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bambimeadows · 26 days ago

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Overtime

GN!reader x Russell Adler

Hey guys, in the spirit of realising I’ve lost my writing abilities and motivation to trauma and depression, I’m shamelessly reposting what I believe is my best work to tumblr from AO3. I hope you enjoy and maybe sharing my writing will be a motivator to learn how to write again.

And just a disclaimer, this has Lazar in it, I was not educated on the horrors or nature of the IDF and the consistent and historic crimes of Israel against the Palestinian people when I wrote this fic years ago in 2021 and played Cold War. I will admit he was never a character that particularly interested me but he was just there so I just used him. I have come a long way since and I will not write about him in particular ever again. A slight double standard considering the U.S military force or CIA is barely any better, trust me I know but uh, yeah I hope you enjoy the fic.

1981 Berlin. The air is crisp, the sun has made an appearance regardless.

Now dusk, it descends towards the horizon and paints swirls of vanilla orange across the sky. It’s a stark contrast to the ground below, Berlin’s miserable, industrial grit.

It’s a gorgeous respite, but the subzero temperatures have bitten your cheeks raw, so it’s about time you go back inside and resume your work.

All-day long, a steady flow of decryption tasks have been tossed at you without so much as a courteous smile in your general direction. After a while, it all seems the same, a linear, monotonous rut. The jury was still out as far as you were concerned - was it better to have your brain zombified by desk work, or ravaged feral by combat?

At least on the front lines there was the variation in scenery. CIA safe house E9, well, you called it the grey place. Everything was grey in there, grey walls, grey chairs, grey steel, you’d look over at the evidence board and see the photographs of the humans you were hunting were grey too. So it was no wonder your mood was rain clouds and all its drizzle.

Your eyes flutter shut, allowing the breeze to taunt you just a moment longer, but then the angelic hush is struck down by the mammoth garage doors beside you.

Your rudimentary tut and sigh coincide with their grumble as they open. You hadn’t wanted company, you much preferred your breaks sans colleagues...

But your heart gives you a stealthy, low jab in your ribcage, because it is him.

Him, who is hues of cognac, rich mahogany leather and toasted honey hair. The way his jaw is set is a cliche of America’s ideal masculinity.

It’s an obvious choice to lust over a man like this. People judge women for lusting over a man like this. Because The handsome-hotshot- Asshole? Really? How predictable, how terribly uncreative and idiotic and self-destructive.

To hell with it though, you had no one you valued the opinions of to tell. Those three inside could laugh at you until they were split at the seams, you didn’t feel this way on purpose.

He does not acknowledge you, yet. Only he could do this and it make sense, if it were anyone else you’d be flummoxed.

Instead he stands a little way away from you and starts to light his cigarette with his infamous silver zippo, his old faithful. Sometimes, typically during the sluggish late afternoons, you see him twirl the lighter around in his agile, spindle fingers. It’s hypnotising if you watch closely enough.

Even his fidgeting is sophisticated. He is perfect.

And when you acknowledge this, it is not a lovehaze sentimental byproduct of your... infatuation(?) It’s a prudent observation, he does nothing to convey humanness. If you cracked open the sturdy husk of him, you weren’t certain you’d find the reds and pinks and intricacies of flesh and organs. Perhaps you’d find silver metallic at best, a ghostly black chasm at worst.

“Nice work on getting us that location, Bell,” his voice is lithe as he takes his first inhale, masochistic to his lungs he is. He exhales nicotine clouds through lips that are silky in the spaces they are not chapped, and his tone is back to it’s imperative gruffness. “What are you doing out here by yourself?”

The initial isolation with him has siphoned your word bank dry - well you’ve never been the social butterfly of the team, to begin with, but Sims, Park and Lazar didn’t make the walls of your throat close in like this.

When allowed to grow too long, your hesitation becomes ripe with meaning, you are all but stammering without moving your lips, so you swallow the dryness and verbalise. “I just needed to get away from it all for a few minutes.”

