Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jason is leaning back in his chair, whiskey in hand. Not quite tipping it off its feet. He’s accepting the ambiance of the hotel into himself, catching a quiet moment before he blows the lid on this place, steals the show gems, and skedaddles.

And then a bombshell sidles out of the throng like she’s coming for him. Jason licks his lips and puts the whisky down, the click of glass on laminate drowned out by the convention-rumble surrounding them.

“Hey, darling.” He says.

She steps to him, leaning in to flash her cleavage and whisper into his ear. “Stay off my job, buddy.”

Before Jason can react, she’s stepped back and cross-drawn two SIG-Saur MPXs and is leveling at targets behind him. He hits the floor rolling and comes up back to back with her.

Time to make himself useful now that she’s shot his plans to hell. He starts in on the security guards popping up. Bang bang bang, like whackamole.

“Go!” She snarls at him.

She’s got cover fire knocked, so Jason bolts in an erratic zigzag down the aisles, tapping glass and swiping jewels into a bag.

He’s about to hit the exit when a lithe form clings to his back and blisteringly hot muzzle tucks up under his chin.

“Those are mine.” She hisses into his ear.

The MPX is awkwardly long for a hostage situation.

“Darlin’,” He drawls. “I would never dream of partin’ such a fine woman from her jewels.”

He hooks a leg out from under her and flings her over his shoulder and down the flight of emergency stairs.

He skitters down the stairs after her, black brogues clicking on steel like her heels on carpet. She’s peeled herself off the floor and is leaning against the cracked concrete wall at the bottom, the MPXs dangling by her hips on their straps. It’s clearly a pose. A trap.

“Real clever, darling.” Jason says, and steps to her. He pushes a leg between her thighs, stretching her skirt taut, and kisses her.

She laughs, nails clasped tight around the hand that’s gripping the back of gems.”Nice try, buddy.”

“I’m driving.” Jason says.

She pushes him back, still laughing. “Whatchya waiting for?”

He takes her to a diner, buys her breakfast for dinner. She flirts incessantly and he can’t even find it in himself to resent how she’s got him by the dick.

He ditches the car in the diner lot and takes another from the certified-new-used car lot next door. And then the night is theirs, the slice of highway illuminated by the Camaro’s headlights whipping them past suburbs and back around into the city again.

They ditch it by a club, call a ride to the club, and make like lovers in the back seat until the driver kicks them out three blocks from Jason’s apartment. Jason tips the driver, and she giggles.

Chapter Text

She’d left no way to contact her, and she’d left the extreme desire to contact her. It’s distracting, like they show it in the movies, like when the leather of his gloves stretches tight over his knuckles and he remembers her just as tight and mussing the sleek leather.

He needs to focus on breaking this guys face, not the scent of her that he can’t get out of his gloves. And oh, think of the devil, and she shall appear.

“Hey, buddy,” comes a voice from behind his head. He leads his turn to face her with a pistol.

“Could you take care of this for me, pretty?” She waves at half the lobby.

He’d do anything she asked, and he thinks she knows that. This knowledge feels like capsaicin the crevices of split lips. He lays down cover fire on the sector she indicated, keeping heads down and tagging the feet of any who try to scurry.

But it’s watching her work, that’s the true art form. She has names, and the bellhop is pliable to her requests. Afraid, stammering, pointing.

She grabs a suitcase off the cart and they’re on their way up.

The elevator dings. Jason clears the hall and then presents it to her with a grand gesture.

She blows him a kiss.

He’s ready to shoot the lock off but she produces a branded mag card and swipes it. She must have the magic touch because it opens on the first try. Jason gives a quiet whistle of admiration.

“Get with it, buddy,” she says acidly, and kicks the door open. It doesn’t go far, hooked on the chain. She shoots it, the bang deafening in close quarters.

There’s a yell from the other side.

She jams the solid toe of her shoe into the gap of the door and fires three more shots into the room. The yelling stops. He’d gotten low during the shooting, and now he thinks about the money hiding in the safe down the hall, and about kissing the back of the smooth leg before him.

She kicks the door open, backstroke nearly clipping his face. He rises from his crouch with a lunge, like an attack dog coming up to loom behind her.

