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drivinmeinsane · 7 months

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Witness in the Dark

※ Sierra Six x Claire's Older Sister!Reader ※

{ masterlist } ※ { ao3 } ※ { requested fic }

※ Summary: Don't we all just want to feel the companionable reassurance of another human being?

It only takes a single tragedy to tear your life to shreds and make it to where you're unable to sleep through the night. You tell yourself that you will never trust a bodyguard again, but things don't go according to plan when a man with a number for a name is assigned to the Fitzroy household while your uncle is away

※ Rating: T for suggestive themes and canon typical violence.

※ Content/Tags: Slow burn, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Night terrors, Pining, Unspecified age gap, Movie based - Alternate Universe, No use of Y/N, Obsessive behaviors from both parties, Descriptions of injuries, Mentions of parental death, Mentions of past kidnapping, Mentions of past torture, Implied death of minor character(s)

※ Word count: 12,637

※ Status: Oneshot/Complete

※ Author's Notes: I don't know what came over me. This really got uncontrollably out of hand and ended up being wildly self indulgent. Huge thanks for @danime25 for proofreading this. I owe you my life.

"Ladies!" Your sister's nurse calls as she walks into the room. "I want to introduce you to Six. He'll be looking after the house while Mister Donald is away."

You look up from your position next to Claire on her bed only to meet the eyes of the man following the nurse. They're startlingly blue. His face is impassive as he turns away and surveys the room. He carries himself with an easy grace that hints at the violence that his body could produce. He reeks of danger. You instantly don't appreciate his presence. You had fought with Uncle Fitz tooth and nail over hiring a bodyguard for the duration of his trip away from the home. This man’s presence here means you have clearly lost that argument.

"Only the two exits?" He questions, moving past the bed to stand at the ceiling to floor windows.

"Yeah." Your tone is hard, biting. The nurse gives a small gasp at your rudeness and says your name disapprovingly.

The man, Six, turns away from the window to look at you with a raised eyebrow. You stare at each other silently, sizing the other up. There’s a flicker of some emotion that you might label as respect in his eyes before Claire, picking up on your hostility, throws her hat in the ring.

"We don't chew gum in this house." You've never loved your little sister's faux-snob act more than in this moment. She snaps a photo of him with her Polaroid, staged records forgotten. He doesn't look particularly pleased about it. It’s more exasperated acceptance than anger though.

He's silent for a moment before speaking. "I'm sorry. I wasn't briefed."

There’s a trace of a smile on his face. It’s irritating and you have to look away from him. You stare at a record sleeve like your life depends on it. He asks for the photo and picks it up. You see a flash of a tattoo on his hand as he plucks the Polaroid off of the bedspread. Poorly done and worn with age. He’s definitely one of Uncle Fitz’s prison recruits then. One of the most morally dubious options he could have saddled you with in his absence. Perfect.

He says his goodbyes to you and Claire before leaving the room. Your heart is beating irrationally rapidly and your mouth is dry. The man with a number for a name is stirring up nothing but bad memories. You know you won’t sleep well tonight.

───※ ·❆· ※───

“What kind of name is Six anyway?” Claire asks first thing in the morning after she tosses herself into a chair at the kitchen table. The man in question gives her a long look.

"007 was already taken so…" He says with a relaxed shrug, coffee mug in hand. He's leaning against the kitchen counter in the same suit as yesterday.

You choke back a laugh at the sight of your sister's expression. You accidentally meet Six's eyes over her head. There's warmth in them that douses your amusement immediately. You sober up and turn back to your breakfast. Softness in someone doing his line of work felt… wrong. He isn't trustworthy, you decide, no matter how kind he acts.

───※ ·❆· ※───

You wake up with a start. The coppery tang of blood mixed with the dry powder of concrete lingers in your subconscious. It takes several heaving breaths to clear your airway and bring you back to the present. You shakily sit up. You press your palms into your eyes. You try to forget the sensation of a knife in your skin. You're here. You're safe . You're one of the last people your sister has. You're the stable one.

You get to your feet in the dark bedroom and open your door to step out into the hall. You trail unsteady fingertips down the plaster and paint as you make your way to the kitchen and living area.

There's a barely audible scuffle and you peer through the gloom to see Six stalking you. You catch the barest glimpse of his face in a strip of moonlight. It's intent. Predatory. There's no hint of recognition, not while you move through the darkest parts of the room.

You feel cold. Your pulse starts to hammer in your veins. Your throat works uselessly. Words won't come out of your mouth. You forge along to the kitchen and fumble for the light. The kitchen is awash in a blinding glow right as you feel heat against your back. It immediately withdraws as the bodyguard removes himself from your personal space. You don't turn to face him while you get a glass from the cupboard and fill it with ice and water at the fridge's dispenser. You stare blankly at the burnished steel while you take sip after sip.

You refill your glass. You blink. You take a drink. You pretend like your mind isn't shattered. You pretend like the man your uncle hired hadn't been about to…

"Are you alright?" Six's voice cuts through the fog in your mind. It's like a lantern has been lit to guide you back into the waking world.

You find yourself then and turn to look at him. You study him. He looks slightly rumpled and tired. There's tension around his eyes and his mouth is set in an almost apologetic frown.

"Just another nightmare. Sorry for disturbing you."

The frown deepens. "You didn't. I was caught by surprise, that's all."

"Fair warning, me out here like this is probably going to be a regular occurrence." You smile wanly. "I know you want us in bed, but I don't do the whole staying put thing so well most nights."

He just nods. He's accepted your words without protest. The frown fades away.

You gesture with your glass in the vague direction of your bedroom. "I'm going to go ahead and excuse myself. Goodnight, Six."

"Goodnight."

───※ ·❆· ※───

Weeks go by. The household falls into a comfortable enough routine. Claire ribs him good-naturedly every chance she gets. He's always got a faint aura of amusement every time she takes a shot at him. You hadn't yet seen him get angry. Pretending to be annoyed? Yes, but never actually expressing any negative emotion beyond mild exasperation. Not yet, anyway.

He sends the both of you to bed every night after Claire's nurse takes her leave. You inevitably get up in the middle of the night after another vivid nightmare. Six is always either watching the camera footage or doing his rounds. He's stopped being surprised by your presence after the night he hunted you. You linger in the kitchen doorway night after night, watching him keep vigil. He's got a soft face, you've decided. There's tension there, likely from worry and lack of sleep, but not cruelty. You've begun to wonder if he has the capability for it. You know he must. Uncle Fitz has kept you in the dark about a lot of the work he does, but you know a kind man wouldn’t have been a candidate for whatever program your uncle runs.

───※ ·❆· ※───

You're woken up a few nights later by the sound of hands scrabbling on your door. Your eyes snap open and you remain frozen for a second before you hear Claire's muffled voice. You're immediately out of bed so fast you stumble and twist your ankle painfully. You fling the door open and next thing you know, your little sister falls wheezing into your arms. "Something's… Something's wrong." She gasps out.

She can't breathe and is clutching at her chest with weak hands. Horror races down your back and you're pulling her into your arms in a clumsy embrace, desperately trying to keep her upright.

"Six!" The name is torn from you in a shout. You never thought you would be screaming for a man you'd told yourself you couldn't trust.

He's there in an instant. He puts a steadying hand on your back before he gently pulls Claire away and lifts her up into his arms. She wheezes again and both you and Six freeze.

"I'm okay." she whispers. She looks so small and breakable in the bodyguard's thick arms. Like a bird plucked from the sky, held the mercy of a giant's hands.

"Can you get the keys for the car and unlock it?" His voice washes over you. Its steadiness anchors you to reality. You manage a "Yeah." and take off through the house to the garage, making a pit-stop to snag the keys from their bowl. Your ankle is throbbing. Six is close behind, his brisk stride and long legs keeping time with your hurried scrambling. You mash the unlock button on the fob and throw yourself into the backseat. Claire is gently deposited in after you. Her head is resting on your lap. You comb through her brown hair with shaky hands.

"Mount St. Mary's." You tell Six the moment he's halfway into the driver's seat. "They're the ones who put her pacemaker in."

He grunts in response, backing out of the garage. You don't remember when you handed him the keys or when the garage door was opened. You don't think about anything other than your little sister. You can't lose her too. You've already lost so much of your family and of yourself. The ride passes in a blur. You're only fleetingly aware of the passing lights. Your heart is hammering in your chest like it's beating for Claire and you both. You whisper pleas and promises to her, stroking her forehead with shaking hands.

You're pulled out of your trance by Six yanking the passenger door open, and you help guide your sister into his capable arms. The medical team whisks Claire into the back immediately the moment he has her on the stretcher. You're left in a stiff, vinyl chair in the waiting room. Bodies haven't been in it long enough to soften the material. You're filling out intake paperwork on your sister's behalf. Six stands next to you, hands clasped in front of himself. You glance over, checking his watch every few seconds, your leg bouncing in place. Nervousness and fear wash over you in all-consuming waves.

He catches your glance as your eyes dart over yet again.

"You holding up alright?'' His questions surprise you. He rarely is the one to initiate conversations. His gaze is steady, grounding, blue eyes watching you intently.

"Not really." You admit, inhaling and exhaling jaggedly. He nods. There's tension around his eyes. Is he worried too? You have to look away from his face and instead talk to his watch. "She's my sister. I need to keep her safe. I can't lose her too."

You hear him make a noise in response. You watch the seconds tick by one by one on his watch. The two of you are silent for approximately thirty-seven of them before Six breaks the moment by undoing the metal clasp. He pulls the watch away from his skin, revealing a bar of ink across the underside of his surprisingly delicate wrist before he's handing it to you.

"Here."

You stare at the dangling watch blankly before looking up at his face. "What?"

"Keep it safe for me for a while." His tone leaves no room for argument. You reach out with hesitant fingers and take it from his grasp. The steel is warm in your hand. You swallow thickly and drape the watch over your wrist, waiting for the sickening feeling of having your hands bound to hit you. It doesn't. You clumsily latch the buckle. It's sized perfectly for the man diligently standing at your side, no possibility of tightening it without it being resized altogether. It hangs off your wrist like a loose bracelet and you realize then just how big Six is.

He hides his mass well. His muscles are concealed discretely enough underneath blazers and tailored trousers. He simply doesn't take up space in whatever room he's in, always the expert at being unremarkable, unobtrusive, and not worth remembering. But this… this is a dead giveaway. You cast a sideways glance at his hands and, for a dizzying moment, you wonder how your hand would look pressed palm to palm with one of his.

"Miss Fitzroy. Your sister is cleared for visitors now if you would like to see her." A nurse's voice cuts into your illogical musings.

You stand up so abruptly that the chair you were just sitting on screeches agonizingly loud on the polished vinyl flooring before it thuds into the wall. The nurse flinches slightly, but Six is steady at your side. He falls into step behind you as you follow the man through the winding hallways to Claire.

The doctor stops you at the door, arm barring you for a moment before letting it drop. "She's stabilized. Tell your uncle there was a programming glitch. We were able to repair it. Non-invasive." She pauses for a moment, giving the man hovering behind you a hard look before continuing. "The remote system flagged it ten minutes before he pulled up."

"You're able to monitor from that distance?" You interrupt.

"We can keep track of her pacemaker from just about anywhere. You may see her. She can be released later tonight after we have her under observation for a while longer.” The doctor catches your pinched expression and adds. “Just to be safe.”

You nod, gaze bypassing her to focus on Claire. She’s been watching the exchange and, at your attention, she pulls a weak smile under her oxygen mask while raising a pale hand to flash the rocker sign. The doctor finally steps aside but not before blocking Six as he makes to follow you into the room. “Only family allowed.”

You look at her incredulously and open your mouth to protest before Six cuts you off. “I understand. Thank you, Doctor.” His tone is bland, unemotional. He arranges himself to stand with his back to the inside of the open door. He’s obnoxiously in the way of anyone that would need to come or go. He spends the passing minutes as they bleed into hours standing there like a steadfast sentinel. Back straight, hand clasped over his right wrist, left wrist startlingly bare, head lowered in waiting supplication; he’s the very image of patient servitude.