“Get away from us?” The inflection at the end of his sentence, a glimmer of wry, incognito humour. Squint and you’d miss it, the right corner of his lip did actually quirk up just then. But the inner cities of Hell would see pretty snow flurries before his face arranged into anything pleasant and palpable at the same time.

“Normally I’m able to do so without any issues,” you snipe back.

Knowing exactly how you sound, you point your chin and nose towards the heavens. You wish to look regally aloof, instead, you could discern you look brattish and bashful all at once, this was only corroborated by his delicate scoff.

The intention was to throw him off the scent. The sickly-sweet stench of thrumming hearts, tummy aches and clammy hands didn’t take a fine-tuned bloodhound to sniff out. Apathy would be the optimal approach, but you were yet to master this trade. That was his game.

You see it then, as you always do, in your peripherals, he lifts one of the Marlboros up, and then down.. and then he looks at you. It can be tricky to tell where his eyes swivel and take purchase thanks to the sunglasses that had found a forever home perched on his skull.

It’s how his body turns in your direction, a compass needle, that’s how you know. And he wants you to know because a man of his precision did not have to work at tactfulness. Adler stifles you with his watch, it has the magnetic force to still you in your path, it slows your limbs and quickens your heart. Not like a lion to a gazelle, the dynamic is more off-kilter than that, and gazelles sometimes escape. It’s more like a barn owl to a field mouse, swooping down unprecedented and picking your flesh from your bones before you could even consider what transpires after demise.

But what you wouldn’t give, just for even a few morsels of time, to wiggle your brain into his and in an act of gluttony, gain access to every last thought he had of you, his inner monologues, the passing remarks as he watched you go about your day. You didn’t care if he thought you were the lowest life form on this planet, you’d adore to be put out of your misery regardless.

You cave, turning your head to look him dead on. You see the leftover sun ricocheting off his sunglasses, the frames are casting a shadow over his face like a sundial. “What?”

He shakes his head, he waves his hand, slight haphazard gestures so dismissive, it yields the very fibres of you trivial and inconsequential.

“You’re a member of the team,” he informs you as he flicks the exhausted cigarette butt into the distance. “You can play lone wolf when the job is done.”

As he turns, his hand clamps down onto your shoulder and squeezes electricity up and down the pole of your spine.

It was no sweet, encouraging gesture, you were not a naive, feeble little thing. You knew. Unassuming small doses of control here and there were utilised to maintain dominance, to fortify it’s foundations, over time he might build empires of influence in the open plains of your mind.

The pack leader bangs on the door to be let into his den and throws over his leathered shoulder as an afterthought; “Time to get back to work, don’t you think kid?”

Adler had a pyrokinesis bestowed on him specifically to melt everything dignified inside you.

It’s a few hours later, a nearby digital clock has shifted its neon sabres to 20:00

Park and Adler leave the small office at the other end of the safe house, and as always like ritual or clockwork, they throw an indistinct glance in your direction and exchange a few parting words before they put distance between each other and continue their work separately.

Your eyes are heat-seeking missiles as you watch Adler wander over to Sims. As always, there was no clue on his face as to what he had been talking about with agent Park.

“Is he really all that?” The words and the breath attached are but a hair’s breadth from your ear. You flinch back intrinsically, shoulders hunched up and brow bone bent out of shape as you glance up at the intruder.

The offending party is the mountain-esque man you’ve come to know as Lazar, said mountain is topped with the distractingly unorthodox combo of a burger town t-shirt and black leather suspenders. You contemplate questioning why, you realise there is no point.

A rumble of a laugh emits from him, it comes from the deepest part of his belly and sounds like trombones and thunder harmonising. He pulls a bar of chocolate from his pocket and presses it down in front of you so the royal purple foil is obscuring the face of some Russian spy.

“Oh,” you say, a lightness of sugared surprise lighting up your face as you pick it up and smooth your thumbs over the top. “My favourite, how did you know?”

“Ah,” he taps his nose with a self-pleased wink before placing his hands in his pocket. “I might have had some insider information.”

You let out a breath of a laugh as you began to peel it open. “And what’s the occasion?”

