitched about an achievement that was taking forever to get. Something different from the routine, yet it felt exactly the same. It wasn’t until Gavin was walking to the food market that his day got really wild.

 He was waiting at the crosswalk. Normal. He could hear sirens in the distance, the sound bouncing off the tall buildings around him. Normal. The green walk symbol appeared. Normal. He sees something black and green heading his way. Nor-

 Gavin gets wrenched back by his shirt and he stumbles into someone arms. He sees a car go racing by; two police cars following. The black car bounds down the street making a right two blocks down and the sirens fade into the distance again, along with the cars.

 Gavin looks up to see Michael, of all people, holding him up.

 “Jesus Christ! Are you okay?” Michael shouts as he stands Gavin upright and holds him close.

 “Almost got bloody run over by a car but I’m good boi.”

 Michael let out a strained laugh and held him tighter. If Michael was unhappy, Gavin didn’t notice.

 Michael drives them home. Apparently, he was out picking up something for his boss when he walked out of a store to see Gavin about to be run over. Gavin kisses him on the cheek when they get home and Michael beams, his sour mood forgotten for the moment. It stays that way until meg and Lindsay get home; Michael immediately tells them what happened. Meg makes cookies and cuddles him all night. Lindsay threatens murder and asks him if he was okay every 10 minutes. Michaels laughs at both of them. It was a normal routine for someone being hurt in their little family.

 Now, Gavin is observant, especially since he loves photography so much, but he still is an oblivious motherfucker (as Michael puts it). So he doesn’t hear Meg one the phone, whisper-shouting at someone. He doesn’t key in on his partner's annoyed looks.

 He just goes back to the routine, something he’ll never get tired of now.

 4.

 Cleaning was something Gavin use to hate. He’d whine about having to even clean his small room back home. Somewhere along the way of entering a relationship, Gavin found that cleaning could be fun. Just throw on whatever music you want and starting dancing.

 That’s how it goes on this day. Gavin puts on a random playlist and tugs on the rubber gloves to get to work. He’s looking for a cleaner under the sink when he hears the playlist end and he unfold himself from his position hunched over to get it. Unlucky for Gavin, by doing so his head hit his phone where it was teetering on the edge of the counter.

 The iPhone goes flying into the sink, making a series of loud banging noises and lands right in a big patch of water that had yet to drain. Gavin quickly takes off his gloves to reach in a grab it. He fishes it out and opens the drawer that holds hands towels to dry it off.

 After deeming it okay and functioning, Gavin goes to close the drawer when something black catches his eye. Gavin furrows his eyes brows and puts down the phone and towel to reach into the drawer.

 He picks it up to see it’s a thick switchblade.

 Gavin immediately has a million questions run through his head. Why is there a switchblade in the towel drawer? Whose is it? Was that there when they moved in?

 He turns in around in his hand and presses the button to make the blade pop out. He turns it in hands again to see the emblem on the side. It has green and black colors and what looks like a circle with writing in it. He holds it closer to his face to try and read it.

 “Hey, Gavvy.”

 Gavin suddenly jumps what looks like 10 feet in the air and drops the blade which clatters to the ground. Along with a few drops of blood.

 “Gavin!” Lindsay shouts and runs to him to look at the thankfully not too deep cut on his palm. “What happened?”

 “I found a switchblade in the drawer and-” He cuts himself off to wince when Lindsay presses a towel onto the cut, soaking up some of the blood. He sees a look of realization on her face.

 “That’s mine. I put it in there just in case ya know.” Lindsay shots in a small smile before he gets pulled over to the sink to wash the cut. Lindsay murmurs about him not needing stitches as she takes care of him.

 Gavin completely forgets about the emblem.

 3.

 “Okay, Turney. Million dollars but-” Gavin pauses to giggle sending Meg into giggles also. To say they were tipsy was an understatement. Meg was still holding on to a sliver of sober but Gavin was on his way to drunk. The Joneses were away for their anniversary so Gavin and meg decided to go out and have fun. Fun meant, getting drunk in a bar and playing pool, which meg was currently kicking ass at.

 They were having a wonderful night until it came time to go home. Meg had called the uber and she and Gavin were stumbling their way out the back door – the front being way to crowded to try and get out of. Going out the back door meant walking in the alley to get back to the main street.

 Meg didn’t think they’d run into trouble, being in FAKE territory. She was wrong.

 The sound of a gun cocking had them both freezing. Meg could see in her peripheral vision a gun at the back of Gavin’s head.

 “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Mogar and Dollface. Trying to dye your hair different colors so you’re not as recognizable now?” a man with a deep voice says so cockily, they could almost hear the smirk in his voice.

 “Lo-ook I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Meg tries to play the dumb angle, hoping to stall until someone else comes from the back door of the bar.

 “Cut the shit, everyone knows you FAKES.”

 Meg was surprised with how well Gavin was taking this situation, but she knew she needed to do something quick before the asshole keeps spilling the beans. She gets her opening when the guy nails Gavin in the back of the head with his elbow. It enough for him to fall to the ground and Meg to be able to disarm the man and shoot him before he could run. She looks back to thankfully see Gavin unconscious.

 Getting him into the uber was bad enough, but getting him inside was harder. Meg spends the rest of the night coming up with a lie and texting Geoff, Lindsay, and Michael.

 -

 Waking up was painful. His head hurt in every way possible. He could feel the throbbing in his temples and in the back of his head.

 He groans as he tries to open his eyes.

 “Gavin?” He hears Meg question as He sits up.

 “Ugh, what the hell happened?” He squints around to see Meg sitting on the bed next to him.

 “Here drink some water and pills before I explain.” Meg all but shoves the water and Advil at him and he gulps it down.

 “So what happened? Why does my head feel so mingin’?”

 “Well…some drunk came out of nowhere and hit you really hard. Luckily there was someone else around the corner to come to take care of him. He knocked you out a bit, but I’m pretty sure your fine.” She flashed him her usual smile. He smiled back and pulled her down to cuddle.

 “Thanks taking care of me Turney.” He kissed her kissed to top of her head.

 “Anytime Gavvers.”

 It was silent in the room for a beat.

 “So how mad is Michael.”

 Meg's laugh tells him everything.

 2.

 As much of the world today is online based, there is still slip-ups that happen that make you go out into the real world.  Like when Gavin locked out of his bank account and has to go to the bank to sort it out.

Unlucky for Gavin that day, the bank is crowded. Pacific Standard is booming with people; the two-story building currently has people flowing in and out like water. Standing in line has Gavin impatiently shifting his feet as he checks his twitter. Apparently, there were reports of a crew making a hit on a bank today. It was doing nothing to settle Gavin’s impatientcy. He couldn’t wait to get out of there and curl back on the couch for a How It’s Made marathon.

Gavin was never known for being lucky.

 Screaming followed two gun shots. Gavin could see people booking it to the door in his peripherals and other covering their ears. He heard someone shout to get out of the building but Gavin’s not stupid enough to try and book it.  He also hears someone shout for everyone to lay on the floor. Gavin slowly lowers himself to the floor before sneaking a glance to see most of the bank is gone. They were lucky enough to make it out the door.

 “We got 10 minutes until cops arrive. Scary skull and Mogarious keep the hostages in line, but no killing. Lady beard get working on the vault. Pancakes, do a sweep of the area. Pink Guy keep your eyes peeled. Everyone get to work.” Gavin couldn’t see the person speaking; he was too far to his right. Gavin did see a short man head up the stairs and vanish. He also saw a woman in really short shorts and an ugly Hawaiian shirt vault over the counter to the back. What he paid most attention to is the guy in a brown jacket and another in a skull mask head towards the group of people Gavin was in on the floor.

 The famous arsonist Mogar and the scariest hitman on the planet, Vagabond. They were all wearing their signature masks.

 “I wouldn’t try anything if I were you people. Bullet wounds hurt like a bitch.” The vagabond let out an eerie laugh following his warning.

 Remember that thing about Gavin not being Lucky?

 His phone rang. He looked over to it, to see Lindsay’s face lighting up his screen. HE froze as Mogar came closer to him. He picked out the phone as someone (vagabond) flipped him onto his back.

 “What are you playing at?” vagabond growled at him as he pointed a gun at his face.

 “N-nothing I sw-swear. It's just my girlfriend.” Gavin’s phone kept ringing as his eyes darted between the two.

 Mogar looked down at him and they locked eyes.

 “Daddy boss we need to leave.” He shouted as he dropped the phone on Gavin’s chest.

 “Lady Beard isn’t done yet.”

 “Geoff.”

 Ramsey looked over to Gavin and his still ringing phone.

 “Lady, grab what you can and find a way out. Pancakes meet us out front with the van.”

 With that, they all left. Gavin’s phone stopped ringing and all was silent in the bank. They could hear tires squealing as the van pulled away. Everyone still in shock didn’t move or make a sound. The cops burst into the door and everything was sent into motion again. Gavin still laid on the floor looking at the ceiling.

 He vaguely remembers a cop asking if he was okay and being questioned. He does remember people thanking him for practically saving them.

 A cop gives him a ride home and Gavin stumbles into the house, thankfully more coherent than before.

 “Gavin!” Meg and Lindsay shout and run to him for the living room.

 “What happened? Where have you been?” Lindsay questioned him as meg hugged him.

 "There was a robbery while I was at the bank. Got caught up in it, is all.”

 “Christ Gavvy, are you okay?” Meg looked up at him, concern all over her face.

 “Yeah, it was just the stupid fake ah crew.”

 "Yeah, the stupid.” Lindsay mutters.

 They don’t talk about again after that night and Gavin forgets about the encounter after a few weeks.

 1.

 Everything comes to a head when Gavin is on a shoot. Out in the sort-of redwoods by the shore, Gavin is doing a photography shoot. The camera was getting a little too dusty so he decided to take up Dan’s offer to shoot this new model that was in town.

 It was going great, the model, Christina, was a natural in front of the camera and overall pretty chill. The whole shoot went better than Gavin expected and it left both of them happy with the results.

 “Really, Gavin thank you.” Christina thanked him again as she walked to her car.

 “It’s no problem! I’ll email you everything I’ve got and anytime you want some more photos you know who to call.”

 With one last wave, they went their separate ways. Gavin to go wait for an uber and Christine to her car parked farther up the road.

 With a sigh, Gavin sat down on a bench and pulled out his phone.

 -

 Waking up felt exactly like in the movies. His head was pounding, his eyes were heavy, and he only caught little bits of voices and people walking into his line of sight.

 Gavin fully woke up when there was nobody in the room. He looked over the see Christina looking up at the ceiling from where she was tied to a chair.

 “What…” Gavin tried to speak.

 Christina looked over to him.

 “Oh, you’re awake finally. They must have got you pretty hard.” Gavin could see she was sporting a black eye and a cut lip. With how is face and body hurt he couldn’t be much better.

 “Who…” Gavin tried again. Christina let out a snort at that.

 “Some people wanting money from my dad. They were real assholes about it too.” She looked back up at the ceiling and closed his eyes. “Don’t worry about it, though. There should be someone on the way to rescue us.”

 “That’s…reassuring.”

 “Hmm. Sorry, you got caught up in this. I’ll make sure you get something for it.”

 “Getting out of here alive will be all I need.”

 “Isn’t that the truth.”

 Christina fell asleep after a while and Gavin kept trying to wiggle his way out of the ropes, only to make his wrists bleed. He thought the wait at the bank was difficult but staring at the door of the room that was holding them was way harder.

 They both fell in an out of consciousness for what felt like a few days, but in reality was only a little over a day. They were both hungry and dehydrated. Gavin felt as though he was going to scream before the door opened.

 In walked two men and a woman. The men were both holding bags that smelled of food and water. The woman walked up close to them and had a smug smirk on her face.

 “My, my, you two are like Christmas gifts.” She walked over to Christina and bent to look her in the eyes. “You are the daughter of a very rich man and he would pay anything to get his precious baby back. Your daddy isn’t very smart, though, considering this isn’t your first rodeo.”

 “At least I’m not a bitch who has to kidnap people for money.” Christina snarls back.

 “Not all of us can be rich sweetheart.” The woman gets up and starts toward Gavin before sending Christina another smile. “And you better watch that mouth honey, be a shame if someone did something to it.” The woman smirked when Christina only glared harder.

 The woman walked in front of Gavin and studied before grabbing his chin and making him stare her in the eyes. “Now you, where the surprise under the tree weren’t you.”