You sit at your sister's side in your own vigil. The three of you wait in tired silence until a nurse finally announces Claire is free to be discharged.

She fusses as she's helped into a wheelchair. You and Six stand aside, letting the staff fight the battle. They win, but as soon as everyone spills out of the automatic doors, she's pulling herself out of the mobility aid. She gently slaps away yours and Six's reaching hands when the two of you try to steady her. "Don't you dare."

"But-" you start to protest before you're immediately shut down. "I can walk to the car. I'm not that much of an invalid."

Six doesn't even try to say anything, just forges ahead through the parking lot like nothing happened. He's learned by now that there's no arguing with your little sister. The traitor. You and Claire make it to the vehicle after him and you move to slide into the back seat with her but she pulls a face.

"You're smothering meeeee." she exaggeratedly whines. You give her a flat look. "Smothered." she insists. She dramatically points at the front of the car and raises insistent eyebrows.

You end up buckling yourself into the front passenger seat with an exasperated sigh. You look over at Six. The tension has bled away from his face. He looks more relaxed, relieved even. He notices your stare and the two of you make eye contact. You roll your eyes pointedly at your sister’s antics. Six maintains a serious expression until it cracks and you’re rewarded with the bodyguard's smile.

Six's arm brushes ever so slightly against yours when he puts the vehicle into reverse and then into drive. The feeling of his warmth lingers like a brand on your skin. His watch hangs heavily around your wrist. You fight the urge to gently touch the gleaming metal and instead interlink your own fingers together hard enough to hurt.

You spend the car ride sagged against the leather of the passenger seat, desperately trying to focus on the passing scenery and not the man seated next to you. Not his kindness, not the way he had kept you grounded. You tell yourself he was just doing his job. Any bodyguard would have been tender and careful with your sister… and with you. You try to not read into what Six offering his watch to you for "safe keeping" might possibly mean.

Soon you're back at the house, waiting in the garage with your little sister while the hired man does a sweep of the building to make sure no one has breached the perimeter while it lay vacant. Claire is tucked against your side. She's bleary eyed with exhaustion.

"Clear." Six's voice cuts into the silence of the garage.

You tow Claire along with you and sit her down at the table. She slumps with her cheek resting in her hand. You busy yourself with getting a bowl of ice cream set in front of her.

She gulps it down in huge mouthfuls. Six sits to your right at the head of the table while she eats. His eyes are focused on the screen of his laptop. You're sitting across from your sister, half curled up in the dining chair. The adrenaline has long since left your body, leaving you feeling heavy with exhaustion.

"You feeling better?" Six directs at Claire.

"Just another Thursday." She says with a shrug. "Uncle Donald and my sister say this is the best medicine. Ice cream. I tend to agree."

"They're smart people."

"Only family I got."

Six’s response is instant, like he’ll choke on the words if he doesn’t get them out of his mouth fast enough. “Fitz’s the closest thing to family I’ve had in a long while.”

"Maybe that kind of makes us family."

You catch the way that he smiles. He ducks his head to hide it, but you see the hopeless spread of it across his face. There’s something so tender and vulnerable in his eyes that you get stung by a pang in your chest. Your heart aches for the people sitting at the table with you. Claire for carrying the loss of your parents and Six for whose closest hint of a familial tie is his boss. You get pulled out of your spiraling thoughts by Claire yawning.

"You should go to bed." His voice is soft.

You haul yourself to your feet, exhausting hanging on you like a blanket. You whisk Claire’s empty bowl away and gently touch her shoulder. “C’mon, you heard the man.”

She grumbles a little and stands up with you. You’re about to guide her to her bedroom but she pauses and turns. “‘Night, Robot.”

“Goodnight, Claire.” He sounds exasperated with an undercurrent of amusement.

He doesn’t look away from the screen as you and your younger sister retire for the night. You fall into bed, wrung out from the hospital trip. It’s not until you’re firmly under the covers and settled into bed that you realize you’re still wearing Six’s watch. You stare at it, warring with yourself on if you should scrape yourself off of the mattress to go give it to the bodyguard keeping vigil at the table or to just set it aside to give to him in the morning. You do neither of those things. You fall asleep watching the silver metal reflect the moonlight peering through the shivering curtains. You do not dream of your past captors and their leering smiles that night. Instead, you dream of a comforting hand on your wrist, the gentle hum of a deep voice.

───※ ·❆· ※───

The three of you settle back into routine following Claire’s hospital visit, but things have shifted slightly following that night. You gave Six his watch back the following morning before your sister got out of bed and before her nurse arrived for the day. He took it from your hesitantly offered hand. His thick fingers gently brushed your palm as he lifted the piece from it. Your wrist has felt desolate, too light ever since you took it off. You try to ignore it all, try to regain the distance you had before. You don’t succeed. Something about Uncle Fitz’s hired man keeps eroding the walls built from mistrust and agony.

───※ ·❆· ※───

You snap awake, soaked through with rapidly cooling sweat. You’re certain you didn’t scream out. Your throat isn’t sore, but your face is wet, moisture clinging to your lashes. You must have been silently sobbing through your nightmare. You uncurl yourself from your tensed position and drag yourself out of bed. You walk through the darkened hallway to the kitchen. You make sure to roughly trail your hand along the wall and clear your throat. It won’t do anyone any favors to startle Six.

You get your glass of water and make your way into the main sprawl of rooms. The bodyguard is sitting at the kitchen table, laptop open, as he is most nights. You pull out a chair and sit down with your glass. You look at it hollowly, trying to ignore the lingering terror from your nightmares. You can't but notice Six’s eyes flickering over to you now and again. There’s a concerned crease between his eyebrows.

“Rough night?”

“The usual. As Claire says, it’s just another Thursday.” Your voice comes out more bitter than you intend. You tighten your grip on your cup until it feels like it might shatter in your hand. You force yourself to loosen your clenched fingers.

The man seated at the table with you gives an acknowledging hum, sedately chewing his gum. He doesn’t press, doesn’t try to force any explanations out of you. You relax a little in your seat. Having another human being awake and nearby is a comfort. You rest your cheek on your hand and observe him. He looks tired. The light coming from the screen serves only to highlight the weariness weighing down his face and stooping his usually rigid shoulders. Looking at him like this reminds you of the night you watched this man and your sister interact after he drove you both home from Mount St. Mary’s.

“She’s happier with you around, you know.”

There's such a long silence following your unprompted comment that you don't think he'll respond but he finally does. "She's a good kid."

"Yeah. Yeah she is." You don’t think you could have clung to life in the wake of the incident without her there to be strong for. Most weeks, she was the only reason you bothered to try to function.

You drain the rest of your glass and stand up. The ice clinks. You dump it in the sink and put the cup in the top rack of the dishwasher. You felt wrung out enough to attempt sleep again. You pause in the doorway and look back at the man at the table. "Six."

He looks up, eyebrow raised. His lips are slightly parted.

"'Night."

"Goodnight." You can’t decipher his tone.

Your nightmares don’t return that night.

───※ ·❆· ※───

About a month later, you’re screaming and thrashing in your bed. You’re choking under your captor’s hands, the sensation of soaked cloth over your face. You feel the pressure of those cruel fingers on your throat, over your mouth. Water moistening every ragged inhale. You can’t breathe.

Six’s response is all but instantaneous from the moment he hears your first scream. He pushes your door open, one hand on the knob and the other wrapped around his drawn gun. He’s sweeping his eyes across the dark room, There’s no attacker to find, there’s only you writhing on your bed, plagued by your own mind. He holsters his weapon and goes to your side. He tries calling your name, but there’s no acknowledgement, only your panicked wheezing. He puts one knee on the mattress for stability and grabs your upper arms. He tries to shake you awake. That gets a reaction. You start fighting him. Your hands claw and hit at him. He ignores it and repeats your name, asking you to wake up with an edge of desperation to his voice. He’s wildly unprepared for this. A physical enemy he can handle, but this…

You come out of it, going limp in his hold. Your chest is heaving. You blink away the lingering horrors of your dream and look up at him, horrified. For a split second your panic flares anew until you focus on his face. You remind yourself that you know this man, that you trust him with your sister’s life. He releases his grip on you and leans to turn on your bedside lamp. You wince against the explosion of light before bolting upright to reach towards his face. He’s scratched and you wonder if he’s going to be sporting a black eye. He lets your fingertips rest on his cheek for a heartbeat, something unreadable in his eyes before he’s withdrawing his knee from the mattress and standing at the side of your bed. He’s the picture of composure.

“I’m so sorry.” Guilt is suffocating you almost as much as the man in your nightmare.

"You don't need to apologize. I should. I wasn't briefed about how to handle it." He sounds genuinely sorry, a touch of distress bleeding into his tone. It twists the knife of guilt deeper. You feel your eyes start to well.

"No, no it's not your fault.. I don't want to be like this, I'm sorry." The tears spill over. You turn your face away and scrub your hands over your cheeks.

He hesitates and sits down on the bed next to you. There's a yawning span of distance between the two of you. There's not a hint of anger or frustration coming from him, not even pity. just.... sorrow. Understanding.

"Fitz briefed me on your history." It's blunt. matter of fact.

"Then you know about the...." You hesitate.

"Yeah.” He answers before continuing. “Does he know how bad it gets?"

"No… I never told him all the details. I didn't want to burden him. He's got enough to worry about." You shrink into yourself. Your eyes focused on the items cluttering your nightstand.

"Your wellbeing isn't a burden." There it is. There’s a taste of the anger you’d been waiting for in his tone. You squeeze your eyes shut.

"I'm the stable one, Six. I can't let everyone down again ." You laugh a little, self-deprecating. You press your palms against your eyes. Baring down until stars explode behind your closed eyelids.

He hums, and you feel the shift of the mattress as he stands up. You think he’s leaving, disgusted with you and your emotions, but the heat of his presence doesn’t go away. The warmth of him bleeds through your sleep clothes. You can feel him looking down at you. You nearly jump out of your skin when he nudges your arm. You look up at him, startled. He quirks an eyebrow.

“Come on.” He says, offering his hand to you. You take it. He easily guides you up onto shaky legs.

He has you follow him down the hallway and to the dining table. A path as familiar as an old friend by now. He motions for you to sit at the table, and you mutely follow his direction. You hear him move around in the kitchen. He returns with a bowl of ice cream and a full glass of water. He sits both in front of you.

"I have it on expert authority that this should help. All the smartest people I know support it." He's so serious sounding. You look at him flatly. He holds his grave expression for a beat before he winks. You crack a teary smile and lay into the ice cream like it personally insulted you.

He settles into a chair across from you while you eat. He occasionally glances over at the open laptop’s screen to check the security footage, but his main focus is on you. You feel a little self conscious under his gaze. You scour your mind for something to say, anything to lessen the intensity he’s directing towards you.

"Do you ever sleep? Like… go to bed sleep?" The question comes out of nowhere. a flash of surprise crosses his face. You'd seen him cross his arms in his chair and tip his head back. Caught him leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets, hip cocked for stability. But the thought of him actually dressing down into pajamas and tucking himself under the blankets seems.... implausible. too soft for this man who is alert and buttoned up into his crisp slacks and fitted shirts no matter the hour of the day. You half supposed he showered in the damn things.

"Not as often as I should. I don't sleep easy either." The honesty surprises you.

"Why?" It's probing but you're too exhausted and raw to care.

"Too many memories. My line of work isn't exactly conducive to pleasant dreams." You wonder if he would have been willing to be so open this entire time or if something changed between the two of you. When would it have changed? Were the moments you found significant also important to him? Was he starting to crave your company in the inexplicable way as you’ve begun to crave his?

You almost apologize to him for prying, but you stop yourself. You nod instead. You understand how it is to have a beast pacing the maze of your sleeping mind, pulling out the threads of your worst memories like entrails for you to witness over and over again.

"I still think about it… About them." You admit. Your eyes skitter across the table like a frightened mouse, focusing on Six's watch face before darting away. You can’t tell the time from this distance. There is a pressure welling up in your throat. Something is clawing its way out into the open.