“You sulking around here like the apocalypse is nigh,” he responds, pushing his chest out with a sigh, “But then again, that’s not occasional for you, it’s customary.”

“The apocalypse could be nigh from what I understand...” comes your smart-aleck bite, but he has no interest in it.

You feel the sparks of energy that has overflowed the entirety of him, he’s a loaded spring today, and apparently you are the punching bag of choice. “A word of advice though, a man like Adler? He’s not going to be into the pouty, sulking in the corner type. It’s cute for about five minutes, and then it’s annoying.”

It has to be done, you have to gaze up at him with choler and revolt like cat and mouse back and forth’s are far beneath you, but it only serves to makes his ear-to-ear grin glitter into the seafoam of his retinas. “How many more times do I have to tell you? I don’t want to be the subject of your sick fantasies, Lazar.”

Your teeth chomp into the head of the chocolate bar with purpose, seethe-narrowed eyes not moving from his face as you do so.

“I don’t get it personally,” the six-foot-four man leans onto your table, you eye the space his thigh meets the metal warily as it creaks in protest under his weight. “You salivate over him all day as if I’m not stood right here.”

You exhale, you take another bite of your sweet treat, rewarded to you because you are sulking around like the apocalypse is nigh.

“Do you not have somewhere else be?” You are only half-joking, but the wolfish good nature that had warmed his face rendered him far too charming for you to solicit true agitation. “Like clinging on to Park’s pant leg or something?”

“Ha ha ha,” he drones, his sarcasm is smooth and without malice as he plucks the remaining square from your fingers and slips it past his hearty moustache. “If that were in any way accurate, at least I have better taste than you.”

“Please,” your mouth curling sportfully as you predict what response you’d achieve with your next words. “Park’s just Adler’s female equivalent. Two peas in a pod I’d say.”

Lazar opens his mouth, the beginnings of objection etching its way onto his rugged features, but it’s wiped away as his eyes drift to the side.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Adler says as he approaches, he slots himself in between you and Lazar with slippery ease to place yet another faded beige folder on the desk in front of you.

“Um...,” your lips twist to the side of your face as you peer down at the unwelcome presentation and start to dissect it’s contents. “What’s all this?”

“Hm?” He steps back, awaiting your elaboration as if he hadn’t an inkling of what could be askew.

“It’s just gone eight o clock, you want me to start something else now?”

You glance up at Lazar momentarily in wishful thinking he might rally behind you, he is paying you no mind, staring off into space and stifling a yawn instead. No honour among thieves. Or CIA agents.

“You don’t mind staying a little later, do you?” Adler asks, velvet has draped over the jagged edges of his voice as he asks you the favour- asks you the favour? No, he’s telling you the agenda.

In fact, it crosses your mind now; this has probably been aforethought of his since you arrived this morning. He’s had all day to ask, he made an active, mindful decision not to.

Why were you so fond of him again?

You fail to keep your chagrinned grimace below surface level, but succeed in biting your tongue instead. “No, I don’t mind.”

“Knew you wouldn’t let me down,” the tongue in cheek praise drips from his mouth honeyed and throaty, teasingly smug even. He turns to Lazar then. “How about you? Interested in some overtime?”

“No thanks Doc, there’s a burger the size of my head and a hot bath calling my name. But I suppose you’ll be staying here late as well?”

“I can’t just leave them to her own devices, can I?”

23:00, now the red digits were laughing at you, your eyes are dry and foreign in your skull, your fingers have cramped and you wished they laid idle under body heated blankets.

Adler has been in the office for a large part of the night, he came back briefly but then the phone rang and he had to excuse himself again.

He had even wagged a finger at you and told you to stay when your face had lit up with inquisitiveness.

Certain information, you had clocked early on, was not meant for your subordinate ears. It is excruciating. Knowing there are things that you do not know feels like ants marching paths up and down your skin. Secrets were hidden underneath your nostrils, but you couldn’t find them to save your life.

But it was simple protocol, procedures and security and some other effectively silencing buzzwords used frequently by men far less remarkable than Russell Adler.