 “Leave him alone, he’s not connected to my dad,” Christina shouted.

 “Shut up before I get some else to.” The woman snapped back. She turned her gave to Gavin again. “How delighted I was when I found out I had bagged Ramsey’s little secret.”

 Gavin heard Christina gasp next to him at the mention of “Ramsey” and Gavin became more confused than scared.

 “Excuse me?” Gavin asked. The woman looked confused before she threw her head back with laughter.

 “He doesn’t even know! It makes me so happy I get to bring your world crashing down.” The statement did nothing for Gavin confusion and he spared a glance at Christina. She looked surprised if nothing else. Gavin heard the slap before he felt it. His head was snapped back to the right and he was looking into the woman’s eyes again.

 “Eyes on me, Free.” She snapped. “You’re gonna want to hear this.” She stood back up to here full height and started pacing. It reminded Gavin of an evil villain.

 “Your little bedmates having been keeping a secret from you.” Gavin frowned at the mention of his partners. “I’m sure you heard of The Fake-” gunshot cut her off. She sighed, “Take care of that while I finish this.” With a flick of her hand the two men were off.

 “As I was saying, The Fake AH Crew. You’ve heard of them yes?” She asked Gavin.

 “I don’t know what they have to do with me,” Gavin stated.

“I’ve never met some as dumb as you ya know?” She woman said like she was expecting Gavin to understand something. Gavin just frowned more.

 “Your-” this time an explosion cut her off and made her stumble. “Goddamnit, Do I have to do everything around here?” She yelled and whipped out her gun to started towards the door.

 There was a lot of things in Gavin’s life he expected. His parents being wary of him moving to America, his camera lens breaking when he fell out of that tree, Michael and meg calling him an idiot when he accidently set the sink on fire. Nothing could have prepared him for what happened in the next few minutes.

 First, the woman’s head exploded. Second, there was an even bigger explosion that rocked them in their chairs. Third, the door opened to reveal the fucking vagabond and the rest of the Fake AH Crew.

 The crew ran forward to untie Gavin and Christina. As soon as they were free, Christina pulled Gavin and herself back to put some distance between them. The fakes seemed to sense their unease and some of them back up.

 “Get out of the way! Where is he?!” Someone shouted and the Fakes split apart as three people walked forward.

 Not just any three people, Gavin observed. His boyfriend and girlfriends. Holding weapons. Standing around with the Fakes. Gavin felt his head hit something and it hurting for a split second, and then nothing.

 +1

 The first thing Gavin heard when he woke up was an obnoxious beeping sound and someone sniffling. The first thing he saw was the ceiling of a room. The first thing he felt was a dull pain everywhere and someone holding his hand.

 He moved his head to the right to see Meg, Lindsay, and Michael all to the right of him. Michael was slumped backward asleep and Lindsay was quietly talking on the phone a few feet from them. Meg was holding his hand and was the one sniffling. Gavin squeezed her hand to get her attention.

 Megs head shot up and she hit Michael with the hand that wasn’t holding Gavin’s. Michael jolted awake and looked around before finally settling on Gavin.

 “Lindsay,” Michael said louder enough to get her attention. Lindsay looked up to meet Gavin’s eyes before hanging up on whoever she was talking to.

 Gavin tried to speak before he felt a hand on his left arm. He looked over to see what looked like a doctor.

 “Hey Gavin, my name’s Caleb. Don’t try and talk before you get some water down your throat, you haven’t orally ingested any liquid for over two days. We wouldn’t want you to yourself more.” The man- Caleb – gave him and genuine smile and Gavin nodded. Lindsay picked up a half empty bottle and brought it over. Caleb helped him take some huge gulps before he took it away.

 “Now, before you get into anything, let me run down your injuries for you.” Gavin nodded for Caleb to continue. “Alright, you have a pretty mild case of a concussion, bruising on your ribs, and a few minor bruises throughout your body. You’re going to need to take the pain medication I give Lindsay for 4 weeks and rest a lot for the next couple weeks to make sure your concussion doesn’t get anything more than mild. Can you do that?”

 “Yes.” Gavin forced out.

 “Fantastic!” Caleb smiled. “I’ll leave you to it then.” With that, he went out the door and Gavin noticed the room didn’t look like a hospital room.

“Where am I?” Gavin asked.

 “A hospital of sorts,” Lindsay answered. He looked over all their faces and couldn’t help but picture them back at the place where he was being held.

 “What happened? What’s going on?”

 Meg glanced at Michael and Lindsay laid a hand on both their shoulders.

 “Gavvy, we’ve been keeping something for you for…a while.” Lindsay started. “When we first met you, we weren’t particularly honest in what our line of work was. I’m not a tax accountant, meg’s not an assistant, and Michael isn’t an electrician. We all work together for, well me, now.”

 “I don’t follow,” Gavin said. Lindsay sighed.

 “When I first came to Los Santos I was some bitch to a gang leader.” Meg said looked away from Gavin, “He’d force me to do his dirty work without pay. Geoff Ramsey showed up one day and killed him, apparently, they had beef. Geoff saw right through me and took me under his wing. I started unofficially working for him from then on.”

 “I was fleeing mob in New jersey. I didn’t do the best job of it. I was being pummeled to death under a bridge when Geoff coming riding in on a bike and killed them all. He saved my life so I vowed to protect his. I joined the Fakes and became their third member.”

 “I was the eighth member. I was working for another crew leader, real asshole, when I was contacted by some in Fakes offering me a deal to be a double agent. We took them down and I joined the fakes. A few months ago, Geoff asked me to become the new leader of the Fakes.”

 They sat in silence as Gavin processed this. He thought back to the knife, the woman mentioning the fakes, and finally Meg Lindsay, and Michael all protecting him. he was an idiot.

 “God, I’m so bloody stupid,” Gavin said as he closed his eyes and softly banged his head against his pillow.

 “What?” His partners asked. The sounded surprised. Gavin brought his head to look up at them.

 “I could I not see it before?” He asked himself. His partners looked at each other in shock.

 “Are you not breaking up with us?” Meg asked.

 “What?” Gavin exclaimed. “Why would you think that?”

 “I mean, we are members of the city’s most wanted gang,” Michael said. Gavin let out a hoarse laugh.

 “I’m not exactly the cleanest person in this city either.” They looked even more surprised. “before I met you guys, I might have stolen some things. Hell, I even did some hacking work for a year or so. When we first met, I thought you guys were hiding something, but as time went on I just thought I had found some normal people. Guess I was wrong.” Gavin shrugged.

 “I still don’t…” Michael tried to say.

 “No one is innocent in Los Santos Michael boi.” Gavin smiled. “Besides what do you think Dan does when he’s not helping me? He collects bounties all the time.” Gavin said passively.

 “So were okay?” Lindsay asked.

 “Yes, Linds.” Gavin smiled.

 “Good, I got someone who meets you.”

 +2

 1 year later

 “I’m not telling you fake fucks anything!” The man shouted, spitting blood at them.

 Another man decked wearing gold sunglasses walked forward to stand next to another wearing a skull mask.

 “That wasn’t very nice was it, lovely Ryan?” Gavin asked.

 “No, it wasn’t Gavin.” Gavin could hear Ryan’s smile. “Should I teach him a lesson?”

 “Do your thing,” Gavin waved a hand. “Lindsay’s got dinner on and she’ll skin me if we’re late.”

 “Give Meg a kiss for me.” Ryan said as he walked over to a table that held multiple ‘tools.’

 “Always do,” Gavin said as he walked out the barn door and closed it behind. Michael was leaning against a sports car outside.

 “We better hurry boi. Meg is sending me snaps of the food being cooked and Lindsay’s pissed face.” Michael gave him a kiss as he walked closer.

Gavin had made a mistake. He had thought that he was being cheeky. Gavin had gone into this believing that he could get away with it. However like many of his plans this one had fallen through as soon as he’d conducted it. Now Gavin was left like a sitting duck, perched upon his porcelain throne. He’d committed the crime and now Gavin was certainly doing the time. You see, in their house they had a rule. No pooping in the upstairs bathroom. The reason for this was that it was way too close to the bedroom for anyone to be comfortable with. The rule had been made shortly after their first night when a mystery pooper had left a bomb in the bowl. It had been decided then and there that when it came to a number two, you did not come upstairs.

  But Gavin, being Gavin, had completely disregarded the rule. Nobody else was upstairs with him and Gavin had thought that he could get away with it. The girls had gone out to do some last minute grocery shopping as while it had been Michael and Gavin’s turn not a few days ago, they had forgotten almost all of the essentials. At the time it had been funny to find that they had forgotten the bread, kitchen roll and washing up liquid amongst other important things. Now Gavin saw the error of his ways when he reached for the toilet roll and his hands grasped at air. Lindsay and Meg weren’t going to be back for a long, long time. Michael and Gavin were quick when they went shopping at the expense of a few items but Meg and Lindsay took forever to get everything off of their list and more.

  Gavin knew that downstairs they had the emergency roll. He knew that, had this been a piss, he could have shook himself and shimmied back down to give it a safety wipe. That wasn’t an option with a poop. Gavin had only one option. He had to ask Michael to grab him some and risk being yelled at for not following one of their few house rules. There was one thing that Gavin had planned ahead when he’d snuck into the upstairs bathroom and that was his entertainment. Beforehand Gavin had been lounging in the bedroom, phone in hand and severely engrossed in some new viral video that had been sweeping reddit. He didn’t see a point in pausing it just to poop and he had taken it with him to the bathroom. Now it was his only life line.

  Gavin brought the phone to his ear after hitting number three on his speed dial (Geoff being one, Griffon being two, Meg being four and Lindsay five respectively) and waited for his boyfriend to answer with baited breath.

“What do you want, I’m like right downstairs.” Michael answered rather rudely. There was no greeting and now warning that he’d actually picked up until his voice almost startled Gavin off of his seat. Gavin could tell that Michael had crammed the phone underneath his shoulder because of how close it was to his mouth. Gavin could hear the TV and his thumbs as they wriggled the controller.

“Michael, I need you to bring me some bog roll.” Gavin said. He was already close to whining. “I’m upstairs.” Gavin added for clarification. Michael already knew that they were out but he’d be annoying as hell at any chance Gavin presented to him.

  “So? How is that my problem? Just shake and make a break for it.” Michael said. That was what he would do and something that Gavin had done countless of times. Michael had often caught him on the way down, smirking and blocking the way as Gavin begged him to let him pass.

“Michael, I can’t shake this one.” Gavin said. Michael frowned.

“Are you asking for some help? I’m not touching your dick with a ten foot pole.” Michael scoffed.

“You weren’t saying that a few nights ago…” Gavin teased despite his precarious position.

“Gavin, shut up. I’m not coming to shake your dick for you. This was the worst pick up line in the entire world.” Michael said over dramatically. Gavin rolled his eyes.

  “Michael please, I don’t need you to shake my dick for me right now. I just need you to get me some bog roll.” Gavin begged. Michael snorted.

“It’s toilet roll but really, what’s so hard about giving it a little shake? You’ve done it before.” Michael reminded him. Gavin groaned. He had to tell him. His boyfriend was going to be mad at him and Gavin was most likely going to be banned from the upstairs bathroom but this was urgent.

“Michael, I can’t shake the poop from my anus.” Gavin said quietly. Michael was silent on the other side of the phone and then there was a long, heavy exhale.

“Are you telling me you took a shit in the upstairs bathroom?” Michael yelled.

“It was more like a dollop…” Gavin defended himself.

  Michael hung up on him. Gavin was about to yell and ring him back but he heard the stomping of feet on the stairs and wished that he hadn’t called Michael at all. There was no warning as the door was shoved forcefully open. Gavin hadn’t thought to lock it because he’d thought he would have been in and out like a sneaky ninja. He covered his private area with both of his hands, leaving his phone to drop to the side of the toilet. Michael stood in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest and his shoulder resting upon the door frame. Gavin tried not to snicker as Michael’s nose wrinkled at the smell.

“Michael,” Gavin hissed in embarrassment. Michael disregarded his protest with a shrug. “You didn’t even bring me the bog roll.” Gavin whined. How could Michael come upstairs without the very thing Gavin needed him for?

  “Why should I bring you that? You broke the rules. You’re going to have to wait until the girls come back.” Michael smirked. Yes, that was the perfect punishment for Gavin. He could sit here and wait until everyone came home to witness his crime.

“But Michael they could be ages!” Gavin complained. He couldn’t remember when Meg and Lindsay had left but he knew that it had been a while.