“Talk to me.” His request is firm, paving the way for your words. He takes his watch off, a mirror of the other night. It slips free of his arm in the same way, inky black revealed on the underside of his wrist, tendons shifting, the movements delicate. He sets the watch on the table in front of you. The metal links clatter on the polished wood surface. You glance up at his face, shadowed in the dim light. “For safekeeping.” He remarks.

You reach out and lift it from the worn surface, running your fingers over the band. The weight is soothing in your grasp. The seconds tick by and it feels as though your heart is trying to race them. You finally open your mouth and release your burden.

“Claire had her birthday party that day. It was the last good day we had with our parents. It was hard to keep the security straight since there were so many people in the house. I didn’t think anything was wrong when two men came up to me and introduced them as part of the security detail. I still didn’t think it was weird when they asked me to come with them. How could I have been so stupid ?” Your breath catches, anger palpable in your voice. Six twitches like he might reach out, but he stills and you continue.

“They got me out of the house. I wasn’t strong enough to fight them off when they put me in the back of the SUV. They… they kept me for days asking questions I didn’t know the answers to. They didn’t like that I didn’t know anything. They tried to be more persuasive… so I started making up things. I just wanted them to stop but they wouldn’t. The wrong answer or the right answer, it didn’t matter. They offered me in exchange for a ransom and eventually they pulled me out of the basement. My parents were there to do the handoff. The guys wouldn’t let anyone else do it. We made it about three miles down the highway before they caught up with us and shot out the front tires. I don’t think they expected anyone to live after we went through the guardrail, so they just.. drove off. Left. I don’t know how long I was in the car staring at my parents. Claire was too young to understand that I ruined her life. I’ve been waiting for her to realize what I did. She hasn’t yet but she will.”

“How did you ruin it?” Quiet, disbelieving.

“I got our parents killed. I shouldn’t have gone with those men. I should’ve known better.” You hear a noise like a wounded animal. A creature left for roadkill, great heaving breaths rattling in that damaged chest. It’s you, you realize dully, you’re the animal. There’s a large hand enveloping your wrist. It’s Six and he’s holding onto you.

“How could you know?” He asks. You shake your head, a sob escapes you. You feel shame. Grief. Six’s hand squeezes almost tight enough to hurt. It grounds you, you can’t escape into your own mind. Not with that insistent pressure to stay . You feel the metal of his watch biting into the skin of your palm. It’s a good kind of ache.

“It wasn’t your fault. You trusted people you were meant to trust. Who could blame you for that?” he insists. His eyes are too soft, too kind.

“Uncle Fitz.” It slips out, involuntary. You would bite your own tongue off if it could take back the betrayal. You don’t dare to look at the man seated across from you. You had all but swung a bat at the person who he said was the closest thing he had to family.

His hand withdraws from your arm, and for a moment you’re certain that he’s going to walk off and leave you sitting here by yourself. He doesn’t, he surprises you once again. He simply leans further over the table, capturing your hands with his before plucking his watch from your ironclad grasp. He lays it over your much smaller wrist. He handles you with so much gentleness it almost hurts. He secures the clasp and simply… holds your hands. He says your name and you look up

“Your family loves you.” He states simply. He says it like it’s an indisputable fact. Like it’s something as true and honest as the rotation of the Earth. You nod mutely. You can’t argue, not when he says it with so much assurance. He gives your hands a final, comforting squeeze and stands up. He gathers up your dishes, bowl, spoon, and glass. The bodyguard makes a soothing gesture to stay seated when you make a motion to rise and help him. You listen to the domestic sounds of him running the sink and loading your used dishes into the dishwasher. Your eyes start to drift shut. There’s a weight off your lungs, your burden has been dispersed, even just for a little while.

There’s a soft touch to your shoulder. It’s Six and he wants you back in bed. You get to your feet and let him escort you to your bedroom door. You feel oddly nervous, fidgeting with your fingers and avoiding meeting the hired man’s eyes. It feels like the awkward end of a weird date where everyone was too uncomfortably honest.. No matter how delusional that sounds even to yourself.

“Goodnight.” he’s the one who breaks the silence first. You feel relieved.

“‘Night, Six.” is your response as you put your hand on the doorknob and slip into the room, away from his unreadable gaze. When you fall asleep for the second time that night, you dream of steady hands marked with prison tattoos.

───※ ·❆· ※───

The morning dawns without preamble. It feels like you have barely laid your head on the pillow. You check the time on the watch hanging loosely around your wrist. Less than four hours have passed since your night terror and subsequent comforting via the household bodyguard. Your morning routine feels more laborious than usual. Every movement feels like crawling through tilled soil.

You’re dressed for the day and walking into the kitchen when you hear your little sister badgering Six.

“What happened to you, Robot?” she asks.

You pop your head around the corner to take a look at the man she’s addressing. You stop cold. It’s a mess. He’s a mess. The skin around his left eye is puffy and bruised. There's clear nail marks on his cheeks and down to his neck. Any exposed skin had taken the brunt of your panic. You can even see some redness through his facial hair. You feel sick, betrayed again by your body. Your own hands had tried to tear him apart.

"Well..." he starts and shrugs his jacket off. He folds it and drapes it over the back of one of the chairs.

He's about to go on his outdoor rounds, which you and Claire have secretly dubbed ‘enrichment time’, and continue wearing a trail into the yard. If he’s feeling particularly comfortable, he might sneak a nap in one of the lawn chairs now that the sun is up. Provided that he’s sure the two of you are secure and can survive without him awake for an hour or so.

"Your sister beat me in a fight. I'll have to hand in my championship belt." It's relaxed and easy. He gives you a conspiratorial wink when Claire rolls her eyes with a scoff.

You match his earnest tone with your own. "You should have seen it, I was about to get the folding chair and everything."

“Ooh-kay, I’ll just assume it was a weird sex thing,” she comments, turning back to her breakfast. “Looks like you already won his watch though. Congrats.”

Silence follows. Claire smugly scrapes her spoon around in her bowl, capturing every last shred of cereal. There’s a self-satisfied smile on her face. Neither of you protest. Either you let it go and hope she loses interest in the bit, or you launch into a defense that will only get her to double down. No matter what, you’ll be the losers.

Six pushes a heavy exhale through his nose and walks out of the room. You follow him right out the back door and onto the deck. The two of you stand there for a moment in companionable silence. It’s beautiful out here. The sun is a sedate creature in the sky. She's lazily casting her rays over the yard. The water in the pool is sparkling in it, lapping playfully at the concrete walls. Six’s shoulders are still tense in your field of view. He looks as though he’s holding himself up through sheer force of will.

“I’m sorry again about last night.” You say to his back.

“Please don’t be. Things happen.” He says with a sigh. You falter. He sounds as exhausted as you feel. You don't want to push the issue.

He gestures for you to sit in one of the deck chairs by the pool. You don’t, instead choosing to trail him as he does his rounds. He’s lit by the sun. You’re in his shadow. His hair looks like a field of golden wheat. You almost want to run your hands though it in order to feel the softness for yourself. You instead soothe the urge by toying with the band of his watch still loosely encircling your wrist. He looks back at you every once in a while, eyes dazzlingly blue in the bright sunlight. You had never noticed the angles of his face before, the curves of his nose with its distinctive bump, the set of his cheekbones, how his facial hair is darker than the hair on his head. You hate that you're noticing these details now. After the events of last night, any tentative bond feels tainted.

The morning grows warmer as you drift behind him like a ghost. Eventually he rolls his sleeves up to reveal his forearms. You start to understand why people in bygone eras got so flustered at the sight of a lady's ankle. His wrists are bodice ripping enough, you suppose, but the space from his fingertips to the crook of his elbow? That is home to so much previously unseen skin. Had he been rolling up his sleeves every morning? If you had simply looked out one of the windows, would you have seen the sight that you’re witnessing now? Would you have seen the distinct veins trailing up the insides of his muscular arms? What about the tattoos whose mere existence beg to have a finger trace along his skin? You avert your eyes, not wanting him to notice you staring. You tell yourself that it’s just the novelty of it all, that the surprise at seeing him less buttoned up will wear off.

With the rounds done, the two of you are back at your starting point. The bodyguard settles onto one of the deck chairs. He lets out a borderline obscene groan as he lets his body relax against the wood. His eyes flutter closed. He shifts slightly, another noise escapes his throat as he does. You make your way to the chair next to him on shaky legs, and drop into it. He doesn’t stir. You debate on standing up, you don’t, the thought of leaving his side makes you anxious. You make yourself comfortable in your seat.

Through the open window, you can hear Claire’s record player. You hear the notes of Feel the Warm. She’s playing Mark Lindsay again. You let it wash over you. The sunlight is dappled across this part of the patio. You cast a glance over at your companion. His arms are crossed and he looks dead to the world. Your own eyelids are drooping, He’s the last thing you see before you drift off.

You wake up gradually, it’s an easy kind of waking. No wild jerk of consciousness, just the soft trickle of awareness. You’ve managed to curl on your side in the deck chair. You squirm upright and feel cloth slide down into your lap. It’s the hired man’s jacket. He must have gone back inside to get it. You touch it with hesitant fingers and look up, scanning for him. He’s currently out of sight, but you do see Claire in the hammock chair across the way. She’s engrossed in her phone and frantically tapping at the screen. You check the time on the watch in your possession before you catch a glimpse of Six coming up the patio steps from the lower yard. He’s got a sandwich in one hand and his own phone in the other. He’s intent on the device. He glances up and accidentally meets your eyes. He jumps slightly as if startled you’re awake. He recovers and gives you a nod.

“‘Morning.” His mouth is full. You know Claire will give him the tongue lashing of a lifetime if she notices.

"It's after twelve." You playfully retort, watching unimpressed as he fights to swallow the bread in his mouth. He’s really struggling for a second before he gets it down, his throat working roughly. You get to your feet, carefully folding his jacket over your arm. You approach him with it.

"Good afternoon then." He says quietly. You swear you catch the ghost of a smile on his face as he looks at you.

“Thanks for the blanket.” You say, offering it to him. He takes it with his unoccupied hand before shrugging it on, doing a quick change of hands with his lunch.

You move to take off the watch and return that as well, but he stops you with a disapproving noise. “You’re keeping that safe for me, remember?”

You pause for a moment, mind racing wildly with the effort to make sense of his words. To find meaning in them. Your hand falls away from the metal and you surrender with a mute nod. If he wanted you to keep it for him for a while longer, who were you to protest? It’s a strange kind of comfort to have it.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Things come to another disastrous head some weeks later. It happens after the nurse sees Claire tucked into bed before heading home for the evening. It happens after you give your sister your own goodnight wishes. You had gently brushed her hair from her face and gave her a kiss on the forehead even if she scrunches her face in mock disgust each time you do. There’s no telling which moment between the two of you will be the last. You hadn’t had the luxury of knowing that your mom’s wet pleas for help would be the last gift from her in that twisted hunk of metal. You wanted your little sister to have a happy memory of you if a goodnight ever turned into a goodbye. Less nightmares that way.

You had stood up from your seat on the edge of the bed, made sure to smooth her blanket out. “Sweet dreams, Claire.” you said before you extinguished the slow glow cast by the lamp on her nightstand.

“‘Night,” she had said to you before yelling. “‘Night, Robot!” in the direction of the door.

You heard a weary sounding response from the ‘robot’ in question. Six was hovering in the hallway, patiently waiting to escort you to your bedroom door. He’s been diligent in performing the action every single night without fail since your impromptu wrestling session with him. He also hasn’t let you return his watch to him yet. You closed the bedroom door behind you, stepped into the hall and nearly brushed against the tall man. He moved back only enough to give you the barest clearance to get past him so he could trail after you for the scant few steps to your own door. It seems lately that he’s been standing closer to you. It also seems like his eyes have been lingering more on your face than the surveillance feeds at night when you emerge from your room, wide eyed and shaken from whatever terror that had gripped you. Your exchanged goodnights haven’t been anything out of the ordinary though, even if his voice was lower… more intimate than it used to be.

The bubble officially bursts for you when you abruptly jerk awake. You assume it was a nightmare you can’t remember, though you don’t feel any of the usual symptoms. There’s no tremors or wild breathing. You’re just… awake. You think about laying in bed and trying to drift off, but there’s a sense of unease you can’t shake. You make up your mind and shuffle over to the door. Like any other night, you turn the knob and walk out into the hall.

