text: It was some giant, cosmic joke. It had to be. Somewhere, up in the stratosphere, whatever deities were still watching over us mere mortals were cackling . It was, ironically enough, hilariously unfunny. And, on top that, it was stupid, on my part, to let it go on as long as I had in the first place. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known what I was getting into. I read the brief; front to back, back to front, and in German (for good measure). I could recite it from memory. Captain Rhiannon Ellis, the pride of the Greendale Police Department, was known for her habit of closing cases while seemingly doing nothing but goof off and flirt with everything that drew breath. It was why I’d been hired in the first place. I needed to figure out exactly how much she knew; throw off her investigation; and not get seduced in the meantime. I’d done two of those things. Which is a D+ at best. “Did you actually write a report this time,” Ellis asked, her voice dry as kindling and cutting through the almost peaceful silence that had followed me barging my way into her office with nary a how-to-do, “or am I going to have to fake one. Again.” “Better practice forging my signature,” I said, tossing her my wickedest of grins, the one that promised a myriad of things to come, and flopped down onto the unfairly comfortable sofa Ellis kept by the window. It was perfect for napping -- or pretending to nap, as the case may be, “And don’t forget my distinctive flair for the dramatic.” Gods, this was stupid. I should get out while I have the chance. My employers were already up my ass; my turnover was usually rocket fast. It’s what I was known for . My whole reputation rode on the ability to get in, get the information I needed, and get the heck back out again. It was there, in heavily encrypted plain English, all over the dark web. I hadn’t had to advertise my own services in years, the proof was in the pudding. And, honestly, I’d had enough information a month ago, but I was still hanging around like an idiot. It was easy to play it off as long as I kept the information coming. No one really had the time to delve too deep into my continuing ruse. Though at this point, I wasn’t entirely sure who I was pulling one over on. “I let you get away with too much,” Ellis lamented, overdramatic and with a smile on her face. Gods, she was gorgeous. “If that were true you wouldn’t push my feet out from under your ass while we watch T.V.” “And you wouldn’t get any enjoyment out of it if you didn’t have to try, you absolute cretin .” Because that was the thing, wasn’t it? Ellis had snarked, and snapped, and shrugged me off; I had given back as good as I’d gotten. Ellis had sent me on bullshit beat after bullshit beat; I had delivered every time, petty criminals practically gift-wrapped. Ellis challenged my decisions; I screamed in her face (arguably not my best decision). The point was, for some reason, I kept trying. Ellis started calling me Thorn; I called her Stevie until she cut it the heck out. Ellis said, “ Call me Rhiannon, when we’re not at work ”; I had just laughed because I’d never see Ellis outside of work, right? Right? Ellis -- Rhiannon smiled at me across the table in some dimly lit bar after a case that had gone surprisingly smoothly; against every alarm bell shrieking its fool head off in the back of my brain, I smiled back and held out my package of sour Skittles . A peace offering. Rhiannon had kissed me, in an even dimmer corner of that same bar, her hands tangled in my hair; I kissed her back, the whole world dissolving into whiskey and the tang of citric acid and pure, unadulterated stupidity . I went home with her. It was only supposed to be the one kiss, the one night, the one time. But I’d woken up, so early that it could still be called late, with hazy moonlight streaming in through the open curtains, and rolled over. The darkness threw the parts of Rhiannon’s face that I’d thought I knew into shadow and brought out all of the things I’d never thought to look for. The exact angle of the slant of her eyes; how long her lashes were; the scar across her left cheekbone. She slept with her mouth slightly open and her dark hair spilled across the white pillow like spilt ink. She slept with a knife carefully under her pillow and her arm thrown carelessly across the most immediate threat in her life. I could have killed her. That night or any of the nights after. It wasn’t, technically, in my job description. I was supposed to neutralize the threat that Rhiannon and her team posed to the arms dealers who had hired me. No one said anything about killing her. It wouldn’t be frowned upon , per say, but it wasn’t a part of my contract. I would still get paid if Rhiannon lived. I would still be able to pay for Everly’s treatment if Rhiannon lived. When Rhiannon lived. “What are you thinking about?” Ellis-- in the office she was Ellis. In every report I’d ever drafted, for the Greendale Police Department or for my employers, she was Ellis. In every moment of my joke of a life not spent curled in the corner of Rhiannon’s sofa with a book in my lap and my feet tucked firmly underneath the other woman’s thighs she was Ellis -- asked, setting her pen down on the desk with a quiet click. If there was ever a time to lie my ass off --“What you look like underneath that