“Ah well, I guess you’ll be sitting here for ages.” Michael said before he turned to leave.

“Michael!” Gavin cried out exasperatedly as his boyfriend disappeared around the corner and out into the hallway. “Michael, at least close the door.” Gavin said.

“Nah, you can do that yourself.” Michael replied. Gavin was so, so screwed.

  oOo

  “I can’t believe you flipped an old lady off.” Meg giggled as she unlocked their front door.

“She deserved it, that bitch cut me off.” Lindsay reminded Meg. The shorter girl shrugged and side stepped out of the way so that Lindsay could enter the hallway with her. They could hear the TV and a few choice curses slipping past Michael’s mouth and could only assume he was playing a game. Meg rushed to the kitchen to dump their groceries while Lindsay followed the noise to her husband.

“Hey babe, what are you doing?” Lindsay asked the obvious question.

“Pounding some kid’s ass.” Michael replied casually. Lindsay raised an inquisitive eyebrow and choked on the surprise laugh that wriggled its way out of her. Michael took a moment to realise what he’d just said. He shook his head as though it would rid the words from the room.

“You knew what I meant.” Michael murmured afterwards.

  “Hey, where’s Gavin?” Meg interrupted them both as she snuck into the room with Michael and Lindsay. Michael stood up as though he had been shocked. The girls watched as he pushed past them and marched up the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Lindsay questioned as her husband disappeared.

“To Gavin, if you’re feeling merciful bring the toilet roll.” The girls shared a look and Lindsay darted back into the kitchen to grab the rolls that she and Meg had bought that day.

“What did you do to him?” Meg asked warily as she followed Michael upstairs.

“Meg, don’t be so quick to judge.” Michael joked, “Gavin did this to himself.” They heard Lindsay coming up the stairs and the girls feared the worst.

  The bathroom door was open and Gavin was looking pitifully down at the floor. He’d tried as best as he could to cover himself up. When Michael had barged in on him, Gavin’s phone had tumbled too far for him to grab it. At the sound of someone approaching Gavin looked up and smiled hopefully at his new audience. Michael was looking smug as ever. The girls were slightly confused.

“Why is Gavin sitting by himself on the toilet?” Lindsay asked.

“Gavin broke a house rule. Gavin let a number two loose in the upstairs bathroom.” Michael informed them. Gavin scowled in his direction.

“Yeah and then Michael left me all alone up here when I know there’s an emergency roll downstairs.” Gavin tattled.

  “Aw, Gavin.” Meg cooed as she shimmied by everyone and snatched the toilet roll from Lindsay’s hand. On her way to the toilet she ripped the plastic from the rolls and chucked one to their pitiful Brit. Gavin grabbed at it gratefully and then looked at everyone.

“Are you going to leave or what?” Gavin asked, exasperated.

“Gavin we’re all more than familiar with your ass.” Lindsay joked. Gavin rolled his eyes.

“Can you please leave?” Gavin begged. Lindsay did as she was told and Meg respectfully followed her. Michael stayed put. Gavin shot him a pointed look but Michael remained.

“Gavvers, what have we learnt today?”Michael asked. Gavin huffed.

“That I shouldn’t have pooped upstairs.” Gavin replied.

“We’re gonna be late, Michael,” he said for the third time, like Michael didn’t know what time it was and how late the heist was running.

“Oh no, hurry Micoo,” the crew mocked, Gavin’s shouting easily picked up in his comm so they could hear. Their high pitched imitations of Gavin’s voice came like clockwork because the crew loved picking on the two of them.

“Fuck off, we have two lovely ladies waiting for us who will kick our asses when we’re late,” Michael told them, not for the first time either. When Geoff was giving them dates for the heist the two of them had tried to bow out, told Geoff to give the job to Matt and Jeremy or one of the other hundred crew members that had been hired recently; but Geoff insisted that he couldn’t do it without them.

He had also promised that they would be done with this heist before Meg finished giving her report on the six o’clock. Michael and Gavin would never be allowed to hear the end of it if they missed their six month anniversary dinner for a heist.

It was almost hard to believe that it’d been six months since all that shit with the Corpirate had gone down. Things were still hard sometimes, Meg still got a little panicked if she felt like someone was following her and they all had their share of long, sleepless nights but they worked together in a way Michael couldn’t believe. No one spent an insomnia filled night alone, someone was there to take care of every bump in the night, and, even though the panic attacks were rare these days, there was always someone there to help you remember how to breathe. They took care of each other, and would keep doing it for a long time after this.

Their first official date took place not long after the Corpirate was gone, he’d ‘borrowed’ a truck from Geoff and they’d gone to Meg, Lindsay, and Gavin’s apartments and packed up everything they thought they couldn’t live without before saving the rest to be moved into storage by someone else later. They grabbed dinner that night at some tiny hole in the wall place that Meg said she went to all the time when she’d first moved to the city, they were tired and a little sore from having moved boxes out of buildings and into the car and then up to Michael’s apartment. He hadn’t even thought of it being their first date until Lindsay asked if he was gonna make good on his promise for date two to be at the range.

He did. He actually asked Jack before he borrowed their chopper, because unlike with Geoff and his truck he was actually a little worried what would happen when Jack realized he took it without asking. He flew them out to the Crew’s personal shooting range, really it was more like ten miles of desert in the middle of nowhere filled with cars that wouldn’t run anymore and shooting dummies, if you actually wanted to try for target practice. He brought a bunch of new toys for the four of them to play with and was really hoping that Meg and Gavin liked this as much as he knew he and Lindsay would.

It was only their second date, so they were still getting a feel for the way their group worked in a situation that wasn’t life threatening. Their first date had been the four of them and had let them bounce and blend with each other, but they split into twosomes when they were at the range. Gavin grabbed Lindsay by the hand and dragged her over to the one of the dummies, demanding that she teach him how to throw knives. Meg stayed by Michael’s side, her fingers tangled in his as she reminded him that he promised her an explosion.

He helped her shoulder the rocket launcher that he’d brought, pointed her toward a pile of crushed vehicles stacked on one another. He watched her pull the trigger and heard the sound of the cars exploding. He watched her face as the cars caught, even from as far as they were standing he could feel the heat of the flame.

He hadn’t seen anything as beautiful as the look of awe and amazement on her face as she watched the destruction she’d caused. She set down the launcher before running and leaping into his arms. She was squealing with the thrum of excitement that a good explosion caused and she kissed him hard. He could see the flames dancing in her eyes and he was sure he was in love.

He could hear the thunk of knives hitting rubber and a cheer from Gavin. The man bounded up and wrapped his arms around Michael’s other side coming to revel in the chaos with them, and let Michael know he hit the dummy in the nob. He talked Michael into taking the rest of his C-4 and creating a pyrotechnics show for them and they watched the explosions he created once the sun went down. If he’d been sure he was in love with Meg when he saw the flames from her first explosion dancing in her eyes, he was certain he didn’t want to live without any of them as he listened to the three of them giggle as their faces were lit up by the destruction he’d caused.

He was going to let them know that too, had four matching bands sitting in a box in his pocket that he was going to give them tonight. If this heist ever ended, so they could meet the girls for dinner. It was still early in the day, but they would have to wait out the cops before they could go anywhere and they hadn’t even made it to the safe house yet.

“We’re gonna be in the dog house tonight, Gavvy.”

“I don’t want to hear any more about your sex life.” Geoff groaned, which was a very new rule and Michael was definitely gonna call him on it.

“We had to listen to you talk about Griffon for a fucking month before you talked to her!”

“That woman is an artist with a chainsaw, watch your mouth,” Geoff said loud enough that Michael pulled out his ear piece just to keep from going deaf, he filled Gavin on the half of the conversation he missed when the man sent him a confused look.

He handed Gavin his comm and let him shout, “We don’t want to hear any more about your sex life, Geoff.”

They both laughed as Gavin tossed the comm onto the dash of Michael’s car, they were only a couple minutes away from the safe house and he couldn’t make out the LSPD in his rearview anymore. He gunned it, they might just make this date after all

–

“You get the very latest in heists, theft, and gang activity here so be sure to stay tuned to this channel, so you can know what we know and be in the know on this show, heart you.”

Meg smiled as she walked off the soundstage, live reporting wasn't easy on the best of days but today was a heist day, which made it that much worse as she had to simultaneously keep up with the Crew’s antics and share them with the world.

But, tonight was date night, and Lindsay was waiting in the wings to pick her up and that made her stressful day that much better. She was a professional, and still at work, so she didn't run over to greet her girlfriend, but she’d be lying if she said she didn't power walk. She let Lindsay pull her into a tight hug that lifted her off the ground, she giggled a little, and the other girl quickly smothered the sound with a quick peck on the lips.

“Ready to go?” Lindsay asked as she set her back down on the floor.

“Yes,” she said excitedly, it was their big six months and she was looking forward to their planned dinner almost as much as she was looking forward to seeing whatever it was that Michael was planning on doing at that dinner that had him so worked up all week. Assuming, that is, he made it to dinner at all, cause it wasn’t looking so good as she came off air; but their boys still had a little bit of time while they got ready to finish up.

They were just about to leave when Ashley came up beside them. Meg refrained from groaning, but just barely, she'd only been working with the Know for a couple months, but schedules were hectic and there were some nights, usually Wednesdays strangely enough, that she was there all night. She really didn't wanna get stuck at the office because Geoff picked date night to rob the bank.

"Meg, just wanted to say what an awesome job you've been doing," Ashley said, "I know you wanna get out of here, just wanted to let you know how great it’s been working with you!"

Meg grinned, Ashley had really been a huge help when she'd first gotten started. Helping her learn the ropes about what she could and couldn't say, both legally and because it would put her in a situation much like the one she'd just gotten out of. Ashley was the one who first let her in on the big secret to the Know’s success: people want the news, but they want the gossip even more. So let them know that the Triad is planning on moving in on the Corpirate’s old territory, but also let them know that the Vagabond has been seen hanging around Ruby Rose a lot recently.

It didn't matter if it was true or not, the people ate it up, and because of it there was a rumor going around about her and Ryan being a thing, all because she laughed at the faces Gavin was making off camera while she talked about the Vagabond’s latest exploits. It annoyed Gavin to no end, Michael and Lindsay both found it hilarious, and Ryan kept making it worse by calling in as the Vagabond and flirting shamelessly to add fuel to the fire.

“Thanks Ash, you guys have been great helping me get settled. You here for the rest of the night?"

"Nah, Bruce and Adam are gonna handle it from San Andres."

Lindsay laughed, "Is that smart after Funhaus just ran their first big heist not even a week ago?"

Ashley waved away the concern, "Everyone is gonna be more worried about the Fake AH Crew robbing the bank than they are about Funhaus sticking up some convenience store. But even if they get caught it'll give Risinger something to do, the Crew hasn’t needed their defense lawyer very much recently. Now get outta here, you two kids have fun on date night."

"Thanks Ash, I'll see you tomorrow."

They were barely out of Ashley's earshot when Lindsay was nudging her, "You just got a compliment from Jinx, I can't believe you get to work with her every day."

Meg remembered that this was the first time that Lindsay had actually come to pick her up, and it was probably her first time really meeting Ashley. She sometimes forgot that her coworker was an ex-assassin and Lindsay was almost too sweet to be one, not with the way she has to stop and pet every cat she passed on the street. "It’s just Ashley, babe."

"Just Ashley, that's Jinx! She's one of the original female assassins, she was a Frag Doll, they were international. You know they're part of the reason any girl can make it in this business."

"I know, Linds," she said, dragging her girlfriend out of the soundstage with her, as cute as it was to watch Lindsay geek out about other professionals, they really had to get out of there; and it had as much to do with them needing to get ready as it did her not wanting to get dragged back on air. "C’mon were gonna be late."

"No, we’re going to be just fine, Michael and Gavin are gonna be late. Don't know if you remember how you were just describing them careening into the safe house, but they'll be a while."

"That was Ryan and Geoff, our boys got there a little earlier, but if they're too late then we'll just start the fun without them."

Lindsay pressed another kiss to her cheek, "Love the way you think, Turney."

Michael and Gavin ran into the restaurant, and skid into their seats like they were trying to make it into homeroom before the final bell, they were really only twenty minutes late, she’d been willing to wait an hour before they gave up and had the dinner by themselves. They'd changed out if their heist gear but she could tell that's all they'd done. She could still see the adrenaline making Gavin’s eyes bright and wide and could faintly smell the gunpowder and explosives on Michael's skin. The boys both took their hands and pressed a soft kiss to their palm as an apology for being late before launching into some of the more exciting moments of the heist they'd just finished.