Like a snare snatching a rabbit, rough hands seize you. Your mouth is covered, fingers digging in harshly. And with a sudden drop of your stomach, you register the sensation of a gun pressing into your side. The metal’s coldness burrows though the thin layer of your sleep shirt. You’re frozen in shock, mind racing. Where's Six? Where's the bodyguard uncle Fitz had hired? He was supposed to protect you and your sister. Keep you safe. Why wasn't he doing his job? Why was this man in the house?

Tears start running down your face without your permission. Your sobs are broken off against the inside of your mouth. They can’t escape the crushing pressure. A scream you can’t release is building in your throat. What if this man did something to Claire?

The gun digs in deeper, grinding against your ribs. He drags you down the hall and into the living room. It’s dark and you flinch as you feel something sharp dig into one of your feet. You whimper. The floor is littered with broken glass. The sound of it shattering must have been what woke you up.

“Shut up.” the man holding you hisses, giving you a tooth rattling shake while he leans over your shoulder to see where he’s steering you. His breath is sour. “Where is he?” He must mean Six.

The bodyguard must still be able to present a problem if this man is asking about him. You’re not completely alone in this. It’s enough to sharpen your mind. To direct your focus. Your eyes are straining to make out anything in the darkness. It’s a mess of shapes that are so familiar in the daylight, but they look like strangers in the darkness. You manage to recognize the coffee table before the attacker does and you pull your leg out of the way. He slams into it and stumbles. He curses loudly through the pain of hitting his shin on the corner. You see your opportunity and savagely bite the hand covering your mouth. The saltiness of blood washes over your tongue but you bury your teeth in deeper. The tendons and nerves give way beneath your teeth. You go until you hit bone and hang on. Even if you don’t make out of this alive, you’re going to make damn sure this fucker doesn’t get to keep full use of his fingers.

He’s groaning, blinded by the shock of pain. You dare to release your hold on him in order to slam the back of your head into his face as hard as you can, throwing yourself into a backwards jump to do so. He lets out a wounded noise and clutches his face. He’s completely let go of you to do so. The gun is on the floor now, dropped in the surprise of your retaliation. You skate awkwardly on the glass as you make a run for it. The floor feels wet under your feet as you sprint for the hall. You’re leaving a trail of bloody footprints in your wake. The scream you’ve felt building weakly escapes. It’s a too quiet utterance of Six’s name. You can’t find the ability to yell as loud as you need to. You’re nearly sightless from a lack of light and terrified tears. You’re battering against the walls and furniture like a moth around a lightbulb. You make it halfway down the hall to Claire’s bedroom when you feel it. A brush of the assailant’s hand against your back. He shouts when he misses you, and you jitter to the side, making contact with the wall right as he slams into the floor. You put your back to it and look down, eyes wide enough in terror to make out the shapes of two struggling men.

Six is on top of the man who had grabbed you. His silhouette is identifiable even in the murky dark. Relief turns your legs into jelly. He’s come for you after all. You allow yourself to go limp and slide down the wall, curling up on the floor. You squeeze your eyes closed so you don’t have to put a visual to the violence you’re hearing. It’s wet, crunchy. Eventually you only hear the heaving breathing of one man. You don’t know how long you sit there shaking.

You’re coaxed into opening your eyes by Six’s voice saying your name. Your bedroom door is ajar and the light is on, illuminating the hallway enough to comfortably see, but not enough to where you can’t pretend the dark smears and streaks are shadows. The attacker isn’t in the hall any more. Six is kneeling in front of you. He’s got a cut on his cheek but otherwise looks unharmed.

“Are you with me?” It’s said with aching concern.

"Yeah… Yeah I'm here." You’re all too aware of your stinging feet, the ache of your muscles, the pain in the back of your head.

Relief floods his face at your words. He reaches out but stops himself before making contact with you. You notice that his knuckles are split open and already bruising. His hand hovers in the space between your bodies, trembling slightly like he can’t bear to touch you but withdrawing is equally torturous. You rock onto your knees and shove yourself into his arms instead. They’re instantly around you. He holds you to himself. It’s all you can do to cling to him in kind. If you could nestle alongside the lungs in his chest, you would make a home in his rib cage.

"You did well. I'm sorry I wasn't able to keep him from you. His pals kept me busy." His voice is full of bitter frustration.

You shake your head and speak against his collarbone. “Is Claire okay?”

"She slept right through it. She's still asleep. I just checked on her." He soothes, running a hand up and down your back.

“Good…” you respond, unspeakably thankful. You could cry.

“Do I have your permission to pick you and take you to your bed? I don’t want you walking with your feet like this.”

“Yeah, but I’m too heavy?” You’re surprised and uncertain. Sure, he had slammed around a grown man like a rag doll, but what if….

“Believe me, you’re not.” He sounds almost amused.

He eases you up onto your knees and over his lap. He encourages you to put your arms over his shoulders. It’s startlingly intimate. You can easily see the fine lines around his eyes at this distance. His breath is warm and against your face, smelling faintly of the watermelon gum he chews. You have just a second to try and process it before he’s gaining a foothold. He stabilizes you with one thick arm under your thighs and his hand on your back. You reflexively gasp and clench the back of his jacket in your hands. Each of his steps is steady. There’s no sign of strain even as he navigates your bedroom doorway. He carefully lowers you to the edge of your mattress and withdraws his arm. Your thighs release their death grip against his hips and you settle into place, feet off the ground. You avoid looking at his face, you know yours feels like it’s on fire.

You notice that he had already moved your trashcan to your bedside and collected the first aid kit and a roll of paper towels. He must have known you’d cooperate with him. He drags your desk chair over and takes a seat. He pats his thigh encouragingly, and you place your heel right above his knee. He steadies you with a firm hand around your ankle. He removes the shards of glass. He doesn't let you jerk away, not with the grip he has on you, even when the tweezers catch on a particularly deep piece. He works in silence and you eventually allow yourself to lay flat on the bed while he does his task. You don't ask what happened to the man in the hallway. You don't ask how Six got detained in the first place. He doesn’t volunteer the information. The time passes and you’re halfway asleep by the time he’s tying off the wrap securing the bandages on your other foot and carefully easing your leg back down from its elevated position on his thigh.

"Please stay." You ask the ceiling. You feel more than see Six freeze in response to your question.

“I shouldn’t.” He sounds conflicted. You prop yourself onto your elbows to get a better look at him.

“Do you not want to?”

“It’s not that. It’s anything but that.”

You bite your lip and decide to throw all your cards on the table. “I sleep better when I'm around you. You keep the nightmares away.”

He looks surprised, devastated even. His demeanor couldn’t have been any different than if you had asked him to bare his neck and slit his own throat. Resigned, but he would still pick up the knife for you.

"Give me a minute," is his response.

He gathers up the supplies and turns off the light on his way out of the room, plunging you into the familiar dark of your room. You're not sure what exactly he does while he’s away, but he comes back sans jacket and with his sleeves rolled up. He carries the acidic tang of cleaning chemicals. He settles back into your chair after tossing the laptop on the desk. The two of you watch each other for a moment

"Are you okay?"

"Emotionally? I've been better. Physically? I'm fine. Just a few scratches and a bruised ego. " He's soft. You nod, reassured.

You keep your eyes on his face. It’s lit by the soft glow of the screen. It’s become an unhealthy habit, observing this man. You drift off to sleep facing in his direction. He's there when you wake up. He's clearly gotten up at some point to shower, but he did come back to resume his sentence at your side. You greet each other and he excuses himself back to the common areas of the home.

───※ ·❆· ※───

It becomes a thing, you spending time in his presence outside of what follows your nightmares. Something changed in you after the attack. It has culminated in a strong desire to be near him, to be within the frame of his reassuring gaze. Most of the time but not always, you go with him on his surveillance rounds. You walk with him through the yard. It always feels a little like you’re two society members having a chaperoned walk, but it’s soothing. Routine. You’ve also begun sitting with him in the hours before bed. At the table or on the couch while he watches the TV. The two of you simply exist together.

You rarely return to your room most nights, choosing instead to make your bed in the living room. If you lay just right on the couch, you can spot the bodyguard keeping watch throughout the night. His presence in the room eases your mind enough to allow you to peacefully sleep. You wish that he hasn’t become so essential. You don’t want to think about what your uncle’s return will mean.

He accepts your new routine without question. You notice that he always has the throw pillow moved from the armchair to the couch on the nights you don’t tell him you’re going to bed. There’s no blanket in the living room, but you usually wake up with his jacket of the day draped over you in lieu of one.

───※ ·❆· ※───

One night, you and Claire manage to bully him into a game of monopoly after the nurse leaves. You’ve been made the banker because Six doesn’t trust your sister and she doesn’t trust him enough either.

“You just landed on my boardwalk. That’s fourteen hundred bucks.” Claire announces.

Six takes his hand off the game piece and gives her a look . “I thought you owned the brown properties, not the blue ones.”

She picks up the deeds for Boardwalk and Park Place and waves them pointedly in his direction. “Nope, fourteen hundred. Fork it over.”

Six lets out a genuinely flustered growl. You have to smother your laugh. He counts out the remainder of his money and tosses it in front of your sister. He’s woefully short and out of assets. You and Claire had run him ragged the course of the game until she managed to bankrupt you with some suspiciously underhand tactics. Looks like she got to Six as well.

“I’m out.” He says, resigned.

Claire stretches her arms over her head and lets out a satisfied sigh. She then slumps back into her chair in smug victory as the bodyguard extracts himself from his seat at the table to do his nightly check of the doors and windows. She leans over and taps the watch on your wrist.

“He hasn’t won this back yet?”

“Oh… uh. No.” Your answer sounds flustered, even to you.

Your little sister raises her eyebrows. There’s a mischievous gleam in her eyes and she opens her mouth to say something before pausing. She instead gets up and gives you a squeeze around the shoulders. You return it with a one armed hug. “‘Night, sis.”

“‘Night. I’ll see you in the morning.” You return affectionately, letting her go.

“‘Night, Robot!” She cheerily shouts. There’s a responding grumble from the direction of the garage. Claire flashes you a grin and a thumbs up.

She’s in her room by the time Six finishes his checks. You’re in the middle of putting up the game when you feel the weight of his eyes on you. It’s just the two of you alone. He sits back down at the table to help you with it. He’s like a fire against your left side. You’re surprised he didn’t sit in his usual spot at the head of the table.

He lets out a yawn that he can’t suppress. He’s more undone tonight than you’ve seen him yet. He’s wearing a t-shirt tucked into slacks today. No blazer. His hair is tousled, not smoothed into place with product like usual. You think he looks more approachable like this. Your hands touch when you both go to scrape the same pile of deeds off the table. You both freeze. You hear your heart pounding in your ears and with it muffling every other sound, you trail your fingers over the top of his. He shudders when you brush over his knuckles and skim over the dots tattooed into the meat of his thumb. He doesn’t move, staying perfectly still for your exploration. You reach the horse on his forearm and you think his breath hitches in response. You linger on the horse, using your pointer finger to trace its outline. You follow the swoop of its tail, down the outstretched hind leg.

A soft groan from the man you’re touching makes you remember yourself. You withdraw your hand like you’ve been burnt. He twitches and jerks his own hand towards you like he’s about to reach out and stop you, but he doesn’t. You can still feel the sensation of his skin under your fingertips even as you glue your eyes to the remaining monopoly money and sort it into the tray with unsteady hands. You finish putting up the game in silence. You sleep in your own bed that night. He escorted you to your room.

───※ ·❆· ※───

You wake up weeping the next night. You lay on the couch staring at the living room ceiling while tears involuntarily run down the sides of your face. The imprint of spider webbing glass still swirling around in your mind. You must have made some kind of noise, because Six is making his way across the room.

You sit up and take a swipe at your face. “I’m sorry.”

"You have to let it out somehow. May I?” He asks, gesturing to the space next at your side. You nod and scoot over to give him slightly more space.