uniform,” while not exactly true, it also wasn’t entirely a lie. There was something about being in the same room as Ellis, something electric. Something that felt like breaking a rule and knowing you were going to get away with it. Outside of the office, when she was simply Rhiannon, when she favored t-shirts so old and loved that they were practically see through and worn jeans with holes in the knees and frayed hems, she softened. Her smile came easier, her eyes were less calculated, and the soft flutter of her hair around her face blurred her usually jagged edges. Ellis, with her razor wit and sharp gaze, tight braid, and starched uniform, was something else entirely. She was dangerous; ex-military, an expert marksman, she could slit your throat before you realized she was even in the room. And honestly? That kind of did it for me. “Why do I put up with you?” Ellis laughed, leaning forward across her desk and planting her chin into her folded arms, “Your name literally means trouble.” The alias I’d chosen for this job did, anyways. Briar Queens. Rhiannon called me the Queen of Thorns, sometimes. She called me a lot of things, actually. Things I should have hated. Honey. Baby. Sweet Pea. Usually in the bedroom. Sometimes in the kitchen, with the lights dimmed, as I stirred exactly the right amount of sugar into her tea. Sometimes in the living room, when I mindlessly unspooled her wool for her as she knit and I read, Santa Clarita Diet on in the background. “Well,” I started, swallowing around the soccer ball that had formed in my trachea when Ellis had laughed --every laugh in the office was hard won and far between-- and trying valiantly not to think about what that meant, “I’m beautiful, brilliant, charismatic, and very, very good in bed.” I added in a terrible, overdone wink just to earn another of her quiet, smoky laughs. “You are all of those things,” Ellis agreed, her smile soft, too soft for the office and too much for me to deal with before nine in the morning. It wasn’t the kind of smile you threw around; not the kind you let just anybody see. It certainly wasn’t the kind of smile that you offered your coworker with benefits. “What?” I asked, “No ‘but’ in that sentence, Captain?” I expected sarcasm; something witty and maybe a little sexy. I didn’t expect her smile to just brighten, “No ‘but’.” I had to go . I needed to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Dangling twenty five feet above a pit of venomous snakes in the middle of a hurricane would be preferable. “Coffee?” I squeaked, because it was the easiest excuse in the book; find me a cop without a near crippling caffeine addiction and I’ll out-do that guy from the movie with the annoying yellow things and steal you the damn moon. Ellis’ eyes lit up, “Yes, please ,” she reached for the drawer in her desk that I knew housed her wallet, phone, and keys, but I waved her off. “I got it,” I said, “no worries.” I should really look away; she’d settled her desk in front of the large window, so she could feel the sun on her back throughout the day (because the woman was honestly just an overgrown housecat at the best of times) and the hazy morning light hung around her like a glow and it was doing concerning things to my blood pressure. Ellis relaxed back into her chair; her eyes were blue. It was easy to forget since they were so dark, but the second the light hit them just right it was like watching a raven’s wings unfurl, “Thank you, Briar.” Oh. First names. In the office. My hand stilled in midair as I reached for the door handle. “I said no worries,” I told her over my shoulder, because looking back would be a mistake , “Rhi.” The door clicked shut behind me and I pressed my back against it, for lack of anything else solid and sturdy including, apparently, my spine . “Damn, Queens,” Sergeant Walsh, a tall, kind looking man with glasses and approximately seven thousand pictures of his toddler ready to accost an innocent bystander at any given moment, whistled, “What’s got you so hot and bothered this early?” My skin was naturally, blessedly, a little on the darker side thanks to my useless father, but I don’t think all of the melanin in the world could have hidden my blush entirely. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I said, silently praying for an isolated lapse in the structural integrity of the building that would crumble the floor below my feet and send me to the floor below and therefore away from this conversation, “I’m just going on a coffee run.” “Oh, a coffee run,” Walsh’s grin only widened, “is that what we’re calling it nowadays?” “That is what we’ve always called it when someone leaves the office to acquire coffee .” I hissed -- God is fake. God is absolutely fake; God is a figment of humanity's constant need to feel like there is something bigger than them at work, because if God was real either Walsh or I would have dropped dead of a spontaneous coronary at that very moment. “You don’t have Cap’s card, though,” Walsh pointed out; the absolute bastard. He was loving this! “Which means it’s not a coffee run for the whole team. Which means it’s just the two of you. And since you don’t have her card that means that you’re buying the both of you coffee. Probably from that stupidly expensive hipster place down the street that you both love. Which means you’re