Michael was jumpy all night, a different jumpy than he usually got after a successful heist. She watched him fidget in his seat wondering how long it would take before he spilled whatever he had on his mind that had him so worked up.

The night was winding down, the four of them smiling and talking with their fingers entwined and a drink in front of each of them. Michael kept reaching into his jacket before taking his hand away as he looked around the table, it was starting to make her a little jumpy. She wondered if she was wrong about him planning something and that instead the calm after the Corpirate storm was coming to an end, if there was someone there waiting to finish what he’d started. Months old anxiety was trying to bubble to the surface and she almost jumped when a red faced Michael set a large ring box down on the table.

He wouldn’t look at any of them and left Lindsay to open the box as he stared out the window just over her shoulder. Meg’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of four black bands sitting in the velvet box, identical except for the width of two of them. He was proposing, or whatever the equivalent was when it involved three people instead of one. Lindsay took one of the thinner bands and slipped it on her finger before taking the other and gently sliding it on Meg’s. Gavin was doing the same on the other side of the table, hand shaking in his excitement to put the ring on Michael’s hand. “Yes, you donut,” he said to the question Michael hadn’t actually asked, managing to convey just how ridiculous it was that Michael had seemed nervous about their answer in those three words.

His answer let Michael release the breath he’d been holding, like he thought they would say anything else, and it gave Lindsay and Meg the time to lean over the table and give their answer through a kiss. She and Lindsay both examined the bands in the light, and she could feel a grin splitting her face as she saw how wonderfully the black band contrasted with her pale skin.

She spent the rest of the dinner laughing with her partners; loving the feeling of the new weight on her ring finger, and, despite the anxiety that had tried to bubble up earlier, she actually found herself glad for everything that had happened to her all those months ago. Without it, she never would have met the three of them, and she was happier now than she thought she'd ever been. She had a job she loved, people she loved even more, and the promise of a lot of fun later that night when they got home, she really wouldn't have it any other way.

She wasn’t unrecognizable, but by the time they finished getting her ready she at least looked a little less like Meg Turney and a little more like, well the closest she could come to describing it was she looked like that B-list celebrity that you saw in everything but could never quite remember the name of.

She could tell the other girl was nervous, could see it in her eyes and the way her hands were just barely shaking. Meg was flitting about Michael’s room where the two of them were getting ready, the boys were still half-asleep, curled around each other on the sofa bed. She grabbed Meg around the waist, pulling her down to where she was sitting, "I know you're nervous," she said, "but you're freaking me out and you're gonna make yourself sick."

Meg grimaced, ready to apologize, when Lindsay cut her off, "Don't apologize for being freaked, just take a deep breath and tell me how I can help you feel better."

Meg paused and Lindsay was willing to bet she was counting her breathing the same way Michael used to. "Just tell me for real, is this really going to work? Or are we walking into a death trap?"

"We might be walking into a death trap," Lindsay answered honestly, “but that’s what we’ve been doing all week. We’re gonna watch out for each other, nothing’s gonna happen to you, okay.”

“Can you really make that promise?” she asked, looking down at the ground at the corner of the bed. She was the picture of nervous resignation, and Lindsay wanted to bundle her up and leave her in a place where she wouldn’t have to worry about being in any danger.

“Wouldn’t make it if I couldn’t keep it,” she said, sneaking a quick kiss to the tip of the girl’s nose just to make her smile. “C’mon we’ve got a foolproof plan, we’ll be fine.”

“Are simplistic and foolproof really the same thing?”

Lindsay laughed with her, “For us they are. Just wait until you’ve seen how over the top a snatch-and-grab can get when you’re dealing with the Crew. A detailed plan just gives you more ways to fuck up and we don’t need the help.”

Meg let out a sigh, a release of breath that was as much a release of stress as it was the air she’d been holding. Lindsay could still see the worry in the tight line of her shoulders, but she knew it was nothing like what the girl had been feeling before.

“Tell me what I can do to help,” Lindsay repeated.

“I need something to do with my hands,” she said.

Lindsay smirked, but didn’t make a comment, and Meg, realizing what she just said rolled into Lindsay knocking their shoulders together as she tried to push her off the bed. “Not what I fucking meant, asshole. Let me do your hair, so I have something else to focus on.”

She easily agreed, and Meg flipped behind her and started braiding her hair. They weren’t in any rush, and Lindsay was more than happy to do whatever it took to make Meg feel better.

She was feeling lulled by Meg’s rhythmic movement, the feel of her twisting and pulling as she arranged Lindsay’s hair. Michael came in while Meg was doing that, he watched for a second as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He said a rough sounding, “Good morning,” to them both.

As he walked farther into the room, they saw Gavin had a grip on the hem of Michael’s wife beater. He was following behind Michael with sleep filled eyes and grumbled out something that might also have been a good morning as he was pulled into the room by his grip on Michael. Gavin let go of Michael’s shirt and flopped face down onto large bed beside them while Michael went back into his closet to get ready.

Lindsay ran a hand down Gavin’s back as his breathing evened back out, careful not to move her head while Meg was still braiding. “You’re gonna have to get up sometime, Gav,” she said.

“It’s too bloody early,” he said, voice muffled by the bedding, “and you lot kept me up too damn late.”

“You weren’t complaining about it last night,” Michael said as he came back out, pulling on his sleeves as he struggled with the links like he did every morning.

She motioned to him, making him come closer so she could do it for him, like she did every morning. She pinned them quickly, smoothing down the sleeves while he bickered with Gavin, another part of their morning ritual. “Well it was fun last night.”

Meg finished with Lindsay’s hair, letting her move now. “Are you not having fun, Gavvy?” Michael said.

Gavin sat up to glare at him, “No Michael, for some reason I don’t find getting up at the arse of dawn as fun as watching Lindsay suck that hickey on your neck.”

Michael laughed, fingers coming up to brush at the bruise on his neck that was just visible above his collar before leaning over and ruffling the man’s hair because he knew it would annoy him. “We can mark you up next,” he said, “since you’re so full of the vin.”

Gavin was gaping at Michael as the man went back into his weapons closet, Lindsay smirked at Gavin’s face and at her own handiwork. She’d gotten a little carried away the night before as they’d messed around. It was just some sloppy make outs, nothing farther than she would have gone on her parents’ couch as a teenager; but second base was a lot more intense when there were three other people involved. Just cause Michael’s was the most visible didn’t mean the rest of them made it out without a mark or two.

Michael came out with an arm load of weapons, “Nothing to say to that boi,” he asked.

Gavin shrugged getting up and getting ready, but stopping to see what Michael had brought out with him, Lindsay had to admit she was curious too but not enough to get up just yet.

“Michael, you’re going to be armed to the teeth if you go in with all that.”

“This isn’t for me,” Michael said, and that was enough to get her interested enough to get up and look.

He had three different handguns and six knives spread out in front of him. Gavin ignored them all in favor of moving to get dressed, but she and Meg filled the spot he left.

“I’m not using one of those,” Lindsay said.

“They aren’t for you either,” he said rolling his eyes, “wouldn’t want you tainted by my knives.” She wasn’t going to call him on it, but she heard his muttered, “Weirdly monogamous for someone with three partners.”

Well it went mostly without comment, she couldn’t help but add, “I have more than one knife, and they’re actually weighted right.”

“If they aren’t for you and they aren’t for Lindsay, you can’t actually expect me and Gavin to carry all that shit.” Meg said, already an expert at stopping any argument that she wasn't a part of in its tracks.

“Not all of it,” he said, “just enough to make sure you’re safe when you go in.”

Meg gingerly looked over the things Michael had spread out. She focused on the knives, keeping  her hands far from the small arms that he’d set out. Meg picked up a small, serrated blade, gripping it loosely as she held it up, almost presenting it to the two of them.

Lindsay took it from her, wanting to look it over a little closer. It wasn’t a bad knife: five inch blade, nine inches total, not that badly weighted, and serrated at the base. If Meg was going to carry something, this wasn’t bad. She shared her approval and handed it back to her.

The girl took it in the ginger hold of someone who didn’t know how to use a knife for anything but cooking. Michael noticed at the same time she did. “No, take it like this,” he took her hand and carefully repositioned it around the hilt.

Lindsay then placed her hand over top of Meg’s, “A knife like this, you’re gonna swing through like this,” she helped her roll through a jabbing motion, then another, and another, moving slow so she could get an idea of how it should feel. “It’s a close range weapon so hopefully you won’t even have to use it.”

Meg took a few more practice swings until her movements became more fluid, unfortunately for Gavin, who stepped out from getting ready and found himself nose to blade with Meg’s new toy.

“Bloody hell,” he squawked and Meg pulled the blade away from him and in close to her chest.

“Sorry Gavino,” she said, handing off her weapon to Lindsay before she moved to her tip toes to press a kiss to the tip of the nose she almost sliced.

Gavin put his hands on her waist and placed a responding kiss on the top of her head, “‘s alright, Turney, little early for knife play ‘innit?”

“This is more ‘it’s dangerous to go alone’ than it is ‘slice me so I can cum’,” Michael said, grinning as he saw how his comment made her and Meg blush. “Pick something, you aren’t walking out of here weaponless.”

Lindsay took Meg aside, confident that if Gavin needed help with whatever he chose that Michael could handle it. She was more worried about making sure Meg could get at her new knife if she needed to and that it wouldn’t be seen while she wasn’t using it.

“Don’t freak out,” she said, “cause I’m gonna lift up your skirt.”

Meg giggled, “That’s not something I usually hear from someone I spent the night making out with.”

“I’m a gentlewoman, who would never take advantage of a lady such as yourself,” she said throwing a dramatic hand over her chest.

“Well I do declare,” Meg said in a dramatic southern accent throwing her hand up to her forehead like a wilting southern belle. Lindsay made sure to roll her eyes as dramatically as possible at the girl’s antics, Meg was kinda a huge nerd when it got down to it but then they all were and maybe that’s why they thought they should try this in the first place.

Lindsay pushed gently on Meg’s shoulder leading her down to sit back on the bed. She kneeled down on the ground between the girl’s legs, she reached up and flipped up the hem of her skirt, fighting the urge to blush the whole time. She placed a hand on Meg’s knee to still her leg as she looped a makeshift sheath around her garter so it was now hanging from the elastic. Lindsay took the knife Meg had chosen and sheathed it carefully before tucking the dangling, covered blade into the thigh-highs Meg was wearing. She ran her hand down the girl’s leg smoothing out the material and making sure the knife was lying flat against her leg. Lindsay grabbed the hem of her skirt again and rolling it back down her leg and arranging the sheathed knife so that it wasn’t visible under her dress.

She looked up at Meg and found her staring intently at Lindsay’s hands with flushed cheeks. “There,” Lindsay said running her hand down her leg one more time, “hidden but easily reached.”

“Save that shit for later,” Michael said startling them both, like his hand wasn’t halfway down the back of Gavin’s skin tight pants as he helped him hide his gun, “we’re gonna be late.”

She got up from the floor between Meg’s legs, extending a hand to help the girl up. They were now standing chest to chest, Lindsay not having stepped back before pulling Meg up from the bed and giving her nowhere to go but close to Lindsay. “We’re gonna be just fine,” she assured her, dropping a kiss to her forehead and a bop to her nose before stepping away. They really did have to go after all, it was getting close to eight and god knows what would happen if they were late.

When they made it to the building Lindsay could feel something was off before they even walked in, whatever element of surprise they thought they had was gone. The building looked exactly the same as it did the day before, and every other day that they’d worked there, but there was a feeling she couldn’t shake that they were getting ready to walk into a trap. She could see the other’s felt the same, Meg and Gavin were shifting on their feet while Michael clenched his hand in want of a weapon. They didn’t risk pulling their guns before walking in though, but they were both ready and it would only take a second for the both of them to be armed and ready.

The lobby was empty as they walked in, more empty than it had been any other day they’d worked there. Foxy’s desk sat vacant and the only sound in the room was the sound of Meg’s heels as they walked across the wide empty space. It was freaky enough that Lindsay pulled her gun, and she saw Michael do the same. They were walking through the room before the boss battle and it didn’t take a genius to know you went into meet the boss with everything you had.