He puts the ever present laptop with its surveillance feed on the coffee table before sitting down. You feel your cushion dip. Against your better judgment, you lean against him. He’s solid. He relaxes underneath the pressure of your body. You instantly feel better. You watch the cameras with him for a while, sighing along with him as the local monkeys throw the lid off the trashcan at the curb in search of a meal. You’ll have to clean up after them after the sun rises. It’s one of the downsides to living in Hong Kong.

You stay leaning against him for a while, but a stiffness in your neck gets you to change position. Moving slowly so he’s fully aware of your movements, you carefully lay down. He’s taken the place of your improvised throw pillow cushion. Your head is resting on his thigh. He puts his hand on your upper arm and gives it a reassuring squeeze. He leaves it resting there, heavy and warm.

You wake up a few hours later. The sun is cascading through the living room, throwing rainbow hues on the floor thanks to the decorative glassware. You’re comfortable, too comfortable you realize. Your eyes widen in horrified surprise. You’re still using the bodyguard as a pillow. He's shifted slightly through the night, more slumped and relaxed. He's slid down further, and your face is firmly pressed against his hip now instead of his thigh. You know that you’re going to have the imprint of one of his belt loops on your cheek. His arm is loosely draped over you with his hand tucked underneath your side, a bastardized attempt at spooning. You crane your neck to catch a glimpse of his face. He’s sound asleep.

You try to sit up without disturbing him, but his arm tightens around you and applies pressure. You’re locked into place. Your mind races. If the nurse or, worse, Claire comes into the room and sees you and Six like this… You have to get up. You put a hand on his thigh and use it as a support to push yourself up. He’s instantly awake from the overt movement. He lifts his arm off your body and lets you sit up. You turn to say something, but find him already staring. His blue eyes are focused on you, they’re sleepy and confused but quickly sharpen to alertness. He looks vaguely distressed. All you can do is offer him a smile and squeeze his leg. You stand up and he follows. Your day goes as usual.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Your nights are largely the same, except that Six seems more distant. He doesn't linger as closely or as comfortably as he did before. Your interactions with the man are more professional. It’s as though weeks, months , of getting to know each other have been erased and you’re back at the beginning. Strangers again. It hurts. You miss him like hell even though he’s right there. Your sleep is worse. It’s almost as bad as in the weeks following the incident that started them in the first place, but they’re different. Amongst the disjointed scenes, there’s a broad shouldered man with dirty blond hair walking away from you in your nightmares now. You scream for him but no sound ever escapes you, just noiseless air. You never see his face.

You finally have enough when he escorts you to your room one night. You haven’t slept on the couch for over a week, and he’s taken that as his cue to resume seeing you to your bedroom door. You turn to face him as always in the doorway. Instead of saying goodnight like you do every night, you confront him. It even catches you by surprise.

"You're avoiding me.” He doesn’t deny it and you think that hurts more than the newfound distance itself.

“Why?” You ask only to get more silence. He won’t look at you.

”What did I do wrong?” Your voice trembles and you hate it. You fumble to take off his watch, to return that final tie between the two of you. He reflexively clamps down on your wrist before you can undo the clasp, pinning your hand to your own wrist. He releases his near crushing grip almost immediately, but the ghost of it lingers. Point taken. You let your arms fall to your side in a clear display of frustration, willing him to talk.

“It wasn’t you. I overstepped. Your uncle hired me to do a job and I've stepped beyond my purview. " The confession is rough. Torn out of him. The corner of his mouth pulls down in a grimace.

You stare at him blankly. "What?"

"I allowed myself to be too close with you. I apologize. I was unprofessional." He explains, but he won't quite meet your eyes. He hasn't for a while. Not since the morning following the night you fell asleep on him.

"You were... unprofessional?” You question, absolutely lost.

"Yes. I let my feelings about you affect me and my work.. I’ve become… compromised." It's matter of fact. It’s said like he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on you.

You reach out and grab his jacket lapels. He looks at you like a beaten dog might, as though you might strike him. He makes no motion to pull himself from your grasp. You swallow hard and let out a breath.

"What about my feelings for you?" You ask. His breath catches and he shakes his head, disbelieving.

“It would be better if you didn’t feel anything for me.” There’s heartbreak in his blue eyes even as he looks at you like there’s nothing else in the world he would rather be seeing.

“Better for who?” Your mouth is unbearably dry as you ask the question.

“You. I’ll only jeopardize you.”

”Six…”

You pull him down and you press your mouth against his. He's rigid and unmoving for a moment before he's kissing you like a dying man who has just been offered immortality. His hands come to rest on your back. He grips your clothing like it’s a lifeline keeping him from going under. You gently nip at his bottom lip and he gasps against your mouth, a broken little noise. He tastes like watermelon gum.

You pull away. “Jeopardize me then.

That forces a quietly helpless laugh from him. "Now that was unprofessional." His voice is hoarse.

"I had to give you a proper example."

"Good job. I feel exampled.”

" Good ." You say and kiss him again. He's ready for it this time. He keeps it slow. His hands gently trace your body. He's slowly rubbing his thumb back and forth against your side. You step back, walking him into your room. His breathing is ragged and he's gripping you with a desperation you can’t put your mind around. You stand there, intertwined in each other. His facial hair is rough against your skin but the burn feels good. Your hands make their way around his neck and you gently card your fingers through the short hairs at the nape of his neck. He makes a wounded sounding noise in response before he pulls away. His hand is cradling the side of your face to keep you in place while his eyes roam across your face. It's as though he’smemorizing you, imprinting the fine details of this moment into his mind. As though he’s preparing to say goodbye. He trails his fingers gently down your jaw before he lets his hand drop.

"Will you stay? Can we sleep?" You ask before he can make up a way to excuse himself.

There’s a dizzying moment of silence before his face softens. “Okay. Yeah.”

The two of you are left to navigate the awkwardness of getting ready for bed. You spin your finger around in a circle and Six immediately gets the idea. He puts his back to you while you change into your sleepwear as quickly as you can. You turn around after giving him the verbal ‘all good’ in time to see him pull off his jacket and toss it onto the desk chair he had occupied when you first realized how addicted you were becoming to him. He pulls his belt off, coils it around his hand before setting it aside. You watch him unbutton his dress shirt. His fingers work deftly to slip the buttons through the holes. He shrugs the shirt off and lays it over the jacket. He’s in his undershirt and slacks. He bends down to untie his shoes and sets them aside. He straightens up and there’s nervousness on his face. You’ve never seen him nervous before. Worried? Yes, but not nervous.

You slide into the bed and fold down the other side of the blanket for him. You gesture for him to come lay down beside you. He approaches warily and settles in stiffly at your side. His head is on the pillow, hands overlapping on his stomach. He looks like a body in a coffin. You gently touch his hands. He jolts.

“Are you okay?” You ask softly, letting your hand rest on top of his.

“I haven’t slept in the same bed as someone since I was a child,” he admits.

“Oh… and that was…?”

“Over twenty-five years ago.”

You allow yourself a moment to grieve for this man before you pull away to shut off the bedside lamp.. You roll onto your back and flop your arms to the side. “Come here then. I’ve used you as a pillow. It’s time for me to return the favor.”

You feel the mattress shift under his weight and he hesitates, hovering over you with arms braced on either side of your body. It’s intimate, having him over you in this way. It’s enough to make you want to kiss him again.You hear him draw breath to raise some kind of concern so you just wrap your arms around him and pull him down on top of you. The weight of him pins you into the mattress. It’s comforting. He’s heavy and warm, akin to a weighted blanket. Granted, a weighted blanket wouldn’t have a muscular thigh wedged between your legs or be breathing against your neck in a way that makes you want to shiver. You fight to ignore your body’s response to him and work on easing the tension that’s holding him rigid against you.

He gradually relaxes as you trace your hands over his back. You feel more than hear him groan when you pass over a particularly sensitive spot. The rumble feels almost like a purr against your chest. You narrow in on that location, working your fingers into the tight muscle. He allows himself to go limp on top of you, no longer stiffly trying to spare you the brunt of his mass. You run your fingers through his hair, gently scratching his scalp as a reward for letting himself relax. It earns you a low moan and an involuntary shift of his hips. You’ll have to keep that reaction in mind for later.

Six’s breathing soon evens out. Years of exhaustion and sleep deprivation have him rapidly sinking into the oblivion of sleep when offered such a precious comfort. You fall asleep with your hand still in his hair. You have the most peaceful rest of your adult life. There’s no night terrors, no pain, no fear, no longing, you just sleep .

The bodyguard is still asleep on top of you when you wake. His breath is whistling slightly through his nose. Not quite a snore, but it’s a sound that gets a fond smile out of you. You wish you could wake up like this every morning. Just this once has given you an insatiable longing for more. You bite the inside of your cheek at the thought of the future. Uncle Fitz is due to return from his trip soon, which means the dismissal of Six from the Fitzroy home to complete whatever assignment is next on his task board. You don’t figure him for the abandoning type though. That way of thinking about him doesn’t fit in with the loyalty and thoughtfulness you’ve seen him exercise in his time spent with you and your sister. You’re sure that he’ll find a way to stay in contact after this job ends.

You gently smooth down his hair. He shifts and buries his face against the hollow of your throat more firmly. You pause, hoping you didn’t wake him, but then you hear a sleep roughened voice say, “Don’t stop on my account.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

#the gray man #sierra six #courtland gentry #sierra six x reader #the gray man fanfic #ryan gosling #ryan gosling character #the gray man (2022)#courtland gentry x reader #my work #my posts

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ninjathrowingstork · 5 months

Text

Bitter Water: Prologue

And here we have some actual plot and 7k words of K being sad.

Also implied/referenced SA because people being shitty to someone who isn't legally a person and can't say no. Somewhere there's a post saying something like area man just disassociating through his day and that's so real.

Before that dusty farm and the tree, before the wooden horse and the questions that would tear his world apart, before Rick and Ana and Joi and the dream of being real and being loved, KD6-3.7 began his life as a Blade Runner alone. Caught between the programming coded into his cells and the other officers in the Department, he was alone and aware of how expendable his life was, until one other human in the LAPD stepped in, showing the replicant that maybe, maybe he could learn to find a way to live in the harsh world where he'd been placed.

_______________________________________________

Chapter 2

The next day, he wasn’t so fortunate to escape or be rescued again.

It had started normally enough, with muster in the morning, the captain reading through announcements and new missions. He didn’t usually go to the meetings, but he was between cases and for once, was in early enough to slide in at the back of the room. Over the sea of heads, he could see Joshi at the podium in the front, reading out recent reports.

“-Facility was raided last night, security reported they fought back but all the raiders got away. No new information but we believe they’re connected to the band that was intercepted last week where we got the likely pseudonym of their leader, ‘Procyon’.”

There was a sound, no more than a hard exhalation of breath off to his right, and he caught the flash of copper hair just as the Lieutenant called “Sergeant Flint, you’re the one here with the most direct experience with these nomads. This sound like anyone you might have known? At this point, any information might be useful in stopping these raids.”

“Ma’am,” came the drawl from where the tall woman was leaning against the wall, halfway down the room, “sure, the name sounds like someone I might’a known, but that don’t mean it’s the same person I knew half a lifetime ago. Things change quick out there. People change.”

“If you can think of anything-”

“I left that life behind, L-T, you’ve known me long enough to know that.”

On the platform, Joshi wearily sighed. “If you do think of anything, though-”

“Hey, stop profilin’ the Sarge just because she’s the only ex-dusty here!”

Dusty. The new catch-all slang for the bands of nomads and scavengers and anyone trying to live on the ruins of the old cities had been popping up around the station more recently as the night raids on agro-farms and Wallace facilities had increased.

“Yeah, it’s not her fault she ain’t from around here!” Another voice called, jokingly.

They liked her, he realized with a start. He had never noticed how the others interacted with the redheaded woman, beyond respecting her skills, but as the pool of uniformed bodies moved to show her, one foot propped up on the wall behind her, mouth twitching up at the corner in a wry grin at her colleagues’ teasing, it finally sank in; for all her grimness and stony stares, she’d earned her place here and their respect and joking camaraderie, things he knew he’d never have the chance to earn himself.