Said man joins you again before too long, pulling up a chair opposite you without ceremony. His knee brushes against yours, your body screams at you for it, he pays it no mind.

“Who was that?” you ask, appropriately nonchalant as you shift your gaze back down to your papers.

“Nothing for you to worry about.”

It was rather remarkable just how often it was nothing for you to worry about.

“If you say so.”

Silence had been stalking you both the second you had been left alone together. It had caught up now, only to you though. Quiet wasn’t awkward to him, it was embraced with open arms.

Positively, you were stuck with him, the table you were both seated at felt like a deserted island. And he had turned brooding into an art form tonight.

It’s not like he was ever full of the joys of spring... but he wasn’t always plagued with the miseries of winter either.

“Is...Everything okay?” You decide to press, press him, press your luck. Your shoes are pressing into the eggshells he had littered on the floor.

Adler clears his throat and flips a page, marks something on the paper before he replies.

“I get tired too, Bell,” he indulges you, or the closest he can come to indulging you. There are cracks revealing something akin to defeat in his tone, and now you’re intrigued.

Vulnerability? A whiff of it at least? But is this all it took? For the others to leave? Or was it because he was at work at an hour that was designated to be tucked away in his hotel room?

“If you’re tired,” you begin, shrugging and shaking your head because it’s the most obvious thing in the world to a mere mortal like yourself. “Why don’t you go and get some sleep?”

He doesn’t respond so you fill in for him. “If you get tired too, you should take care of yourself... too.“

Adler slips his gaze up onto you, he is directly across and now that the two of you are close enough, you can see the silhouettes of his eyes after all.

Can I see you without your shades? trickles down from your brain and onto your tongue, it tastes of everything forbidden, so you let it disintegrate.

He huffs amusement through his nose and shakes his head slightly. “You’re cute, kid.”

You could hardly find the common sense and professionalism to be patronised by it. “Cute” is a bad omen in all truth, cute is merely inferiority in a pretty, ribboned parcel.

You clear your throat, willing the hot needles to stop prickling at your face. “It’s only common sense, Adler.”

The air is clearer from that exchange, a sweetener in strong black coffee. You’re here on this island with him, at least it’s not all doldrums and smoggy atmosphere.

You think you might try again in fact, why not strike while the iron is hot? “So, is it true you have an ex-wife?”

Something on the diverse terrains of his face twitches, he stops writing mid-sentence but doesn’t glance up. “Is it true?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would I lie?” The question is the real article, entirely rhetorical. To his credit he does seem entirely perplexed, his bushy eyebrows of gold wire have ruffled lower behind his shades.

You tussle with it for a few counts before you determine your retort, a ghost of a smile plays at your lips as it comes to fruition. You are impish, urbanely playful even, as you peer up at him through your lashes. “I know you’re making up that tiger story.”

The hum that rumbles up his trachea and slips through his lips is not one of vexation. You’re crossing lines right here right now, on the deserted island among the murky grey waters of the CIA safe house... and he doesn’t seem especially pissed off about it.

“Look,” he’s levelling with you as he places a cap on his pen and picks up the neighbouring coffee mug to take a sip. “I promise you, there are few things in this life more realistic than a failed marriage.”

“I understand that, but I just...”

Your vacillation swells to extremities and it provokes him to lean forward, his forearms invade your territory. His head tilts in your direction like infant plants growing towards sunlight. It’s an unexpected, singular note change in his intoning symphony of apathy. Unexpected, but more importantly, you consume it with near greed.

And look how close the two of you are now, you are close enough to inhale Marlboro’s and his cologne more wholly than you ever have - a heady concoction of spiced earth and sharp citronella that spins your head 360. “You just what, Bell?”

“I just can’t imagine it.”

“Why not?”

The most delicate piece of humour twinkles between the lines of his voice, the voice that has suddenly grown deeper with huskiness - this was it, this was his recreation, watching you squirm.

He’s moved back, slumped in his chair and cocking his head towards you, expectant yet indolent. And it dawns on you why he looks so mind-shatteringly attractive in this snapshot. Not just because he is him and you are you with your affinity for him, but because he is challenging you.

