#tdwk10

To an outsider, it might have seemed like nothing had changed. Like a spot the difference. Coffee in hand. Too-thin coat bundled around her. Bottom lip pulled into her mouth, teeth worrying it. Check, check, check. But a keen-eyed puzzlemaster might notice the paper schedule was missing from her right hand, and that her hair was down, obscuring her face. A true genius might have seen the new sharp edge to her gaze, the addition of a pocket knife weighing down her coat pocket. Just in case.

The car rolled up like it always did, like the world was clockwork around her. So much had changed, but Alfred’s punctuality remained. It was almost reassuring, Aspen thought as Calum stepped out. Maybe there was something left of the mechanics of her old life to be salvaged.

“You should have taken a few more days off.”

“Good morning to you too, sir.” Aspen said. Usually she’d chirp it, like a hollow-boned sparrow. Not today. But Calum did smile a little, even though he brushed by her without taking his coffee. There are six differences between the picture on the right and the picture on the left. Can you spot them all?

“I was worried about you.” He said, once they had entered the elevator and she had successfully handed off the coffee. “I’m - I’m glad you’re alright.” He meets her gaze directly, not in the mirrored surfaces of the elevator. He looks sleepless, too. Should they hug? Thinking back, Aspen can’t remember if she felt particularly safe in his arms (as Calum Hood) or not, but if he gave her another chance she’d like to find out.

Ding.

Aspen walks on autopilot to her desk, but Calum stops her, grabbing her elbow with a grip so light that she might not have felt it if his skin didn’t feel so hot against hers. “Come into my office?” He says, eyebrows raised politely, before he turns away and lets go of her to head in. He trusts her to follow him. Jesus, she’s got to stop overthinking his every move.

...she can’t. In the few steps to cross the threshold, a thousand possibilities have run through her mind. Is he asking her in to kiss her again? To talk to her freely, for once, like a real person? Strange that he’s one of the most powerful men in the world and they’re stealing space in offices for safety before they do anything real. He has a literal suit of armour, he shouldn’t have to sneak around like that.

He sits at his desk. Is she in trouble? She can’t be, she hasn’t done anything yet.

This is her chance. Before he says his piece and changes the course of her life again, she’s got to take care of this. “Actually, sir, I kinda had something I wanted to say to you.”

He nods at her to go ahead. He’s so fucking quiet, it’s freaking her out. Her stomach twists, despite all the times she’s mouthed this in the mirror. “I just wanted to thank you for saving me the other night.”

“Well, all I did was ask the night guard to check in on you when you weren’t answering your phone.” He says, with a wave of his hand. The motion is relaxed. Too relaxed. She thinks, for just one moment, she sees through him. It gives her the confidence she needs to go on.

“We both know that’s not what I’m referring to.”

There it is. One of Mr. Hood’s eyebrows quirks up, but the rest of his face is motionless. Another mask. He’s good, though. Aspen almost questions herself. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Whatever. Just listen.” She says, too quickly. She’s not like him yet, she can’t hide how nervous she is. “I know I can help you. I know the GCPD is expediting all your cases, and I know their forensics lab doesn’t need that extra pressure. I can do PCR and gel electrophoresis, I can do superglue fuming, mass spectrometry. Let me help you.”

Calum’s sitting up now, knuckles white on the armrests of his chair. Has she made a mistake? Well, he looks just a hair too nervous for her to be wrong about the secret identity. Right? Her hands feel sweaty. “Help me with - Miss McMichael, I don’t know what exactly you’re insinuating, but -”

“Don’t you dare.” Nerves and passion make her snap at him, but somehow it works, the Batman holds his tongue. “Calum. I know about your night job. I know I can do this. And,” she says, taking a deep breath before tucking her hair behind her bad ear, “you don’t have to worry. You know I can keep my mouth shut.”

The cut on her face is still a little scary-looking. She had cleaned it up as much as she could that morning, but it’s punctuated by black suture thread on both ends. She knows he knows what it looked like that night, but she wants him to see it now, in the cold light of day. She wants him to see what she can do. All of it. A bloody update to her resume. 

His jaw flexes as he takes in the scar on her cheek. Everything is quiet for a moment, just his hot gaze on her face and her watching him watching her, waiting for him to nod, to smile, to give her a fucking approving flex of the eyebrow.

She gets nothing.

In fact, it’s not until he stands up that she realizes that he is mad. There’s anger in the set of his shoulders and she’s seen this directed at her before but it’s never crackled through him like this. He walks around the desk so she has to take a step back to remain a safe, businesslike space between them. Are they still pretending to just be colleagues? She can’t tell.

“I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but I think this experience has affected you more deeply than you would like to let on, Miss McMichael.” He says. Yes, then. Still pretending. He has the fucking nerve to act like he doesn’t know she’s right. Her anger quickens again in her chest. Fuck. “I started the paperwork last night to transfer you to our branch in Central City. I had some qualms about this, but -”

The floor under her feet seems to tip. Central City? “Wait, what?”

“- But now I’m certain it’s for the best. In fact, I might ask to ensure the process is expedited.”

No. No. He can’t. Her stomach lurches. “You can’t do that.”

“Sir.”

Aspen shakes her head. This isn’t possible. This is another test, it’s just another test, and she’s gonna pass. She won’t let this happen. She forces herself to look him in the eye. “Calum. You can’t send me away like that.”

“You would do well to remember your position.” He spits out, every word formed crisply off his tongue like saying this doesn’t bother him in the least. Not a test. This is real. “And I think you’ll find I can. You ought to read contracts a bit more carefully.”