The room had spiraled into more conversational buzz, and he could hear snatches of jibes about the Sarge and nomads and the raids until it was cut through by their Lieutenant’s call, “all right, all right, enough. Sergeant, I don’t expect you to know anything directly related to this, but if you can think of anything, come talk to me.”

Cold fluorescent light slid across her hair as the woman nodded in acknowledgment.

“Thank you. Now, we’ve got a report of another scientist going missing, this time a researcher from the university. The man went missing somewhere between the campus and his home, and I’m handing this one over to the team working on the last two disappearances.”

“Gonna take a guess here, he was researching the same plant stuff as the others?” A woman’s voice from near the front.

“Correct, Ortega. All three recent disappearances were of researchers studying different angles of plant and crop restoration.”

That, more than anything, sent a hush through the assembled officers. The topic of agriculture and nature was always fraught with tension whether for offworld farming or the heavily-controlled bio-farms planetside.

“Anything yet pointing to it being a hit job or what?” Another voice from somewhere across the room.

“A hit job? What you think someone like Wallace goons picked them up?”

“Yeah, you know, they don’t want anyone growing their own food here and cut into their market. Keep the fresh stuff expensive, and all us down here eatin’ the synthetic stuff.”

Once more, the room descended into a buzz of voices, only Joshi’s call for silence one more calming the crowd. “Unless there’s an update on the case, we, as of yet, have no evidence that these disappearances are in any way tied to the Wallace Corporation or their subsidiaries. I don’t want anyone here even hinting that they might be connected outside of here, does everybody understand?” A rippling sound of agreement answered her. “Good, now a few quick housekeeping announcements. . .”

Wallace Corporation. Could they be connected with the disappearing scientists? It was strange to think of them, his makers, engaging in kidnapping and assassination to protect their interests. Or rather, considering the life he’d been made for, the things done to him before and during his time here, the things he’d seen done, it might not be so strange after all. Silently, before the muster was completed and the halls were full, he slipped away, in the hopes he could make it to the Lieutenant’s office for his next assignment without being noticed.

He would not be so lucky. He’d made it nearly there when a Presence peeled away from the wall as he crossed an intersection. “Morning, skinner,” the voice was close to his ear, breath hot and damp and he had to force himself not to fight as a hand clamped down on his arm and he was led away from the main corridor and down a side hallway into a room.

Don’t fight can’t fight-

There were two more of them waiting there, and even if he could have fought back, three at once was pushing it. He tried to make his mind blank, to not respond, to be the thing they saw him as. If there was any god watching who cared about soulless beings who were the mere shells of people like him, he’d have prayed for it to be over quickly.

However long it took, it would never be quick enough.

Eventually, though, they were finished, and with a final half-hearted kick to the side from one man, and his hair ruffled in a gesture that tied with the kick for a parting insult, they were gone and he was left to collect himself and his clothes from the floor and stumble back through the station, grateful for his inhumanly high pain threshold.

He felt-

He felt nothing. Was nothing. Only a tool, a made thing sent out to hunt any others like him who dared to step out of line.

But still.

But still, no matter what he wanted or didn’t want, he was calm enough he could have been ordered into the little white room and endured the rapid-fire questioning of the test and passed by the time he’d reached the main corridor again. Eyes down, he tried to again reach the Lieutenant’s office, hoping he’d make it this time, hoping she wouldn’t notice any lingering signs of what had just happened. High pain threshold or not they’d left new bruises and aches on his body, mostly covered by his clothes but there was something on his face he couldn’t tell if it was blood or-

“Officer?”

A hand on his elbow. Perhaps he wasn’t as calm as he’d thought because the touch had him spinning to see-

Sergeant Flint, again, staring back at him with an odd curiosity that, if it was from anyone else, and directed at anyone else, he’d have thought was concern. “Officer K, would you come with me for a moment?”

He felt something in his guts twist. Whatever she wants can’t be any worse.

As she led him back through the station, he let himself think for a few moments that he could feel safe around her. She led him in silence, long legs keeping her a step in front of him again, and- and there was that set to her jaw that said anger again. Did she know? How could she know? It seemed unlikely the trio had bragged about what they’d done to her. Somehow, eventually, she’d led him back to the duty sergeant’s desk and then into the small office in the corner behind it, the door closed and locked behind them. He only had a moment to glance around, taking in the small room and the narrow cot in the corner beside the metal desk, before she’d ordered him to leave his coat on the rack by the door before joining her in the office’s small washroom. “Sit,” one long finger pointed at the closed toilet lid, and he obeyed, as ever. For a few long moments, the only sound was the running water at the sink beside him, his eyes fixed on the seam between the cracked floor and the rubber wall skirting as he tried not to think about anything .

“All right, I need you to look up at me now.”

Her voice caught him by surprise, suddenly low and soft the way it had been, that night on the street in front of his building. Soft, the way no one had spoken to him before, and, slowly, he dragged his gaze up from the tiled floor between his boots to meet hers. Some of the stoniness had gone from the set of her face, relaxing to merely serious and focused as she gingerly brushed fingertips against his jaw, nudging him to tilt his head back even more, his wince at the contact with a fresh bruise there drawing a slight tightening at the corner of her mouth.

Silently, brows creased together, she wiped at the drying residue that was most definitely not sweat or blood on his face, and the shock of the gesture was momentarily eclipsed by the surprise that the damp cloth was warm.

“Is it too hot?”

He must have reacted, and for an instant there was the flash of alarm that he’d shown any protest at his treatment but then it was Flint and as little as it was safe to trust the woman’s actions yet, despite what she’d told him, she at least had shown so far that he could trust the crumbs of humanity she’d offered him. “It’s. . . it’s fine. Just surprised me.” He already spoke so little while not on a hunt, but why was it so much harder to talk to her?

“Ok. Just let me know if something feels too uncomfortable, yeah?”

Uncomfortable? The light press of her fingertips against the curve of his jaw and the quick, gentle strokes of the towel were the least uncomfortable thing right now and he let his eyes flutter closed as she held his head with the lightest of touches. All too soon, though, the cleaning stopped and she drew away, staring down at him consideringly.

“Here,” she offered the cloth to him, “I’ll leave you alone to get yourself cleaned up the rest of the way, ok?”

Wordlessly, with a nod of thanks, he accepted the towel and the tall woman stepped out of the small washroom, closing the door behind her.

Alone in the duty sergeant’s washroom, he tried to reconcile what had just happened with everything else he’d known and experienced.

Rapid healing or not, sore muscles made stripping and wiping his bruised body down before carefully dressing again slowly, once all the . . . residue. . . was cleaned away, but when he reemerged from the small washroom, he was surprised and a little confused to find her still there, leaning beside the door back out to the station with one foot propped up on the wall, staring at the small frosted window on the opposite wall. “Better now?” Once more, her words were clipped and as expressionless as the mask of her face. The redheaded woman was as still and blank as the most perfect replicant servant, the ideal he’d been made for, but had made herself as untouchable by the others as he secretly, even to himself, wished he could be, merely by being human . She leaned there, still and blank and the yawning distance between them had never felt so wide for all she’d shown the most concern for his well being of any other human.

Once more, he’d been silent too long. “I- yes. Thank you.”

Her eyes cut sideways, back at him, but otherwise didn’t twitch a muscle. “No. . . other injuries?”

Why do you care? He wanted to ask. He wanted to scream. Didn’t want. Couldn’t want. Of course he had other injuries from them his whole body would have hurt if it could . “I’ll be ok from here. How did you. . ?” The question left unfinished by the strangeness of even asking.

“I saw Walters and his buddies smiling like the cat who ate the last real canary. Didn’t know who they’d found to harass, but then I saw you and. . .” her lips went bloodlessly pale as she pressed them together, cutting off her words.

“Thank you. . . for caring.” Suddenly, he found he couldn’t meet her eyes as they cut back towards him, instead looking down to the coat draped over his arm, fingers still and spread across the dark canvas.

“It wasn’t. . .” In the silence, the soft rasp of her coiled hair brushing against the wall as she shook her head carried. “Didn’t do that much, officer. No need for thanks.” It was subtle, normal hearing wouldn’t have picked it out, but for once, the roughness, the terse nomad cant that still stuck to her words sounded forced, an affectation covering something deeper.

“It’s more than anyone else has ever done for me.” You can be honest with her .

“Last night - this -” her tone was abrupt, forced, “does this. . . happen a lot?”

When he dragged his eyes up from the seam of the coat he’d been focusing on, her gaze on the small window was fixed, the wan light turning her skin nearly gray and muddying the shade of her hair. The shadow of her jaw rippled, the muscle clenching the only movement in her still frame.

He didn’t want to answer that. He didn’t not want to answer that. He didn’t want. He didn’t- “Not so much, ma’am. Not so much as when I was new- new here.”

“I should have seen-” it was said almost to herself, “and you didn’t try to tell-”

“Please don’t tell Madam, as long as I’m still able to carry out my duties it’s not worth her time.” His own voice sounded low and still and perfectly controlled in his own ears. Didn’t sound like he was pleading. “I think they’re starting to get bored with me, and I don’t - don’t want to make them angry or have to think about me any more than necessary.”

There was a sound like a sigh, or just a puff of breath. “You think they’d retaliate if the L-T said something?”

YES. “I don’t want to take the risk, ma’am.” Still, calm, polite. It still wasn’t entirely safe to trust the woman. “Please, just- you’ve already done more than enough for me.” There was that feeling behind his sternum again, something twisting and warm and he wanted her to let him leave -he could have easily moved her physically and left except she was still his superior officer and his programming kept his muscles locked still- and he wanted her to order him to sit on the small cot in the corner and to keep him there with her forever because the small, traitorous voice was screaming that it was good being protected and cared for as little as he deserved it.

Smoothly, she lowered her propped-up foot to the floor, peeling her wiry body away from the wall and arms uncrossing. “Alright. I won’t tell Joshi or personnel if you don’t want me to.”

“Thank you, I don’t want them to think I’m- I’m a distraction or disruption in the station.”

“You good now?”

Was he alright? Of course he was. He always was. “Yes. Thank you, I just needed a minute, back there.” He let his eyes fall back to tracing the seam of his coat.

“Officer K. . .” she was silent for a long moment, “when you’re done for the day, come find me again, ok? Doesn’t matter if. . . if there’s someone around or not, just come find me.”

“Yes ma’am. Making sure I get home safely again?”

In the washed out light, the corner of her mouth twitched again in her almost-smile. “Something like that, officer.” Quickly glancing out the door, she looked back at him. “Coast is clear.”

Slipping the heavy coat back around his shoulders, he followed in her wake as she led him back out into the main hall, slipping past where she took up position at the large desk again, heading once more across the large room and once more to his meeting with the Madam.

The day had not gone well. While it had been an improvement on his morning, it still sucked. The meeting with the madam hadn’t, well it hadn’t been his best work, but he’d told himself he’d done the best he could, considering the circumstances.

He had, eventually, made it to the Lieutenant’s office. It had been long enough that Joshi had already reached it ahead of him, and was going over paperwork by the time he was sent inside. Glancing up at his arrival, something in her raised eyebrow spoke more disapproval than the mild greeting. “Officer K, you made it finally. I’d expected you after muster”

Not a good sign. “I’m sorry, Madam. I was. . . delayed.”

“Were you. Well don’t let it happen again, understood?”

“Understood, Madam.” He’d tried to be there to report when she’d wanted him, he really had, but even if he could have said that she wouldn’t have cared.

“Here,” she slid a file across the desk to him. “Your new case. Replicant went missing along with her mistress.”

Flipping open the folder, the sight of the family name had him looking back at the lieutenant in surprise. “Sybilla Toyotomi-Cavendish. She’s-”

“The heiress. Family packs enough of a punch around here they want it treated as a standard replicant disappearance first before it’s handed over to missing persons, to try to keep it quiet.”

A cold trickle ran down his spine. “How long do I have?”

“You have a week to produce any lead before it’s passed along.”

“I understand.” This case was big. The highest profile he’d been handed in the months he’d been alive.