In this colosseum however, with this warrior of silver tongue and platinum mind, you didn’t fancy your chances.

“You’re nosy, just for the sake of it,” he states after your silence frosts over into opaqueness. “I usually hate that in a person.”

“Usually?”

He makes no move to reply immediately, but then the phone rings again for the third or fourth time tonight. It’s occurred to you by now he was staying late to take calls, not just because he couldn’t leave you to your own devices. Whoever was on the other line had impeccably bad timing and you resented them greatly.

“I suppose I don’t mind it so much on you,” Adler bends down over your shoulder, your faces cross in transit, just an inch apart, maybe three-quarters of an inch. Your cheek is parallel with his for a few counts, every count is a count too long. He grabs his cigarettes and his lighter and he’s stood back up and you’re breathing again. Your heartbeat is in your head, beating against your eardrums and throbbing in your eye sockets as he walks away.

You know, because it is common sense to know, that things like that are not supposed to happen. It doesn’t matter that they are de minimis, ghosts of occurrences on paper. That’s why he does it, the tiny things, no one could ever question a wisp of a moment like that and appear reasonable.

“Huh? I was just grabbing my cigarettes,” you imagine him saying, so clean and nonchalant, and then a scorching, lethal quirk of his brow and shake of his head. “Are you feeling okay today? Is something bothering you?”

Maybe you’re overreacting, perhaps you’re over-imaginative. He leaned over you, he didn't lean into you. He didn't push you against a wall or pull you into his body, or grab your face or shove his mouth against yours.

... But he knows what he is doing, he will always know what he is doing.

With him away again talking to God knows who about God knows what, you see the window of opportunity to rest your head. Just for a few minutes, you tell yourself, you’ll be back up by the time he returns.

You’re in the back of a car now. Man made lights from outside the vehicle cast shapes of amber and red across the interior as you’re driven. You look out the window, but your surroundings are awash and murky, as if someone decided to mix every paint colour they had on a canvas.

You don’t know where you are, what you’re doing. When you look at the dossier in your lap the words jumble and rearrange until it might as well be written in an ancient, forgotten tongue.

But there is something niggling at you, like a trapped insect in the most elusive crevice of your brain - a déjà vu and familiarity that flaps its wing frantically and relentlessly bangs into the window but can’t quite find the exit.

A man turns to you from the front of the car, shaggy raven locks and spectacles that are inherently sinister, they frame something callous and ominous. Both the eyes and the glasses were serial-killer-esque.

His mouth opens and moves, but you cannot properly discern the words, it sounds like he’s speaking with his head underwater.

The intonement continues for what could be an eternity, for what could be seconds or minutes or hours, before he has pulled out a pistol. He is snarling when he aims it at your chest.

A tremendous bang, the first clear sound you have been able to hear, and then you are leaking. It’s too dark to see colour, but you know instinctually the liquid seeping down onto your person is red red red.

You’re stuck then, razor-sharp stinging dims down to a dull pinch yet you are still stuck. Your chest is inferno, every other body part turns to cement. Internally you thrash and scream and cry, but your shell is unshakeable. Every piece of effort has been rendered impotent. You’ll be like this, encased in your own physical being until the Earth combusts, you can’t fathom this claustrophobia ever alleviating. You can’t fathom your body will be anything other than a coffin for your mind-

But you’re back. Your head has jerked up, your eyes have forced themselves open and you’re back in the grey. Panting and wide eyed like you’ve come close suffocation.

Your relief swoops you up into a tight, loving embrace, but it soon fades off. Grief clings to you instead, it crumples your face and dribbles from your eyes until you’re jolted up and down with hushed, heartsore sobs.

You have endured grenades and flashbangs and gunfights and napalm strikes and this strike and that strike, all the strikes they could think of... You were supposed to be as tough as nails, yet a nightmare made you crumble like drywall?

Adler is back, the king of tough as nails, he walks past you again without acknowledgement and resumes his position across from you.

It takes him a moment, and then another moment after that, but he does notice something has gone awry eventually.