This isn’t him. This was mean. Aspen just needs to think, for a minute, she’s sure she can get a handle on this if she just has a minute to - wait - “It hasn’t been a month. You promised me - we had a verbal contract that if you didn’t want me before a month was up you’d send me back to Dr. Irwin’s lab.” She says, hoping that it’s the right thing to say. If don’t want me - in your office, I mean, you had to send me back to the lab. And- and if I’m here, you can- you can keep an eye on me.”

It’s a hail mary, but Calum seems to still a little to think it over and she knows it’s her best shot to keep herself from losing everything. She takes a deep breath, bites the inside of her lip, and gives in to the urge to duck her head. “Sir.”

Her heart is pounding in the silence that follows. Maybe his hearing is bat-like and he can tell how close she is to arrhythmia. But maybe not, because after a moment he lets out a breath and ducks his head, one hand on his desk as he moves around it to sit back down. Aspen wonders if she’s shaking. She doesn’t know if it’s good or bad.

She just has to pray he wants her nearby.

“...I suppose that will give you a chance to heal, away from all of this.” Calum says after a long moment. Aspen relaxes a little. She’s won. Well, maybe. Somehow it doesn’t feel like it. “I’d like you to clean out your office this morning, as soon as possible.” She just nods, feeling amputated.

He takes another deep breath, looking her over, still and numb on his office floor. “This isn’t out of spite, Miss McMichael. I want what’s best for you.” He says, almost gently. He’s touched her so softly in the past few days. There’s still a part of her that can’t believe he’s doing this.

“I do know what’s best for me, sir.” She says, meeting his gaze for a long moment. But he doesn’t take this chance to say anything more, and she knows that this meeting - whatever it is - is over. “But I’ll clean out my desk.” He nods once. Still nothing. Damn it, she deserves better than this. “Would you like me to bring your daybook in for you?”

He nods again, but at least he says something this time. “Thank you.” Of course, it’s a dismissal.

And just like that, Aspen leaves, still a little too shaken to be angry. She just had a brush with… something. Fuck, she can’t believe he would try and take everything from her like that.

The box she stole from the lab a few weeks ago is still in her office, kicked into a corner like an afterthought. Somewhere deep down, she really thought she could stick it out. Had she been naive? Well, yes, but not about this. She knows herself, knows her limits even better after that nightmare at a high-rise construction site. And yet, here she is, packing up her desk calendar and pencil cup. It doesn’t matter what those limits are, really, she supposes. Calum kicked her out just the same.

When she brings in the daybook, balanced precariously on top of her belongings, Mr. Hood is clicking through something on his computer and he barely looks up to pluck the book off the stack. In fact, he lets her get to the door without so much as a nod before he calls her name, calls her back. She takes a few tentative steps inside, letting the door close behind her.

“I am doing you a favour.” He says, once she’s turned around and met his gaze. Aspen doesn’t know what he wants her to say to that.

It suddenly hits her that this might be the last time she ever sees him.

“Sir?” She said, pausing by the door. She has to ask. She had wondered in that skyscraper if she would have held her tongue if Calum hadn’t kissed her, but it wasn’t until her uneasy sleep last night when she realized the question went both ways. “I need to ask -”

He stands up behind his desk. Obviously he’s in no mood for any more of a fight. “I can still sign those forms if -”

“No! No, it’s not that.” Aspen shakes her head, white-knuckling the box. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just - would you still have, um, called the night guard if we hadn’t… how did you put it?” She wishes her hands were free so she could fidget with them. She can’t look him in the eye. “Hadn’t made that mistake?”

His eyebrows flicker for a second before recognition dawns. Aspen feels very small as he moves around his desk, coming to stand in front of her. It’s a precarious distance he chooses. Just out of arm's’ reach. Not too close, of course, but after the last few days she kind of misses too close. “I would have called the night guard for you no matter what. The second you didn’t pick up, I left the afterparty and I called the night guard. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

He waits there, letting her search his eyes for any hint of a lie. It feels generous of him. He never lets her look at him like this. After a long moment, she nods. “Thank you.” She says. “I know I said it - um, earlier, but I’m never gonna be able to say it enough.” She tries not to let her anger well back up inside her; she’d do something to thank him if he let her.

Calum can see it, the threads of frustration running through her. She knows he can see it because he takes a step in, finally holding her hands in his around the box. Aspen almost jolts when he touches her; it’s like he just closed a circuit and now this thing they share is flowing through them. “Is this really how you want it to end?” She blurts out. With all the nervous energy running through her, it’s a wonder she doesn’t step back, break his hold.

He smiles at her, and it’s only a little bittersweet. “Sir.” He reminds her. She wonders if he’ll miss that. Reminding her.

 “Sir, please.”

Aspen had always known there were soft things about Calum Hood. There had to be. She had never really seen them, but they had to exist, somewhere, silk and lambswool. He couldn’t be all chrome and steel and tasteful oak.

Now she sees it. He looks at her with all the softness of sunshine in the morning, and when he leans in and kisses her there’s tenderness in his lips. It’s not a kiss like they’d shared before - his mouth presses against hers and gently flexes, a movement so simple and delicate it almost makes her squirm. After a second, he pulls back, resting his forehead against hers for the barest moment before leaning away completely, still holding her hands down on the box.

Aspen’s heart is pounding out of her chest as he tries to smile, letting go of her hands. She sees him hesitate, and then he reaches out and untucks her hair from behind her ear so it covers her scar again. His finger traces gently all the way along her cheek. He doesn’t want to let her go. He’s not going to let her walk out, right?

“Goodbye, Miss McMichael.”