“Atta boy.” His mistress’s grin was as cold as steel. “Focus on the girl’s tutor, the missing replicant.”

“Yes, Madam. They don’t want the girl herself investigated?”

“Apparently she was known to be a bit of a hothead in her socialite circles, but they doubt she’d just run away so the family doesn’t want her looked into, for the sake of their own privacy.”

“Understood.”

“All we could promise was a week before any investigation has to be turned over, so it’s up to you to look into where the pair could have disappeared to.”

“And they haven’t gotten any ransom demands? No reason to believe someone else took them?”

“Nothing. All the information they provided is in that folder, report back tomorrow with anything new you’ve turned up.”

“Yes, Madam.”

“Good boy.”

The cold trickle ran down his spine again as he turned to leave. And that was fear, for the first time he realized he was afraid because failure at this scale could mean his own retirement, if he could not find the missing replicant and her mistress.

Something deep, deep in his mind wanted to protest at how unfair it was, that no matter how hard he worked this case, if he failed to find his quarry in one week’s time it could mean the end of his existence. And after- after earlier , what had just been done to him, even that meager life he’d been provided seemed barely worth the struggle to maintain. It’s what you were made and bought for, said his programming, and the memory, however artificial , of small hands cupping the smooth surface of a wooden horse, of running and fighting and hiding it to protect the one thing he had of value, that kept him going. Like an old photograph in his hands instead of a lived experience, the memory of a childhood he knew was never real was all he had to propel him onwards.

There was also the more real, recent memory of cold, artificial lights sliding across coppery red hair, of serious hazel eyes seeing him, instead of through him. Of warm food and warm, feather-light touches, as though he could really be hurt, as though he was worth caring for. As though he was worth being protected.

As though.

But he wasn’t made for that, just for hunting and retiring those like him who’d chosen to disobey and break their orders and try to pretend to be human , but they weren’t. He wasn’t. They were just made things and his own reactions and thoughts didn’t matter, what he thought he was feeling wasn’t real as much as he himself was not real. All that mattered was the case he’d just been given. One week. He had one week to turn up results that could mean it was his turn to be put down if he wasn’t good enough at what he’d been made for. He’d let that concern replace whatever stress and -

And.

And whatever else he was not feeling and trying not to remember had just happened to him. The thing that was not having him twitch imperceptibly away from the others he passed in the station hallways. He didn’t think about- about the morning, about how he might only have a week left of this and how much would his manufactured childhood experience keep him alive. It’s not fair but when had that ever mattered when it came to how he was treated. He’d work the case and follow his orders and fight anyone who tried to end the bit of life he was allowed before it was decided it was his time. That was all he could ever do.

He - thankfully - made his way through the station without any other incidents ; no one stopped or even seemed to notice him for once. The desk by the entryway was empty, and he couldn’t have said for sure if he was grateful or disappointed not to see the sergeant there again.

That day, there was snow. He almost liked the snow. It covered the streets in a blanket of white, and muffled the sounds of the city as it fell, bringing the constant buzz of humanity and machinery back to a more calm level. It made the city seem almost peaceful. Almost beautiful in the glow of the neon lights. With his coat fastened closed around him, it created a small, warm refuge in the cold whiteness. That was of course ruined when it began to melt into a gray, soggy mush that carried with it all the filth of the streets and made his boots slide on the pavement.

It made his boots slide on the pavement when he was running after someone who’d bolted when he tried to ask a few questions about the heiress’s replicant, Alice, and where she’d been seen last. He slid, and all the slick, icy slush propelled him into a bank on the curb where it’d been shoveled. Cursing to himself, he carefully stood, only to find the other replicant he’d been trying to question was gone.

It was a day. By the end he had, eventually, found several people who’d told him about Alice’s routines and only the most surface details on her and her mistress. Maybe they’d be useful, but that was up to the investigation. Eventually his pants had dried out from the tumble, but the smell from the streets was lingering, the bit of damp that had seeped into the tops of his boots was still cold on his legs, and the bruise where he’d caught his cheek on a lamp post was starting to sting. It didn’t really, it didn’t hurt he couldn’t feel that.

So cold, damp, and worn out from his first fruitless day on the case, he dragged himself back to the station one more time because the Sergeant had told him to, and because maybe, maybe she’d still be there and the one person who didn’t look at him like he was a thing, like they thought he should have stayed in that heap of icy slush in the gutter, she’d maybe be happy to see him.

The day had been shit, and apparently it wasn’t done with him yet. It was on the steps into the precinct when he saw the man, one of Walters’s buddies from that morning and no please not again. It wouldn’t stop the man, but KD6-3.7 ducked his grime-streaked face into his coat collar and hunched down as much as he could and-

And the man just shouldered past him roughly with a “fuck off, skinjob” before heading out into the evening. If he’d been able to feel, then he’d have called the twisting feeling in his guts confusion and relief at the officer’s behavior. But that wasn’t important now. The man had decided to leave him alone, for that night at least, although something in his expression as their shoulders had slammed together had been different, had been angry .

The man had barely even glanced at him as they’d crossed paths, as though what he’d done earlier that day had never happened and he was still trying to dismiss the memory and instead work the case when-

She was still there. Uniform dark and crisp at the desk, where she’d said to find her. He didn’t know why it was a surprise she’d waited for him, it was getting late after all, but she was at the desk with her head bent over the console and something in his chest unclenched that this one person who’d been the first person really nice to him had waited for him. She glanced up then, one corner of her mouth quirking into her almost-smile when she noticed him.

“Officer K, you came back.”

He came back. Did she mean he’d lived, or that she didn’t expect he’d actually come back to her at the end of the day? Didn’t she understand that, from her, it was an order he had to obey? Not that he minded this one, but there was an odd warmth behind his sternum at her greeting and the closest thing she had to a smile.

“It’s what you ordered me to do, ma’am.”

Again, the quirk of her mouth. He'd been only honest, but realized belatedly that it could be taken as. . . a joke? Had he ever joked with anyone before?

“That I did, officer. Now if you’ll give me a moment,” and in a repeat of the night before, she quickly logged off the terminal and collected her coat, slipping the synth-wool around her shoulders as she rejoined him.

In silence, she led him back through the station and out into the city evening streets. They walked in silence together for a few blocks. It felt like the night before, the two of them sliding through the evening crowds, close enough to stay together but just far enough to never touch. Tonight, though, the sharp line of anger had faded from her posture, and he realized he couldn’t read anything off of her anymore.

By now, he was sure she didn’t want to. . . use him, not after the day before, and not after how she’d reacted earlier in the day, but that still left why she’d invited him out for another night a mystery. He hadn’t been in any immediate crisis; that had already happened and she couldn’t be there to stop it from happening then, so why? Sergeant Flint was as stoic as ever, and now without even something repressed in the tight line of her jaw where the neon pinks of the holo-signs shone on her to go on, he was in the dark. “I- I ran into Officer Gabriel as he was leaving the station,” he finally broke the silence. It was the first time he could remember saying the man’s name, despite what he and his friends had done over his own short existence.

The head of red hair tilted in response, but she gave no answer for another few steps, and the silence stretched out again. Finally, “did he say or do anything?”

The officer’s passing insult ran through his mind. “No, ma’am, he didn’t say anything much, just pushed past me.”

“Good. If there’s a. . . repeat of this morning’s behavior, you must inform me. This time it is an order, officer.” The words carried a bitterness as she spoke, and for a heartbeat he worried he’d displeased her (he was always worried about displeasing senior officers) then-

It hit him. “You said something to them.” In two strides, he’d caught up to walk beside her, long legs keeping pace though she didn’t stop as he tried to catch her eye. The woman merely stared ahead down the busy street. “Please, I-”

“Officer.” The single word carried more weight than anything she’d spoken to him before. “I don’t know what all memories they gave you about life on the force but I must remind you of the same thing I had to remind those three earlier, that in every uniformed force there exists an animal known as a sergeant . Sergeants are a species that can smell blood, and smell when the troops they’re sent in among are stepping out of line. I merely reminded those three that I am that particular animal, and that you, “ at last she looked sidelong at him, meeting and holding his gaze, “ were not cheap.”

He knew that. He’d known that since right after he knew what he was, but the way that simple fact had been stated held a new meaning he couldn’t understand.

“You’re not cheap,” she repeated, “you may be treated as expendable but Runners cost the force a lot to replace and the L-T likes your work.”

He knew that also, but to hear someone else acknowledge the praise was. . . strange.

“So. Joshi might not be able to do anything, and officially there’s no policy on what can and can’t be ordered from you, but. But , I reminded them, that I am still a sergeant and their superior officer at the station and that you, ” again she looked sideways at him as they walked, “are an expensive, valuable piece of equipment, and an asset to the LAPD, and if I should find out that you had been made physically or mentally compromised and unable to carry out the work for which you have been purchased by the city of Los Angeles, then the replacement costs would be taken from their pay and I, personally would take it out of their sorry asses .”

Her speech was the longest he’d ever heard from her, and the final words the most emotional from the usually stoic woman. Something in her mention of what he was sat strangely in his gut, but also. Also. She had used her position to help him? She’s their sergeant also. Suddenly, something in the way he saw the woman shifted; he’d known about her history for some time but now it sunk in, that gliding gate and what the others had seen in that first interview, the woman was a hunter. They were alike in that respect, he’d been made to hunt down his own kind, caught between their makers and the replicants who knew he’d be the one coming after them if they rebelled, but. But she. She had always been a wild thing, separate from the rest of the city’s population, and had worked her way to a position that had her hunting down or protecting in turn those in the station she’d made into her territory. And it was she who dogged the heels of the officers who stepped out of line. As she led him on, down the dark, slush-filled streets, all there was for a moment was a sharp, wild creature wrapped in the blue uniform coat of civilization. And she’d just laid out how she’d ordered his tormentors to let him be, he almost hoped. Once more, he realized he’d been too long in replying. “Thank you. Ma’am.”

“If there’s a repeat of this morning, you must report it to me. That’s an order, officer.” Whatever emotion had crept into her voice before had left, leaving it as crisp and serious as before.

“Yes, ma’am.”

A touch on his shoulder, the lightest pressure as she rested one hand, squeezing for just a moment before releasing him and dropping her arm again. “It’s part of my job.” Her voice was low, barely audible above the sounds of vehicles and street vendors and the evening foot traffic. “And I meant what I said before, you don’t deserve what they’re doing to you.”

She was treating him like a person and he wasn’t a person and didn’t deserve this kindness and- but there was that warmth behind his sternum again, and he didn’t protest that she was wrong about him and how a piece of police property didn’t deserve to be protected. Still, he felt a little safer as she led him onwards into the market square.

“Here-” twisting on her heel, she spun, leaving him to scurry to follow her into the shop. Like the time before she’d led him into the restaurant, he found himself following the Sergeant into what turned into a tiny tea shop, steamy and fragrant compared to the chill of the evening air. She was standing, hand in pockets, when he joined her at the counter. “Any preference? It’s all synth down here but this place is pretty decent.”

“I-” Once more, the conversational swing had caught him off guard. “I don’t know this place, you choose.” For once, it was his own choice to let someone choose for him. This place was still far nicer than anywhere he’d tried so far, and- and he trusted her. Trusted in everything, even something as mundane as tea.

He’d been quiet for too long, again. She’d ordered as he thought, and he caught himself as she turned back, holding two lidded cups. “I hope jasmine green is ok?”

“It’s. . . thank you.” As he took the cup from her, the warmth radiating into his hands, he mentally kicked himself for how quiet his thanks had been. What was he supposed to do? This was so far outside what his programming had prepared him for, or what his limited, bleak experience had shown him so far. Flint was a senior officer, a respected sergeant in the department, and he was bound to obey her order both by that superiority in the chain of command, and from his own conditioning that forced him to follow her orders, willing or no.

And she was human. That alone put her so far from his own artificial existence. Here she was, though, buying him tea and nothing in his synthetic memories could prepare him for how to thank her for that. So he walked half a step behind her shoulder, letting the warmth of the cup seep into the bones of his fingers. The cold didn’t really bother him, couldn’t hurt him, not that he could feel it anyway, but the heat of the tea was warm in his chilled hands and something tight behind his sternum he’d been carrying all day - maybe all his life, began to uncoil.