Nothing happened when Michael put his card in the slot, no elevator showed up, no grunt popped up out of nowhere. So they tried Lindsay’s, and nothing happened again, they had no way of getting up to the Corpirate as the doors in front of them stayed sealed. Michael brought a frustrated hand down on the card reader in front of them before trying his card again, with the same results.

Frustration had them stepping away, moving to check the desk that had been abandoned for some reason. They each took a section to search, Lindsay had only opened a couple of the mostly empty drawers, they were filled with blank paper and half used nail polish bottles, nothing that would be that helpful to getting out of the lobby. It only took a few more seconds before Meg was triumphantly shouting, “Found something,” and holding up a card with ‘Turney’ written across a post it.

She went back to the door and used her new card in the slot, Lindsay had to admit she was surprised when the elevator in front of Meg didn’t open. Then she heard Gavin’s gasp, where he was still rifling through the desk as she turned to see what was wrong she saw that instead the wall on the opposite side of the room from them had silently opened.

The elevator that Meg had accidentally opened was large, larger than the one they’d used the day before, and they were easily able to fit the four of them inside comfortably instead of the usual two. There were still no buttons to press in this car, and the doors shut behind them as soon as they all stepped through them. Lindsay had long gotten used to the feeling of someone watching them, and it didn’t take long to find the camera blinking at them. The Corpirate was waiting for them wherever he actually was, they’d completely lost that element of surprise now.

They’d been expecting trouble since they first gotten to the building, and if the first sign they were right about that was the empty lobby, then the next was when the elevator came to a stop around four floors sooner than it should have.

The doors dinged open and they were greeted by the Corpirate, who was bracketed by three men who were built almost as bulky as he was. The three of them were almost identically, tall and broad and built like every tank she’d ever dealt with. Just one of them was easily twice her size and the three of them standing shoulder to shoulder filled the whole room they were standing in. The three of them were wearing matching scowls, and the only way to really tell that there was any difference between them was the scar running down the middle one’s face. Other than that, they were all wearing the same white shirt and had the same bulging arms that were carrying the same huge automatics that were trained on them. As intimidating as they looked, they were still standing just behind the Corpirate who was there waiting front and center for them. Their element of surprise was well and truly gone now and even worse, it had been flipped around on them.

Lindsay knew they had two choices: get out of the elevator and fight or get forced out; and if she was going to have to leave whatever relative safety they had in the elevator, she was going to make sure she was between Meg and the person who wanted them dead.

Every time she did something new with this team, there was a fluidity to it that she was almost amazed by, it was like they were pieces of a puzzle that were just now coming together, and now was no different. They moved out of the elevator together, the four of them moving in sync as they stepped out and into the small room with the Corpirate and his weirdly identical lackeys. The doors closed behind them blocking them in almost as soon as they were out of the thing, and in that same step forward, she and Michael put their less experienced teammates behind them, giving Meg and Gavin a shield in front of them and a wall behind them.

“Ye be comin’ aboard,” the Corpirate said, “I been waitin’ for the four of ye, but you seem to be right on time.”

As he said it the lights went out plunging them into blackness, then all they heard was a scream.

–

The lights cut out and Michael knew they were dead, or they would be if they didn’t move fast. He reached for whoever was closest to him, grabbing ahold of their sleeves and yanking roughly, pulling them to the ground. He hoped that one of them would grab their fourth and bring them down with them, he only had two hands and he couldn’t reach their last member. Then he heard the scream and knew it was Meg, remembered that she was the one on the end farthest away from him and that she’d been grabbed.

Then there were the shots.

Michael knew what was happening, he had enough adrenaline in his system that his mind was flying a mile a minute, the Corpirate had grabbed Meg as soon as the lights had gone out and now his fuck head lackeys had opened fire on them. Michael had grabbed Lindsay and Gavin when the lights went out and pulled them with him to the floor, he knew once it went dark that they were in trouble. They were up against the wall with nowhere to go, sitting ducks for anyone that wanted to take them out.

It was an old trick, dirty, to get a group in the open like that and make it dark to disorient them, catch them off their game and then fire where you know they haven’t moved from. Michael had seen it before and had the knowledge to pull the two to the ground in that half-second of darkness before the shooting started. He’d been acting on instinct as he’d pulled everyone he could reach down to the ground, an instinct he was thankful for now as he heard the rapid fire gunshots.

In all the shooting, he could hear that where the shots were hitting were nonlethal or he was pretty sure they were. Where they were pressed against the ground, it was hard to tell exactly where they were landing but the shots sounded like they were landing a little too close to where their heads were, like they were aiming for their knees. He had no idea if that was the plan. The Corpirate had grabbed Meg in the confusion and now Michael had no clue if, after that part of the plan, the Corpirate wanted them dead or just injured; it was entirely possible these assholes were just shitty shots but even they had to hear the ping of bullets hitting metal and not flesh.

The room was still dark and the shots were still coming when Michael nudged Lindsay. The thing about this trick was it worked two ways, the people being surprised held still and the people doing the shooting never thought to move either. The room they were in didn’t have a lot of places to move to even if they had, and those hulking assholes took up a huge chunk of the room.

He felt Lindsay shifting beside him, moving from where he’d just pulled her to the ground to take a position that would make it easier to fire. He had his pistol in his hand and he tried to imagine just where they’d been standing before it went dark. He had twelve shots in his clip, and another clip with him if he got the chance to use it, plus a revolver strapped to his ankle if he could get to it, he needed three shots for the Corpirate which left him plenty to deal with these fucks, even if they weren’t where he thought they were.

He placed a mental copy of the three shooters where he remembered them being. It took seconds to squeeze off three quick rounds where he thought they were, not bothering with the extra effort it would take to make them nonlethal. He couldn’t hear Meg anymore, there had been the single scream when she’d been grabbed but now there was nothing. He could hear the sound of bullet tearing through flesh and the sound of three more shots being fired off by Lindsay and hitting their mark.

The lights came on at the same time the three bodies hit the floor.

He pushed himself up from the floor, offering a hand to the other two to help them to their feet faster. There was only one place that the Corpirate could have taken Meg, only one other door in the room. He hadn’t heard anything from the room since her initial scream and Michael was terrified at the thought of what that might mean.

They moved with a careful purpose toward that room, stepping over and around the three collapsed bodies. They had already been surprised by the three guards and any more scares would not be good for them, the last thing Michael wanted was someone getting hurt because they rushed in without thinking.

The large room held only the Corpirate and Meg, the two of them standing in the center of the vacant space. He had a thick hand wrapped around Meg’s neck, loosely grasping her but even that was enough where his thumb and fingers were touching. Meg was forced to stand on her tip toes so that she wasn’t dangling from his grip and even then, she was struggling to keep her toes touching the ground. The look of fear in her eyes made his blood boil, he’d promised she would be okay and look at where she was because of him.

“You killed even more of me men, this‘s quite the bloody venture. But I been waitin’ for ye.” He bared his teeth, huge and yellowed, as he looked down at her, “Waitin’ for you especially Miss Turney, but seein’ as ye brought me such temptin’ guests I’ll let you watch as I dispatch them first.”

“Get the fuck away from her,” Michael growled, gun out and pointed directly between the Corpirate’s eyes.

He laughed, cocking the gun he was levelling with Meg’s temple and smiling cruelly as the action had Michael stepping back. She was struggling in his grasp as much as she could, but even the loose hand he had latched around her neck didn’t leave her much room to move. “Ye be watchin’ yer smart tongue Mogar or your fair lassie be payin’ for it.”

Michael didn’t lower his weapon but he took another small step back, not wanting Meg to get hurt in any way because of him, whether that be because he didn’t step back or because he put his weapon down and the Corpirate took his shot. He didn’t know how the man knew about him but he was sure he’d find out, this asshole seemed like the type to monologue before he tried to kill them.

“Surprised that I know who ye be, Jones. I know who all ye be. Was a bit offended when I saw that Ramsey couldn’ send the Vagabond to try an’ kill me but I be more an’ fine with killin’ any member of his half rate crew. I be knowin’ that you be Mogar from the first day I be seein’ ya, watched you in that camera and knew that ye be comin’ for me.”

Michael was shocked, they’d gotten rid of Coal to keep his identity a secret and now it seemed like it didn’t even matter. That it had never really mattered in the first place.

“Are ye aghast? Mogar be a familiar face to me, I need to be thankin’ ye for gettin’ rid of Coal. I be a little ashamed at how long it be takin’ him to figure you out, he be not as clever as he be thinkin’ he was, but he been filchin’ from me stock that’d been givin’ him more to think about than our enemies.”

He was monologuing now, just like Michael thought he would, like he was an actual fucking villain instead of some low rent, mobster with a hard on for pirates. He had yet to do anything with Meg, she was still dangling from his grasp and watching them with scared, but trusting eyes, and Michael was sure that she would be safe until he finished his spiel. So they had to silently come up with a plan before they ran out of time. He tried to communicate what he wanted her to do without alerting the Corpirate.

“Now I don’ want your dear Matey Free to think he be the reason I been toyin’ with ye. Had your dear Captain Burns not relied on him so heavily in years past, might not have known you was there but we been lookin’ for you since we started trackin’ the fair lass. I’ve had my men lookin’ for your handiwork from the moment I knew that my hired assassin had turned and gone to the Fake AH. Even on the lookout for ye we almost missed your work, but once Mister Jones showed up we had one more thing to look out for.”

Michael couldn’t see Meg’s knife anywhere, had spent the time the Corpirate was speaking searching the floor for it, and hoped it meant it was still strapped her leg. The Corpirate didn’t have her arms pinned, and though she had one wrapped around the hand around her neck to try and loosen the grip, the other dangled by her side. If he could just find a way to signal to her, to get her to reach just a little farther down and grab the hilt of her knife.

“The four of you have done admirably,” he said, “ye are hardly the team ya send after a large bounty but I’ve had a hearty laugh at watchin’ Ramsey’s pet gunner try to stowaway among me men with his virgin crew.”

Michael was brushing at his thigh hoping that Meg would see and take her knife and do something. She was looking at the three of them, but he wasn’t sure if she was actually seeing what his free hand was doing in the few seconds he could drop it from his gun and to his leg.

“I’ll still be puttin’ you down though, I’m afraid, there’s nothin’ to do with a rabid dog like you Mogar but put them down. ‘S a shame though, I seen yer work with a cannon if I could turn you into a well behaved mutt I would keep you. Your friend though, I could use a man aboard as capable as ye Free, what’ll it take to get you to turn coat and join me?”

“Go to hell, bastard,” Gavin spat, and even he’d pulled his gun and had it trained on the Corpirate at this point. The only person still unarmed was Meg, who was tugging at the hand around her neck more insistently as his grip tightened.

“Such a shame, ye shall regret that decision soon. Now don’t be thinkin’ I forgot you Miss Rose, it’s a shame you be workin’ against me now. You made assassination much more affordable when I could just sink them from right in front of you, but now you’ve become more trouble than ye be worth.”

He turned his sneer back down at Meg, “And now we be back to you my fair lass, I be surprised when you survived two attempts on ye life; but when it be clear that ye used yer wiles against my primary assassin, I decided to let ye live fer just a few days more to see what ye be doin’. Then Mogar shows up and I see ye with Ruby Rose outside one of my men’s house and I be knowin’ that it just be a matter of time before I can get rid of all me problems at once. So now ye can watch them bleed before I send you off me plank.”

Her hand was twitching toward her thigh, he was still staring down at her but the tips of her fingers were skimming at the hilt of the knife. She needed a distraction, only needed a second to pull her knife and use it.

The Corpirate turned back to them and Michael hoped that he had his full attention on them, which could be enough for her to get her weapon. “As fer the three of ye, we have pulled up to the hangman’s dock. Yer weapons won’t do ye any good, might as well put ‘em down and take it like a man.”

Meg had the knife, was brushing it with the tips of her fingers. She could have it, if she just had one more second.

Lindsay spat on the ground at his feet, “Sexist fuck.”

The Corpirate snarled, and Michael was sure that if Lindsay was any closer she would have gotten pistol whipped, but their distraction was achieved. Meg had her knife in her hand, fingers wrapped so tight around the handle they were white. She still had the Corpirate’s gun trained on her, but she took the chance she had before he moved it to aim at the other three. She swung down blindly and Michael was praying that when she hit the Corpirate didn’t pull the trigger.