also going to buy two pastries, which you’re then going to eat together in her office.” Could I kill Walsh and make it look like an accident? No. I scratch out that idea as soon as I think it; the jerk had the audacity to be Rhiannon’s best friend. She’d miss him if I killed him. She'd be sad . “Which means ,” but then again... “it’s a date.” I stared at him in stunned, horrified silence for several long moments. I knew exactly what my face looked like; Everly had snapped a picture once and it now hung, framed, in the living room of our shoebox apartment and acted as a reaction image when someone said something particularly stupid on the internet, “You’ve lost your mind,” I said, faintly. “I have not!” Walsh crowed, clapping his hands and beaming down at me, “You and Cap have a breakfast date. You’re buying breakfast to eat with Cap. This is Girlfriend Breakfast.” “You shut your whore mouth right now, Anthony Walsh,” I warned, pointing one finger at him -- my other hand was still clutching at the door jam to keep myself upright, “it is not a date. It is...” what, exactly, was it? Two friends having breakfast? That could work, except usually ‘two friends’ didn’t mean ‘two people who had sex three to four times a week and spent the night together even more than that’. Friends With Benefits: Now Including Americanos And Gluten Free Muffins! “It is what?” Walsh asked; eyes glinting behind his glasses the way they did when he knew he was winning. “It’s nothing ,” I spat, pushing away from the door and stalking passed him, “bloody detectives!” He danced in front of me, walking backwards and weaving through the bullpen with an ease I refused to envy, “ Don’t you have work to be doing? Go detect something. There’s nothing to detect in my relationship with Rhiannon.” Shit. “ Rhiannon !” Walsh lit up like a Christmas tree and stopped walking, forcing me to either do the same or crash my nose into his sternum, “You come in early,” he held up one finger, “you buy her breakfast,” two fingers, “and now you call her by her first name!” For the love of -- “Yes! Okay, yes. I am sleeping with her. Is that what you want to hear?” I threw my hands in the air like an exasperated mother of four, “I am sleeping with the captain. I have been sleeping with the captain since the drug bust back in freaking August.” “I knew that already,” Walsh looked at me like I was stupid (I’m not stupid), “what I want to know, is what your intentions are towards my best friend?” Thank the freakin’ fake gods I’d shown up early and no one else had managed to stumble their way into the office yet because the pitch my voice took when I shrieked “Intentions? ” back at him would have busted some ear drums. As it was, it lured Ellis out of her office. “Briar, is everything alright?” She asked before she’d even surveyed the scene, “Oh. Tony.” She looked between the pair of us before sighing; too sharp for her own good, that one, “Intentions. Tony, I told you to leave it alone.” I told you . She’d told Walsh about me. She’d told Walsh about us . There was an us . “What?” Walsh’s eyes got all big and innocent, like he wasn’t in the process of actively terrorizing the villagers (the villagers being me, myself, and I.) “I just want to know--” “My intentions,” I repeated dryly. “Exactly!” Ellis looked like she was on the brink of a migraine -- on one hand, awesome , this beat my record by a whole fifteen minutes, on the other I added that fancy migraine medication that was literally just Tylenol and caffeine to my mental shopping list because I knew, for a fact, that she’d taken the last of her supply on Friday. “Incredible,” she sighed, “why I put up with either of you I’ll never know.” She grabbed Walsh by the upper arm, her grip leaving no room for interpretation or struggle -- he was going to go where she wanted him and he was going to do so with minimal whining -- and dragged him to her side, opening up the way to the elevator for me. “On your way, Briar. I’ll handle the peanut gallery,” her hand was gentle between my shoulder blades as she lightly pushed me forward. “Thanks,” I said, darting into the elevator and slamming my hand against the close button until the office was hidden from view by the thick, shiny metal doors and Walsh could no longer somehow manage to get away and teleport back into my personal space. That was a nightmare, to put it lightly. My intentions . He didn’t want to know my intentions. I didn’t want to know my intentions. Hell, I doubt I could tell him if I wanted to. Nothing had gone as I intended. I was a spy , okay? They could throw out words like ‘covert’ and ‘espionage’ and what have you all the livelong day but that didn’t change the fact of what I was. I was the damn spider, cocooned in my web of lies, spinning them one after the other. Everyone else was just a fly; they didn’t matter . Nobody mattered, except for Everly. Which is why I’d intended to do my job, collect the paycheck, and forget the whole thing had ever happened, like I did every time. I didn’t intend to kiss Rhiannon. I didn’t intend to sleep with her, and once I did I never intended for it to become a thing . I never intended to stay the night. I never intended to google how to make gluten free pancakes at six AM on a Sunday. I never intended to fall in love with her. Oh . The elevator doors slid open. Oh no.