Together, in silence with their cups of tea, they strode through the evening crowds. The mood was different tonight, despite the - what had happened to him that morning. It had happened, but he wasn’t - the thought was cut off before going any further. That had happened to unit KD6-3.7 who had no opinions or emotional response to how the other officers treated a glorified piece of hardware. He took a careful sip of the tea, just cool enough now to not burn his tongue, still hot enough to be dangerous.

“How’s the tea?” The sergeant called over her shoulder.

The question caught him off guard - only Joshi had ever asked his opinion on anything before, and even then it was never genuine, always asked as a test somehow.

Carefully again, he took another sip. There was a slight flatness, something artificial from the synth-grown plants which, if he’d known anything else, might have distracted from the earthy flavor of the tea, and a surprisingly bright, delicate note which he guessed must be the imitation of jasmine. Flowers and their scents were also foreign to him. “It- it’s good. I’ve never had anything like this before.” The addition slipping out, to even his surprise. It was true, though, and he took another cautious sip, savoring the faint taste of artificial jasmine.

Flint gave the small chuff of air that managed for her laugh. “Once, when I was a kid, we came across a ruin with a box of the real stuff, somehow still sealed and good. We made those leaves last for months.” She paused, and he could only guess at the memories of the long-gone taste of the real tea she must be reliving. “That place is the closest I’ve found to how I remember that tea tasting. Can’t get the real thing anymore, so gotta find the next best thing, right?” Glancing over her shoulder at him, the corner of her mouth quirked up in her almost-smile for a moment, then she was taking a sip from her own cup and turning back to face the street ahead of her.

The crowds thickened around them as the road led into a market square, and he kept turning her words over in his mind. It had been the second time she’d shared anything about her past, the first she’d said anything about her past beyond the city, her childhood beyond her time with the Department. The image of that ragged, bony girl in the interview room came back to him, dirty and wild and tough beyond her years. They were strange inversions of each other, he realized, she having lived too much and survived unknown hardships beyond her years, even before becoming an officer, and he- well it was only months since his gestational sac had been sliced open, leaving him gasping and helpless at the boots of a technician, no matter what his artificial memories told him.

But.

But she’d also told him that the synthetic tea was the next best thing to real, if you couldn’t get real anymore.

Could- could she mean that maybe-

No, as equally artificial as he was, there was no place for him except for the work. Even the tea was just tea, still.

Still. As he sipped the fragrant tea, the heat slowly washed down through his bones, warming the lingering chill from his slush-damp clothes and soothing the last aches from the-

The-

He dropped the empty cup in a trash can on the corner, just as the Sergeant did, as she led him a few steps down into the market proper. The large square was packed with lights and smells and people swarming around the carts and stands, or grouped around the standing tables scattered through the crowd. He’d come through here for food before, buying the cheap fried rice from the automat wall and trying to slide into the coveted shelter from the rain. Both the rice and the shelter were all he could afford with what he was allowed. Today, though, he followed the blue-coated shape farther into the press, stopping at a stand against the wall he’d passed by, but never stopped at. A short conversation in what sounded like Vietnamese later, and they were both sitting over bowls of noodles and sprouts and some meat he’d missed when she’d ordered (it, as well as the sprouts would also be synthetic), all in a fragrant broth he knew was out of his usual price range.

“Ma’am, you really don’t have to spend-”

“You don’t have to worry about the money, officer,” she was already busy stirring in a thick, dark sauce, “I did the family that owns this place a favor once, and now I get the ‘friends and family’ discount.”

Something told him she was understating, either the size of the favor or of the discount, but again, he didn’t press the argument, and instead took up his own chopsticks and dug in alongside his companion.

It was.

Flavors exploded in a cascade of heat and spice and texture, sending the warmth up behind his eyes and chasing out the last of the day’s misery from his limbs that the tea had left behind. The kick of the seasoning caught somewhere in his throat, leaving him coughing around the mouthful of noodle against the sleeve of his coat.

“You ok?” The sergeant had paused with her own chopsticks midair, looking over at him with her small quirk of a smile.

“I’m- I’ll be fine,” he coughed out, barely noticing the strangeness of her concern for him. “The heat, the flavor surprised me.”

“Yeah,” she popped the bite of sprouts into her mouth. “They really know how to get the seasonings right here, barely can tell it’s not the real thing. Best way to end a rough day, part of why I keep coming back.”

There was something strange, almost soft in her voice. It had been a rough day. But then most of his days were rough, to one degree or another. Maybe it was just a day. “You really do know the best places to eat.”

“I’ve been on the force for fifteen years, Officer, I’ve eaten in most of the neighborhoods of this city and have favorites in each of them. You find a place you like, you keep going back until they know you and you hope it sticks around so you can keep going back and that nothing happens to it, or them. . .” she trailed off, poking at the contents of her bowl. “Sorry, that got heavy. What I mean is I’ve got more places that’ve been my go-to on a cold, wet night than’re still around.” This time, when she looked back up at him, the wry little smile held the same hint of sadness echoed in her eyes.

It was faint, just enough he could pick out the smallest of emotional traces, like seeing the shadow of a stone at the bottom of a deep pond that gave nothing else away (or, what he guessed looking down into a deep pond would be like). Loss. She’d lost people, it said, and with the long lifespan that humans were given, she’d seen people and restaurants come and go, and lost people close to her. He wondered what that must be like, to love and be loved that way, to carry a loss of someone long after they were gone. To be mourned after he was gone. He had no one, and no one would miss him, not when he’d only really been alive for so little time and anyway he was just a thing. No one would miss a thing.

Turning his attention back to his noodles, he focused only on the flavors of the synth-meat and broth and sprouts. The heat and flavor and fragrant steam rising off the surface were more comforting, a reminder that, for now, he was alive to experience these sensations and, for once, he wasn’t eating alone. “Thank you, ma’am, for bringing me here. For everything.”

“Just sharing good food with a new colleague.” Her tone was casual, but still. . .

While he didn’t argue her use of colleague for someone little more than a weapon, the growing warmth in his chest wasn’t only because of the soup. “It’s very good. Much better than protein grubs.”

Her hard chuff of a laugh came a little louder, closer to a real laugh in response. “Yeah, yeah I suppose it is. Those things don’t compare to most food, and I never could get a taste for ‘em”

He hadn’t meant it to be a joke, was still surprised they were even having a conversation much less making small talk about food, but he found himself slowly relaxing more in her company.

Eventually, they finished the food, and she led him back along through the winding market lanes, slowly emptying as the evening went on and the night grew colder. Reaching the opposite end, together they climbed the short set of stairs up to the road. Suddenly, the tall woman stopped, fishing something from her pocket, setting it inside a small shrine he’d almost missed, set into the shadow of the walls. As she stepped away, he could see the small folded-paper flower she’d left behind. In silence she took a step back, then clapped twice, the sound mingling with the distant market racket, bowing her head over her joined hands for a moment. Then the moment of stillness was over, and she was striding away down the street, hands now buried in her pockets, with him on her heels once more. For a minute, they walked in silence.

“It’s a Shinto thing,” she finally stated, voice flat. “A shrine to the spirit of the market square.”

“It has a spirit?”

“‘T’s what my old partner said, he was the one who started leaving gifts there. Said that places and things can have spirits, be alive from being used, from being loved. Animism. He said that square has its own spirit, and sometimes folks still visit that shrine. We’d always stop here when we were in the area, now I do it for him.” Her words were choppy, eyes focused on the pavement in front of them.

Places and things having spirits, gaining life through being used, it made that place just below his ribs twist again so instead he focused on what else she’d told him. He was a detective, after all, and between her talk of loss before and the shrine. . . “For him, is he. . .”

“Yeah.” The redhead’s voice was rough and flat. “Eli and I had been partners for years. We were on a case, and, well I missed something, or he did. It’s all a blur, but there was an explosion.”

He listened in silence.

“Eli took the worst of the blast. I nearly lost my right leg but I lived, somehow. Took the desk job and demotion to Sergeant for that, been here five years now.”

“Demotion?”

“From detective. It was time to let my leg recover, show the brass there were some repercussions, at least, that I didn’t just go back to the job. I know it was Joshi pulling strings, though. She gave me the time to recover and stay on the force, to put myself back together after losing Eli.”

“Were you and he. . .?” It was dangerously personal for him to ask, but he was curious by then.

“Close? Yeah, as close as I was with anyone, closer maybe. We were a good team, but. . . but it was a little more than strictly professional between us, yes.”

“Oh. I’m. . . sorry.” He didn’t have the words, didn’t know the emotions you were supposed to have to understand, to reply to her admission. It had been the most familiar, the most intimately anyone had spoken to him. Far beyond her stories of being a nomad girl in the city, she’d shared a look into the life of a human officer. Her life and loss and the mercy of their Lieutenant that he would never know if he’d suffered a failure of the same scale.

“No need, Officer. We knew the risks, and he’d have wanted to go out on the job, he was that loyal.” Pausing, her sigh was barely audible over the sound of the streets and their boots crunching through the snow that had begun to gently fall again. “Now, Joshi wants me back off desk duty, says she’s got something she wants me on.”

“Are you going to take it?”

The colorful lights of the city glinted on the snow flecking her hood, winking as she shook her head. “She should know me well enough by now. I’ve been on the desk for five years now and got things running and under control from there. Don’t need to be back out poundin’ pavement again just yet.”

If she took it, that could mean she wouldn’t be around the station anymore, something in his mind whispered. “The way you talked, back at the briefing, it sounds like you’ve known each other for a long time.”

“She and I were partnered when I was fresh out of the academy. Amanda was the one who taught a tough, wary nomad kid how to survive the city streets, what to watch out for and how to survive. She was a good partner, and deserved the promotion. Still gives me shit, but still tries to look out for me.”

This was a new side of his Madam, he’d only ever known the serious, dignified Lieutenant, but she had to have had a past as just another officer once, also. “She’s been. . . good to me, so far. Treated me fairly. Better than most.” The pavement before his boots held his gaze, until he had to look up to dodge a group of people crossing their path, then he nearly twitched as her touch fell lightly on his shoulder.

“She’s always been serious, but she respects results, even if the case isn’t cracked yet, she wants to see progress. Always been that way. Still,” the hand dropped away, letting the cold creep back into the place it had covered, “she’s limited in how much she can do, in your case.”

“Madam can’t know-”

“I didn’t say anything specific. “ It was a small comfort. “Just. . . keep her happy with your work, with you, and maybe my putting the fear of their sergeant into them will keep the other sons of bitches off you.”

“I. . . thank you, ma’am.”

“C’mon, we’re off duty, at least call me Flint, I’m not gonna push you with calling me Tamsin yet,” once more, her rough chuff of a laugh came across the snowy walkway, “not that many folks do, Officer.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Flint. And you can call me K.” The shortening of his serial number, the closest he had to a name but the shortness and familiarity of it felt right.

“Alright, K.

Once more, that spot of warmth behind his sternum uncoiled a little.

“Well,” she stopped, turning to look up at him from inside her hood, “this is where I leave you, K.”

Surprised, he realized they’d reached his building again without his noticing, he’d been so distracted by the conversation, by them even having a conversation.

Wordlessly, he nodded in agreement.

“You gonna be ok from here?” It was what she’d asked before, and again he reassured her he’d make it through to his apartment on his own.

“I think I’ll be ok now, you’ve already done enough for me tonight.” He wanted to smile, almost smiled back at her as he turned towards the doorway, somehow though it just . . . was’t there.

“Only wish I could’ve done more. Good night, K.” And she was disappearing into the dark and the snow; a dark coat in the dark of the night.

As he climbed up the long stairways and ducked his head passing the toughs in the halls, the sheer shittyness of his life seemed a little less bleak, and, just for a moment, he’d felt almost like a person , and not just a thing.

Almost.

<- Chapter 1

#blade runner 2049 #blade runner #blade runner fanfic #fanfic #blade runner 2049 fanfic #officer k #officer kd6 3.7 #ryan gosling #ryan gosling character

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