The blade sunk deep into his thigh, an amazing hit even if she hadn’t just been aiming blindly, and she was able to twist it in even deeper before he dropped her. He screamed as Meg fell to the floor, her knife still buried in his leg, she went limp when he dropped her and collapsed near his feet. She tried to drag herself away, crawling on the floor toward the side of the room away from his rage, stopping only when she curled against the wall. “Change of plans,” he growled, “you die first, bitch.”

Things were moving in slow motion, a familiar slowdown that he was used to from heist time. The Corpirate turned to fire, opening his body up for just a second as he brought his arm out to aim before he turned to face the wall Meg was crowded up against. Michael didn’t wait, knew he had about a second to fire while the man had his arm stretched out and his shoulders squared to them. A second delay before he would close them off.

Three quick shots, two in the chest and one in the head. The same triangle pattern the hit men used, and guaranteed at least one was a kill. Lindsay fired in the same pattern, her shots landing just left of Michael’s, even Gavin squeezed off a shot or two that landed somewhere near his gut.

He dropped to the floor with a wet thud and the three of them were at Meg’s side before he even finished falling. They slid into the floor and surrounded her with a grounding presence. Gavin ran a hand through her hair as she held him, her face pressed into his neck. Michael held tight to her hand, running a soothing hand down her arm, the action as much for him as it was her. To remind them both that she was alright, and that this whole mess was finally over. Lindsay was doing the same on her other side, but Michael could see that her eyes were trained on the body not far from them. He jerked his head toward the corpse and she nodded, moving away from the group for just a second to take care of the body, he knew she had a routine she had to go through, that she wouldn't be able to really relax till she'd gone through it.

Gavin was watching Lindsay closely, but before Michael could warn him that he probably wouldn’t wanna do that, he pulled Meg closer with a hand on the back of her head, to keep her from looking, as Lindsay slit open the neck of the Corpirate. She wiped her hands on the man’s suit jacket before coming back to them, she took back Meg’s hand and joined them in making small, soothing sounds.

“I’m fine, guys,” she said, her voice muffled where she was speaking pressed into Gavin’s neck. He pulled his hand away, letting her pull away from him to look at them, “Seriously, I’m okay.”

She smiled at the three of them, and though her eyes were watery, she looked sure. He could already see the faint bruising along her neck where he had held her, and could feel the rage simmer up again at the rough treatment she’d received. “Really guys,” she said, “I’m fine, it was kinda anti-climactic, to be honest.”

“Anti-climactic?” He said, raising his voice in a fake outrage, “We shot like four people for you!”

“I know that, I just thought it’d be a little more explosive after all the trouble we went through.”

“You want explosive,” he asked, “cause I can give you explosive, I’ll blow the whole damn building up.”

“You know one of those people we killed is sitting right behind us,” Lindsay said, “we should get out of here before someone else shows up. We can deal with your pyro tendencies some other time.”

They helped Meg off the ground and moved back into the room they had entered through, Michael held her close and let her subtly hide her face in his chest when she saw the bodies lying there. Lindsay used a card that didn’t belong to any of them and he had a feeling that she’d grabbed it off the Corpirate when she’d been taking care of the body. The elevator doors squealed open as the busted and shot up doors tried to move.

“What’s gonna happen after this,” Meg asked as they walked back toward Michael’s apartment.

“I’ll call Geoff when we get back home, he and the other Gents will move in and launch a major takeover.”

“Alright, but what’s going to happen,” she left it hanging, open ended and full of possibility. What was going to happen to them, to her, to the business; actually probably not that last one, Michael had a feeling that she really didn’t care if the Corpirate ate shit in hell, let alone what happened to his meth dealing cover business.

“The Corpirate is gone,” he said, he could see one of his three partners about to comment on that obvious fact but he continued before he could, “and most of his business will probably fall apart without that psycho there but fuck knows how many people he has like Coal that are loyal to him.”

“Maybe Coal isn’t the best example,” Lindsay pointed out and he would admit she had a point, he was stealing from the company but he also threw out the word betrayal like it was a cardinal sin.

“Whatever, what I was saying is there’s no tellin’ who he told about you, and what he wanted to do to you.”

“What?” Meg said, an edge of panic creeping back into her voice.

“What?” Gavin’s voice echoed hers and suddenly he had three people surrounding him in a much more threatening circle than the one he’d been in only an hour earlier.

“I’m not saying anybody will,” he said defensively, “it’s just a possibility that he might have sent someone else after her, I mean he did hire Lindsay to do it in the first place.”

“So what?” Meg asked, voice climbing in pitch as she worried, “This was all for nothing? I’m still in just as much danger as I was before?”

“No, shit, I’m just saying it’s something we should look out for. You aren’t gonna be in any danger with the Fake AH Crew looking out for you, ‘specially not when you’re dating two members and one of the RWBY assassins. You’ll just keep staying with at our apartment, your place has been burned but we can go get the rest if your stuff from it later.”

“Two members?” Gavin asked with a weird look on his face.

“Our?” Lindsay said with the same weird look.

Michael was starting to think that they should have had some of these conversations a little sooner, they’d been avoiding a lot of things in favor of focusing on the case, and it seemed like they were all coming up right now.

“Yeah, our. You already said you weren’t going back to your place after it was bugged. There’s plenty of room in my place for you and Meg, you’ve already been living there.”

There was a hurt look in Gavin’s eyes and the weird look on his face shifted to an even stranger one. It took Michael a second to realize what he said, and when he did, he almost cursed, things had been going well for them until they started trying to talk about them, now that words were involved things just got clumsy and confusing. Things were easier when they were just tangled limbs and soft kisses, not ‘I really like you’s and ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do if it’s just me in my too large apartment’s.

He tried to fix it though, he really needed to fix it, there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d be able to stand seeing the three of them pack up their things and go back to wherever they’d been before. “The four of us might make it a little tight, but we can always take the apartment across the hall too, with all that money Gav found in Coal’s bank account. We’ll probably need a whole room for all your computer shit, right Gav?”

He wasn’t quite beaming, but there was a hesitant smile on his face that Michael needed to see all the time. He really didn’t want to be the cause of that hurt expression again, it was a little too reminiscent of the feeling he had when Gavin left the first time. “You said two members?” he said his voice matching that same hesitancy that his smile had.

Lindsay had her fingers linked with Gavin and Meg and the smile in her eyes was bright, “Geoff does need someone to buff up security, and I heard a rumor that the crew was hiring.”

“Let’s go home to finish this conversation,” Michael said, “we shouldn’t talk about crew business in the middle of the street.”

“You’re lucky you’re cute when you get whiny.” Lindsay said, using a finger to bop him on the nose as she spoke.

“I’m not whining,” he said, and now yeah he was probably whining, “you handle crew business in darkened rooms with glasses of whisky not out on the street where anybody could hear it.”

“Are we gonna have to deal with your massive hero crush on Geoff now?” Lindsay asked.

“I don’t have,” he tried to say.

“On Geoffrey,” Gavin said in disgust, “we’re in the same group as Geoff.”

“I don’t have a crush on Geoff!”

“Geoff is kinda handsome,” Meg said.

“Not you too Turney,” Gavin moaned.

“Why do I like any of you,” Michael asked.

“You tell us, apparently we’re in the same category as Geoff,” Gavin said.

“I take it all back,” Michael shouted, walking away from the three of them and in the direction of his apartment, “you can live on the street for all I care, or in whatever shit hole Gavin lives in, I offered you my home like a caring boyfriend and all I’m getting is shit for it.”

“But Micool,” Gavin cooed, dragging their girls along with him as he chased Michael up the street.

“But nothing, you’re all a bunch of dicks.”

“Micoo,” he whined even louder, butchering his name so badly that Lindsay and Meg were giggling as they mimicked the high pitched sound.

“One of you fucks is buying me a new bed, cause I’m done sleeping on the damn couch.”

She hadn’t been on the roof long, and was still trying to see if there was a pattern to his movement. She hoped that she hadn’t just missed her one shot, she could try to hit him while he was moving; but didn’t want to risk missing as she tried to account for wind, distance, and Coal’s pacing, it was bad enough trying to work with the first two.

She worked on steadying her breathing, in and out, as she watched him move through her scope. Waiting for him to stop in front of the window again, where she had lined herself up perfectly, watching now as he walked in and out of her sight. She had to make this shot perfectly, couldn’t afford to miss or even worse hit him non-fatally.

He was standing still again now, looking out at the city, but more importantly, he was doing it through the window Lindsay had aimed at.

Breathe in, breathe out, steady eye and steady hand. Line up the shot, another breath in, hold it, and squeeze.

She rolled with the recoil of the gun watching with the usual morbid fascination as the bullet travelled faster than she could track. The crack of the gunshot echoed through the closely spaced buildings, the only thing that saved her from Coal moving from his spot was how common it was to hear the echoes of fired weapons past.

The shot moved so fast she lost track of it until she heard the sound of it breaking glass, the bullet reaching speeds fast enough that it didn’t shatter the window more than a small radial point around the hole. Coal barely had time to see the glass breaking before the bullet pierced the space between his eyes.

The look of surprise was etched permanently into his face, eyes wide as the red spot appeared in the center of his face, a few drops managing to leak down his nose before he collapsed to the floor. She didn’t bother to hide her smile as she slowly packed away the rifle, she’d never had any problem taking pride in a job well done, and this was certainly a job well done.

She took her time getting down off of the roof, she had no problem with leaving that asshole to rot, literally, for a while. She placed it in the back of her car before checking herself in mirror, she’d left the apartment before having a chance to change and now she was thinking it might be a good thing. She had to get into Coal’s building somehow to make sure there wasn’t any evidence that might put the blame on them.

She’d pulled her hair back while on the roof, an old habit from the days where people actually put any effort into catching her, it was a small way to keep the physical evidence to a minimum. She untied it carefully, letting it fall back loose around her shoulders before running a hand through it to try and artfully muss it up.

“I don’t know how Gavin manages to do this every morning,” she said to herself as she gave up trying to get her hair to do what she wanted it to. She had a very specific character in mind that would hopefully get her into Coal’s building, it’d worked before for his type.

She used her mirror to carefully re-apply the red lipstick she’d been wearing earlier, the stressed out lip biting at work and the less stressed out lip biting at home had left it smudged and nearly gone. Not that she regretted any of the things she’d done at home, and the red color she was wearing looked as good on Michael as it did on her; but that was a conversation to have after several others that they kept ignoring.

After finding the shirt she needed to complete the look she was going for, she glanced back at Coal’s apartment building. It’d been close to thirty minutes since she’d shot Coal and if he hadn’t been discovered yet, he probably wouldn’t until he started to look a little worse or she called it in herself.

She’d worried that the sounds of breaking glass, the body hitting the floor, and the gun shot from earlier would have someone suspicious because, unlike the other two they had already dealt with, Coal lived in a nicer building. Nice enough, that after half an hour the first responders would have showed up if they’d been called.

She strolled into his lobby and up to the doorman. She leaned up against the desk and watched as the only thing he could look at was her shirt, or more importantly what was in her shirt, she didn’t even have to fake a smile. It was tight, low cut, and about a two sizes too small. That and the mussed up look she had as she walked in had him looking at just about everything but her face. The best mask was one that you weren’t wearing.

“I’m here for a Mr. Coal,” she said pitching her voice so it was husky and low, “he said I should go up to his room.”

The doorman looked her up and down for a minute, she wondered if that was even the identity he had his apartment under. They only knew that Coal lived there at all due to some clever camera work from Gav. If that was the problem then she burned herself and would have no way of getting back into Coal’s apartment.

“You’re a different girl than usual, did he give you an apartment number?”

Lindsay could have sighed in relief, she knew she’d been pretty spot on when she thought Coal would be the type to bring in call girls.

“No, he didn’t.”

“23 B, you said he’s already expecting you?”

Lindsay could hear the distrust in his voice, that while he believed what she was saying in theory, he wasn’t sure he trusted her. She glanced down at her watch, stalling for a second to come up with an excuse.

“He is, and I was supposed to be up there five minutes ago. So, if you don’t mind.”

She said it with enough brisk attitude that he forgot whatever distrust he had in her and buzzed her through.

She snapped on a pair of latex gloves in the elevator, it was bad enough the doorman had seen her, she wasn’t going to leave prints on the off chance someone actually investigated. She would be the last person seen going into Coal’s apartment and while Gavin would hopefully be able to scrub her from any security feed, the doorman would still be able to tie her to the scene. It gave her outfit one more purpose, other than being a close dupe of the unofficial call girl uniform, it would hopefully make sure that all the doorman downstairs would be able to describe was a pair of tits and maybe her hair color when someone finally did come to collect the body.