She lifts one hand to his chin, guiding and leading him. He whispers, hoarsely, “Not now, darling.”

The next forty odd minutes pass in a haze of blood and money and the only thing he really remembers after it all is a crystalline moment, a reflection in black glass. He saw himself, and her tanned shoulders behind him, crossed with the sidearm straps. There’s blood on his face, his hair is falling from the razor sharp cut, and she’s so clean . He licks his lips and pushes his hair back into place with back of one hand.

He asks, “What’s your name?”

She’s laughing at him. “Buddy, c’mon. Do your makeup when you get home. We gotta go.”

And then they’re on the move again.

Chapter Text

Jason is enjoying french toast in a diner. There’s just something about the way french toast is at diners.

Darling slides into the booth across from him, resplendent and delightfully out of place in her pink fur jacket. She clasps his hands across the table and says so earnestly, “Come with me.”

“Have some french toast,” he suggests. “It’s particularly good tonight. How did you find me?”

She flips her hair back to reveal an earbud. “Scanner.”

He lays a twenty on the table, picks the entire plate of french toast up, and walks out hand in hand with her. The waitress hollers but there’s a Maserati waiting in the parking lot. Time to go.

She’s driving. He’s eating french toast in a goddamn Maserati. Beyonce’s on the radio.

She takes him club hopping as his hot merch languishes in the trunk. They dance, eye catchingly coordinated, as if they’d practiced, and then she dances with all the eyes on her while he picks pockets.

They end the night with several hundred dollars and really fancy bottle of wine. Jason dances for her alone now, boots treading the hood of the Maserati and silhouetted against the starry sky. He obeys her every gesture as she reclines on the curve of the windshield.

It’s perfect, until she leaves him at the drop point with his merch and he has to hunch his shoulders in the night cool and walk home.

Chapter Text

There’s a text on his phone, situated under the pink and purple lilies he’d brought home because they reminded him of her. Which her, he is not sure. This place is as barren as the flowers gently distributing pollen across the dusty tabletop.

The message is an address. He wipes pollen off the screen with his thumb. This is not his burner phone, and he puts it back down.

He takes a lap around the apartment. He considers his cocaine, and everything that falls down to it.

The phone buzzes under the flowers. Pollen falls.

The message reads. “My name is Monica.”

He bundles the lilies back into their carrying bag. There are sunflower seeds, salted and stale, in the cupboard. There is nothing in the cupboard after he removes them. He takes his own car, and drives to the address.

She greets him at the door, looking as tired as the little house. There is a pistol, heavy and gleaming, hanging loose in her hand.

“Hey, hello, Monica darling.” Jason says.

Monica puts the pistol down out of sight and steps back to let him in.

Inside, he can see the pieces that make up Darling strewn across the damaged hardwood floor. Monica stands in the middle of it, defiant in coffee stained sweatpants and a loose tank that’s half holes.

“You look like hell.” Jason says. He holds out the lilies. “I got these.”

The absent for you hangs in the air like dust.

She ignores the flowers until he puts them down on a cluttered table.

“You too, buddy,” Monica says.

“My name is Jason.” Jason says.

“You look like shit, Jason, buddy.”

He huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, well.”

Monica gestures at the couch, strewn with brightly colored blankets and discarded clothing. It looks like she lives on it nearly exclusively. There’s a precarious tower of mugs on the end table. “Make yourself at home.”

There is nothing here like his home; he’d kept the sterile pretension of money, the clean lines and low clutter of his old life and there’s something comforting about the warm human smell and the TV on at a hiss with the captions scrolling. It might be a cooking show that’s on.

Jason dumps his coat over the shoulder of the couch and dumps himself in and untidy sprawl over only half the couch to leave room for Monica. It’s nice to have a name for her other than darling. He smiles at her.

She looks at him warily. Like they haven’t already fucked.

He adjusts his posture to be comfortable to lie on and she takes the invitation, folding herself down onto him and feeling smaller than she ever did as Darling.

Jason holds her gently and loosely and kisses the side of her neck in the place a tattoo will one day reside. And they watch the cooking show until they can make fun of it and they’re all out of sunflower seeds.