She might have had an apartment number for Coal now, but she realized quickly once she got to the door that she didn’t have a way in, she was debating whether it was worth it to run back out to her car to get her actual picks. She checked both her pockets hoping to find something that would help her get into the room, Coal didn’t seem like the type to give the neighbors a spare key and there wasn’t a hide-a-key anywhere in sight. All she could find was her phone and wallet. She didn’t think she’d found anything of use, was very seriously wondering if it was going to be detrimental to her cover if she had to leave and come back, until she remembered the small card she carried in her wallet, a gag gift from Michael from forever ago. It was billed as an emergency lock pick kit, the size of a business card and made of a thin metal. She cringed a little as she punched out the flimsy tools and prayed to whoever might be listening that these might actually work.

It took twenty minutes longer than it would have if she’d brought her actual kit, and more swearing than she’d used on a lock since her first time picking up the skill; but she finally got into the room. As she walked in, she was hit by the distinct smell of recently dead body.

She walked up to the corpse, gagging a little at the smell of piss and shit that only got stronger as she got closer. She reached down toward the body, and though she could already see the discoloration of the skin starting, she still checked for a pulse. She did it for everybody, even the ones she had slit from ear to ear just to make sure no one came back that shouldn’t.

It didn’t really matter that he was already turning purple and he was starting to look like wax, she still checked and strongly resisted the urge to make this a Ruby Rose signature, she didn’t have a knife on her but she was sure there was one in the kitchen she could use. Once she was sure he was dead, she left him sitting where she found him, she didn’t have anything else she need from him.

She wished she had something specific to look for, but now with Coal lying on the floor behind her she just had to sort through all of his shit looking for something that could tie them to their identities so she could get rid of it. She thought about asking Gavin, thought he might be able help her get into his computer or something; but she quickly remembered that she left her earpiece at home. Leaving her on her own to deal with the search, no big deal, and leaving her with three people back at home who probably weren’t going to be so excited that she’d been MIA for an hour, bigger problem.

There wasn’t much to search through, even though Coal’s apartment was big enough to hold Michael’s inside of it. There was nothing on any of the counters in the kitchen and the drawers were empty too. She groaned, not bothering to be quiet, it’s not like she was going to disturb the dead body with her noise. “This is why I don’t fucking do this shit,” she said as she moved on to the bedroom and found it was almost as empty as the kitchen. She decided quickly that subtly could go fuck itself as she tore clothes out of drawers and sliced open the mattress, “There’s a corpse in the living room, it’s not like someone isn’t already going to know that I’m here.”

Still, in doing that, she found absolutely nothing, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. She had been almost certain that if Coal had any evidence that Michael was Mogar he would keep it somewhere, and he wouldn’t have accused Michael if he didn’t have any evidence to prove it. She only had one more room in the apartment that she could search through, as far as she could tell, and she was hoping it was an office.

And for fucking once, she was in luck.

The room was mostly empty except for the wide desk with the computer sat on top of it. She walked up to it and, on a whim, wiggled the mouse hoping it would be unlocked, it wasn’t because she would never get that lucky. She was certain that any information Coal had on them would be on the hard drive of the computer. The computer that she had no access to because it was locked. She couldn’t exactly take it with her to have Gavin fix the problem.

She glared at it for a minute, wondering if she could just melt the thing with her eyes. When that plan failed, she called Gavin hoping he might have an answer.

“Lindsay,” he answered, and he sounded worried, “are you okay?”

If Gavin sounded worried, that meant that Michael and Meg must be just as bad.

“I’m fine Gav,” she said.

He either didn’t hear her or was choosing to ignore her. “You didn’t take your comm with you, and we didn’t hear from you, and we got worried that something might have happened. Did something happen? Does Coal have you?”

“Coal has her,” she heard Michael’s worried shout, she could practically feel him making some half-baked plan to come rescue her.

“I’m fine Gavin,” she said again, louder this time so he could hear her over his worrying, “and tell Michael the same thing.”

She waited until Gavin relayed the message before saying, “Hey Gav, I’ve got a question.”

“Yeah, what?”

“How dead does a computer have to be before you can’t pull anything off it?”

“Before I can’t or before someone can’t?” he asked with the careful emphasis of consideration.

“Either, both,” she said as she continued to stare at the blinking tower.

“Most people probably wouldn’t be able to get anything off of it if it were good and smashed,” he said, “if it looks like that I could probably still get something off it unless it was dropped offa building or somethin’.”

“Can’t bring you a desktop, Gav,” she said, “it’s not like I can fit it up my skirt.”

She could, however, fit the tower just out of the window in front of her.

“He could have backups somewhere,” Gavin said.

Lindsay paused for a second before deciding if it did it almost definitely died with Coal. “If he does it’s not on his computer,” she said, “I’ll try to bring you his phone.”

She could hear Gavin asking, “Wait, what’re you gonna do?” as she hung up.

She looked at the tower again, pausing for just a second to think about whether or not this was a good idea.

The way she saw it, the only way Coal would have backed things up and told anyone about those backups is if he actually thought his life was in danger. He thought he knew Michael was Mogar, had tipped his hand in telling Michael he knew, would that be enough to convince him that he was actually in danger. If it were, she imagined he’d have something in place, some sort of failsafe that would reveal who was responsible in the event of his death.

There really wasn’t any way to get the PC out of the building, at least not out the door. She wasn’t going to take it apart, even if she wanted to, she didn’t have the tools to do it. Normally she’d try to move over its contents to a portable drive, but she couldn’t get in the computer to try. She knew Gavin wouldn’t be able to break in if he didn’t have the computer in front of him, certainly wouldn’t be able to talk her through it. She decided that it was safest to just get rid of the computer and hope Gavin could get anything he needed to off Coal’s phone, assuming she could find it.

She pushed open the window in front of her, annoyed and not for the first time in her career, to find that they were suicide proofed. She winced in anticipation as she slammed her elbow into the joint, breaking it just enough to push the window open a little wider.

She ripped the tower out of Coal’s set up, leaning out the window to shout a quick, “Heads up!” She hoped that the people on the ground heard and listened to her as she dropped the tower out of the 23rd floor window.

She listened closely until she heard the sound of breaking electronics and heard the shouted, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” from some random civilian on the ground. When she didn’t hear any terrified screaming she assumed the only thing she’d killed was the computer.

Her heart stopped in her chest when she heard a phone ringing, just as she was shutting the window. Worried that this was someone calling to make sure Coal was still alive. Until, that is, she realized it was her phone ringing.

“What Gavin,” she snapped, fear becoming anger that she took out on him.

“Not Gavin,” Meg’s voice was coming through her speaker, “but it is his phone. The one you hung up on earlier if you remember.”

Meg sounded worryingly calm and it made Lindsay feel a little bad about snapping at her, “What do you need?”

“You’re on speaker, by the way,” she said before she actually said what she called for, like Lindsay hadn’t already assumed that she was, “we’re worried, ya know, cause you went all renegade; and then when you do finally call an hour later, you ask about smashed computers and then hang up.”

She thought renegade was a little melodramatic, but they were a team, and she had run off without giving them the game plan. She wasn’t used to working with a team like this, even with as long as she’d been a part of this one; and she was trying but it was hard to remember that she needed to do a lot of sharing after she’d been working as a solo player for so long. Something that also applied frighteningly well to her love life in relation to these three as well.

“I know, sorry, kinda expected Michael to be at the end of this talk, to be honest.”

“Hey,” he said, “I know how to work with a team. I also know how to bring my comm with me.”

“And listen to you try and give me advice on how to snipe, no thanks.”

“Can’t be any worse that your commentary on Shadow of Mordor.”

“I am a Lord of the Rings expert,” she said, something she’d insist on till her dying day. “Ask Gav if he can get what he needs to from Coal from his cell.”

“Well I’m going to bloody have to, everything from police radio to social media is going off about how you dropped the computer from the roof like a mingin’ psycho.”

“Well that’s just not true,” she said, “I dropped it from Coal’s 23rd story apartment, like a regular psycho.”

“Do you have the phone yet?” Michael asked.

Lindsay winced, realized she hadn’t moved since answering her phone. She was grateful for the lessened sensitivity of the phone, was certain they would’ve heard her hiss as she made a face. “Not yet,” she said, “but I’ve almost got it.” Which wasn’t a total lie, she didn’t have it yet and she was sure she’d get it before she left.

“Well hurry up,” Gavin said, “you’ve been there almost two hours.”

“And keep us on the line,” Michael said.

She’d checked every room in Coal’s apartment already, and hadn’t found his phone. Every room, except the couch behind him in the open living area. She gagged a little as she remembered the smell of shit, and how strong it was in the room, but that had to be where his phone was.

She started at the edge of the sofa, as far from the body as she could get, and she started moving end to end, lifting up the cushions and reaching her arm into the sofa’s insides as she went. When she still couldn’t find anything she sliced each cushion open in the hope it might be there.

After sitting in the floor for more than a few minutes, staring at the yellow insides of the couch cushions and having long since gotten used to the smell, she heard the voices coming from her phone and remembered that she still had them on the line. She could just barely hear their voices as they shouted, asking what was going on, and she reached into her back pocket, where she’d stowed it out of habit while she was working.

She had her phone in her hand, halfway through answering when her eyes fell on the body in the floor.

Fuck, she knew where the missing phone was.

–

The last they’d heard from Lindsay was her shouted “Fuck, I know where it is,” before she hung up.

It’d only been twenty minutes, but Michael was still a little worried, no matter how many times he reminded himself that she was more than capable of handling herself. She had made that very clear more than once, and had made a very convincing argument, not that he’d needed convincing.

It also didn’t keep him from pacing, a new habit, and one that had Meg threatening to break his legs if he didn’t hold still. He actually believed she might do it, Meg had adapted pretty quickly over the course of the heist and Michael got the feeling that if she stayed in this a little longer she could make a pretty decent criminal.

When Lindsay finally walked through the door, they were on her in seconds. Michael got there first, since he was already standing, with Meg right behind him and Gavin still trying to push himself off the couch. They were all trying to ask if she was okay and what happened after she hung up. She stopped them all in their tracks with a raised hand, when he stopped Michael could tell there wasn't anything physically wrong with her, but she did have a look in her eyes that said she was still deeply uncomfortable with something she’d had to do.

She tossed a plastic baggie at Gavin before pushing past them all and into his bedroom. He shared a look with Meg as they both tried to figure out if they should follow her, they heard the shower start followed quickly by the sound of Gavin losing his fumbling battle with whatever Lindsay had thrown at him.

“Don’t fucking break it,” he said, rolling over the side of the couch to sit beside him Meg took the arm just behind him.

They all flinched away when Gavin opened the bag, which held two phones in it, and a strong smell they hadn’t noticed until it opened. Meg jumped off the arm of the couch and Michael flinched back with her, Gavin was much less subtle and flipped over the back of the couch, leaving the bag where he’d just been sitting. He was gagging and Michael was a little worried about his floors. He wondered if he should start putting trash cans around, for Gavin’s gag reflex, before he remembered that he had no clue how much longer he’d have Gavin living with him.

“What’s that?” Gav asked through his heaving.

Michael figured out where Lindsay found the phone, “Smells like shit,” which also explained the uncomfortable look she had.

He was a coughing mess as he looked over the sofa at the baggie, “Fecus, why?”

Michael shrugged, the smell really wasn’t that bad once you got over the initial surprise of it. “It took Linds like an hour and a half to find it.”

“What’s that matter?”

“Where do you put your phone when you aren’t using it, Gav,” Meg asked.

“In my pocket, oh,” Gavin said as things made sense for him, then he started gagging again and Michael wondered if that had more to do with the reason he stayed behind the scenes. A hair trigger gag reflex like that wasn’t really an asset anywhere, but especially not in a field as messy as theirs.

“Why are there two phones, she found both of them on him, so what does he need them for?”

Gavin crawled back over top of the couch, and dumped the contents of the bag out onto the coffee table in front of him, Michael couldn’t help but wrinkle his nose in distaste, though there was probably nothing actually wrong with the phones in theory, they still smelled kinda rank and he ate at that table sometimes. Gavin avoided touching the devices as much as possible, “Looks like a personal and a burner,” he said hand hovering above each in turn. “I can probably pull something off the iPhone, but unless someone calls the flip phone it’s pretty worthless.”

“What’re you gonna do if someone actually calls the burner?” he asked. Michael could only think of one reason anyone but a drug dealer would have a burner, and it was because there was someone on the outside who was going to call and make sure Coal hadn’t been killed that night, that if he was something would probably get released to the public, something about Michael’s identity.

Gavin, for his part, just shrugged, there was nothing they could really do. If Gavin answered the phone it would be immediately obvious to whoever was on the other end that Coal was gone, and whatever information he had would be shared. Meg, however, seemed to have a solution to the problem Michael had posed. “What about that thing you’ve been messing around with all week?”

Michael tried not to look nervous, it was never good not knowing what your team was doing like this and he was worried that even after all of this Gavin might decide that he didn’t want to stay. “That’s just messin’ around,” Gavin said.

“Messing around with what, if it can help it doesn’t matter what the fuck it is.” he said.

“Well, Coal is a chatty bastard and we don’t really do that much until the end of the day, so I made a soundboard of some of the stupid shite he’s said.”

“Are you fucking kidding? And you didn’t think that would be helpful?”

Gavin shrugged, “Didn’t think it would be.”

“Go see what you can get off his iPhone, we’ll just have to wait and see about the burner.”

“And don’t forget to bump Meg to the top of the list, we should wait till the burner gets a call before we call in Coal’s death,” Lindsay said as she walked out of the hallway, toweling off her wet hair.

Gavin scooped up both of the phones in the baggie and headed into the guest room to work on the phones.

Lindsay curled into Michael’s side and he kept from flinching away from the cold of her wet hair on his neck. He shifted her so she was up in his lap, allowing Meg to slip into the spot she’d been in before and moving Lindsay’s legs into her lap. They sat quietly for a moment, Lindsay had her head pillowed against his chest and Meg was leaning against his shoulder. “You okay, babe?” he asked her, feeling bad about breaking the peaceful quiet but concerned all the same about her.

“It was just really gross,” she said with a deep sigh, not bothering to lift her head. “Like the worst kind of looting, I haven’t been that grossed out since my first hit.”

“Did something happen?” Meg asked, rubbing at Lindsay’s ankle in comforting circles.

“He fell on me, a little, while I was lifting him up to check his body. It’s stupid, but I was lifting him up to get at his back pocket and he fell on me and I knew he was dead, but if any of these fuckers are going to come back from the dead it’d be him. Then I thought that even if he didn’t he could still pin me under him, and he was heavy I’d’ve been stuck and who knows if I could’ve called for help.”

“We would have come for you,” he said, “Wouldn’t leave one of our own behind anywhere.”

She made a small sniffling sound, but didn’t say anything else. Michael knew better than to say anything about the sound, the show of any kind of weakness was unusual for her. He pressed a small kiss to the top of her head, then another one to her cheek when she pulled away from his chest with a small, watery giggle. Meg couldn’t quite reach her face, but grabbed her hand, rubbing her fingers across the girl’s knuckles before pulling it up to press to her lips.

“Thanks, guys,” she said quietly, her voice muffled where she was pressed into his chest. He could feel her lips moving as she said something he couldn’t quite make out but almost sounded like “love you.”

Gavin came back not long after that, settling down beside Meg with the burner phone and a tablet in his hands. “Did you find anything, Gavvy?”

Gavin shook his head, “Far’s I can tell he was bluffing when he called Michael out. I can’t find anything that says he had a clue who you were. I did find two hidden accounts that each had a couple million in ‘em split those up between us, and made a separate account for Meg for when all this shite is over.”

Michael could feel Lindsay’s hum vibrate deep in his chest, “Good, we’re actually getting paid for this job.”

Michael felt like he should ask if Gavin found anything else, like if Gavin was sure there was absolutely nothing about him on there, because even a blind guess at knowing he was Mogar was frighteningly accurate. He felt like he should ask one of those things, or anything when the burner phone that was sitting on the table in front of them started to buzz.

They all went silent, Lindsay perked up and sat up straight in Michael’s lap. Meg was tense beside him as Gavin made a few quick taps on the tablet in his hands before answering the phone. The tablet was flat in Gavin’s lap, the screen resembled something like a keyboard and as he tapped a few quick buttons Coal’s voice rang out from it, “Coal.”

The quality of the speakers in the phone weren’t great but they managed to make out the voice on the other side, “Boss, we finally gots that shipment you sent over. What’s you want us to do with it?”

“Do your job,” Gavin made Coal’s voice say, “that’s why you’re here.”

“I knows Boss,” Michael decided this was Coal’s henchman that they were talking to, but he had no clue what shipment he would be talking to, “but youse said to call when it came in, said youse was worried about your boss noticin’ the missin’ stock.”

Michael shared a wide eyed look with the girls on his either side, Gavin had his eyes locked on the tablet in front of him. Coal was somehow stealing some of the drug stock from the Corpirate and selling it on the side, he’d been right about one thing though, the only people who used burner phones were drug dealers.

“Do what I had you do last time,” the tablet said, “and do it soon.”

“Whatever youse say boss.” The call ended with a click and they all let out a breath that they’d been holding in a futile effort to stay quieter.

“Way to go, Gavvy,” he cheered, “how’d you do that?”

Gavin shrugged and seemed almost embarrassed by the compliment, “Coal talks a lot, and it gets boring sitting there sometimes so I recorded bits of conversation and deconstruct it into key words and sounds and I attach them to the keys.”

As he said it, he typed a little bit on the tablet on his knees, and Coal’s voice said, “Jones, you can suck my dick.”

Michael laughed, “Coal never said dick, I’m pretty fucking sure of that.”

“Key sounds,” Gavin said, “lets me make words that Coal hasn’t said.”

“Now that we don’t have to worry about that,” Lindsay said, “we should let someone know Coal is dead.”

Gavin nodded, leaving the keyboard app and opening something else. They all watched as his fingers brushed across the touch screen, somehow doing whatever he needed to make sure no one could trace things back to them. He locked the tablet a few minutes later and they sat in a tense silence as they waited for Meg’s phone to ring.

It was the Corpirate’s voice that greeted them when Meg’s phone finally rang a few minutes later. She jumped and fumbled as she tried to get her phone out from under her to answer. “Miss Turney, ye be expected aboard tomorrow morn at eight sharp. Your presence is ordered, not requested.”

She flinched at the click as he hung up, and placed her phone down on the table before curling back down into the sofa. “What exactly is the plan?” she asked.

“We’ll go into work,” Michael said, realizing that they really didn’t have one, “and we’ll take him out with one quick shot.”

“Seriously,” Meg asked.

“What? It’s not like he’s expecting us. The Corpirate already said he’d been in the office all week, so we know he’s going to be there and why would he expect us to do anything different than happened yesterday.”

“That’s it?” Gavin asked, “We just walk in glack him and leave?”

“If we’re lucky,” he said, “not really sure what else there is too it.”

“What if he is ready for us?” Meg asked. She didn’t sound worried, just like she wanted to throw out any problems they might have before they actually had them. Michael wondered if she was as okay with all of this as she was trying to sound or if this was all just too far in the future for her to really feel anything about.

“We’re ready for him, so even if he’s ready for us we can take him.”

“Is that how it works? We’re all ready for each other, but we want it more so we win?”

“Even if he’s ready for something, we know he won’t be ready for the Fake AH Crew and Ruby Rose, at most it’d be like a couple of people out for blood.”

“But we are a couple of people out for blood.”

“Yeah but we also have a secret weapon,” he said wondering if that was a bit cheesy and over the top for what they did actually have.

Lindsay sat up at that, twisting to look at him, “We have a secret weapon? Something to go against that cannon ball shooter he used on Mark?”

“We have Meg,” he said, which sounded a lot less impressive when Lindsay brought up the gun they were going up against.

Meg for her own part, looked at him before she started to laugh so hard he could feel her shaking. “What the fuck am I gonna do?”

“He’s not expecting you, so when you come in with a gun and shoot him we get the element of surprise like twice.”

“I’ve never even held a gun let alone shot one,” Meg said, “I think you need to pick a new secret weapon.”

“Don’t you want that feeling of revenge?” Lindsay asked, “This guy tried to kill you, and you don’t even wanna try to be the one who takes him out?”

“I can show you how,” Michael offered, agreeing with Lindsay that the best kind of closure was the kind that came after watching the guy who’d been trying to kill you get got. “Or you could just use my mini, you don’t really need to worry about accuracy when you can empty your clip in like ten seconds.”

Meg turned, turning so she was leaning against Gavin’s chest so that she could turn to face Michael. “No, no,” she was shaking her head almost violently, “just no, that’s like the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

Michael shrugged, Meg wasn’t a fan of guns not a problem, even though his mini was fucking sweet, “What about you, Gavvers, wanna take the shot.”

“That’s the worst idea Michael,” Gavin said, taking Meg’s hand as she was now half-sitting in his lap. “I’m awful with a gun, they’re banned in the UK it‘s not like here where you can get one in under an hour.”

“Fine, guess it’s one of us then,” Michael said, bouncing Lindsay up in his lap laughing as she smacked him because of it. “You wanna take the shot, or should I?”

“Do what feels natural, planning shit out like that just makes it more likely to go wrong,” she said.

“Do what feels natural, huh?” he asked, leaning in and pressing a slow, soft kiss to her lips.

He could feel her smile before she pulled away, “Fucking sap.”

He reached over and put his hand on top of Gavin’s, where he and Meg had interlocked their fingers. “You should really learn how to shoot a gun,” he said, “even if it’s not very well.”

“You too, Gav,” Lindsay added, leaning so she could add her hand to the mix, “you’ll both be safer.”

“Aw Micool, are you and Lindsay worried about us?” Gavin asked, shooting for joking but not making the mark.

Michael gave his hand a quick squeeze, “Course we are, dumbass.” He was wondering why Gavin would even think otherwise when he had an idea. He looked back at Lindsay, not asking for permission but checking with her that this was even the right thing to do, making sure that he wasn’t massively misreading the situation. She nodded, with her teeth worrying her bottom lip, and a smile in her eye as she shifted in his lap so he could move.

Using the hand that wasn’t already covering Gavin and Meg’s he grabbed ahold of the man’s chin. He pulled Gavin down to make up for the height he lost leaning in over, Michael’s chin was hooked over Meg’s shoulder and Gavin’s face just a breath away. He waited, letting Gavin decide if he wanted to pull away or not, and when he didn’t after a second Michael pushed forward that last bit to connect their lips.

It was a short kiss, not much more than the two of them pressing their lips together, but as Michael pulled away slowly he hoped it was enough that Gavin got that they cared. Not like he wasn’t perfectly willing to repeat the gesture until it sunk in. Actually, that felt like a really good idea and Michael did just that, moving back up to kiss the man again. Gavin had been still against him the first time but now he met Michael in a loose, open mouthed kiss. Michael could feel Meg’s shoulder digging into his chest as he and Gavin moved together in a slide of lips.

He pulled away from Gavin a second time, smiling as the man followed him forward just a little. He looked to find that Meg’s shoulder was digging into his chest as she was leaning between the two of them to meet Lindsay in the same gesture.

He and Gavin watched as the two of them. It was softer and sweeter than Michael would have expected with the two of them, not after how hot and heavy things had almost gotten in front of Addams’ apartment. The two of them parted when they felt the boys’ eyes on them, cross eyed as they kept their eyes on the others’ mouths.

He nudged at Lindsay’s shoulder and she pulled away that last little bit from Meg’s mouth. She smirked at him, and with a wink replaced Michael’s hand with her own on Gavin’s face. She pulled him over so his head was on Meg’s other side, Meg turned toward Michael and giggled as he pressed his lips to hers. Her lips were still slick from her kiss with Lindsay, and she was smiling as her lips moved against his. He huffed out a laugh as she nipped at his lip, pulling away with a grin.

They all sat there for a second, Meg grinned, wide and infectious, and then they were all smiling as they were catching their breath. Michael settled back into his spot on the couch while Lindsay wiggled around trying to get comfortable again. Despite the size of Michael’s couch, the four of them were squeezed onto two of the cushions.

“We’re gonna get out of this,” he said, “gonna take this bastard out.”

“Maybe after all this, you could teach us how to shoot,” Gavin said, looking at a spot somewhere on the wall just over his shoulder. “We could go to the shooting range, the four of us.

Gavin looked a little nervous as he waited for an answer from one of them. “I was thinking dinner first,” Michael said, “the firing range is more of a second date.”