“What happened?”

You shake your head adamantly, fixing your wobbling visage with a stiff pout. It’s a futile effort, you succumb again and have to bury your face in your hands. You want to scamper away, but why bother, he would only chase you.

He rounds the table, eliminating the space between you in two steps. His hands grasp your forearms and tug until your palms are un-suctioned from your saltwater face.

You have been forced to look at him, it wasn’t reasonable for him to do that, he shouldn’t be so invasive, but it dawns on you before you can snatch yourself away, you’re looking at his eyes- into his eyes. His eyes - sharp cut and hard set in his skull, sleek crystalline windows that housed electric blue flames.

The sunglasses were gone. This was the first time you’ve seen him without that unyielding barricade- that dammed black-sepia glass.

The thin line that had manifested between his brows, the restrained puzzlement making his eyes squint and glint prettily under very not pretty industrial lights, it was overwhelming. A piece of human anatomy should never have so much faculty.

“Bell,” his voice is like warmed cotton as he kneels before your lap, tilting his head up towards you to look you in the face. “Tell me what's going on.”

“It’s nothing,” you drag a hand across your face to wipe string snot from your nose “It was just a bad dream... I’m being stupid.”

He breaths out at the admission, letting his head drop down in despair before he glances up at you again. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Adler makes you tea and clears away the work on the table top, he has made “talking about it” an official event.

Your fingers press into the folded up blanket that had been placed in front of you. It had been there before, you had been resting your head on top of it during your slumber/ordeal.

You definitely hadn’t placed it there yourself, no, you had placed your head down on cold metal.

But if you pried about these fleeting little trinkets, you may find you’re not on the receiving end of such gestures again.

He sits in front of you once more and folds his hands together. The glasses are back. That gemstone moment from earlier had been a flash in the pan.

“I was in the back of a car, I don’t know why or where I was going...”

His hums his understanding gingerly, just impatient enough to coax you along the timeline. God did you feel juvenile.

“There was this man....” you sniff, clenching your fists next to his ones. “And it’s so strange because I can’t remember where I know him from. But I do know him. I know I do. And it’s true what they say, isn’t it? That your brain can’t invent faces?”

Adler’s hand slides over one of your knuckles, reminiscent of a snake moving itself over a rock. “What did the man do to you?”

You exhale shakily as your tongue twists and flexes, tries to find the adequate words to draw up the picture. For once you are not letting his administering of touch knock you for six, because it is normal, you’re friends and he’s consoling you.

“He shot me. And I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal, especially not for people like you and me, but I was just bleeding and...I couldn’t wake up for what felt like so long...”

You’re still on the precipice of tear fall. You hear the edges of your voice distort against your will.

”It all felt so real.”

A narcotic laced shushing sound, a lullaby of such, flows from Adler’s mouth. His hand has swapped from perching atop yours to curling around it. It’s warm, and the rough, hard bits of skin protruding from the starts of his fingers are contrarily smoothing of your ruffled feathers because you revere any glimmer of anything quintessentially him.

“What did he look like, Bell?” He’s asking you, pushing and prodding into the bones of your digits and smoothing his thumb across the back of your hand.

You let yourself sink in with no shame, but you’re not wholly sedated. His mouth is stony, thin and straight, you can’t comprehend why distress would be stewing away under that stoic lid of his.

You describe the main star of your nightmare to Adler, intriguing yourself to find you remember his face as clear as day

“Would did he say to you? Can you remember?” He persists, his grip on you has grown tauter, so has the bones and skin of his jaw. The man is holding himself back, he wants to pounce and tear every last detail of this from you, you can tell. It should have made you enjoy this less, you refused to let it.

You shook your head, he exhales deeply through his nose as soon as you did. “Nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all.”

Finally, he pulls his hand from yours with a good-natured pat for your efforts.

“I’m sorry,” he says, standing up and disappearing momentarily. He comes back with your jacket and is gesturing for you to stand up so he can help you put it on. Everything suddenly feels manic and rushed, there’s an electric current of urgency in the air. “I never should have asked you to work so late. You’re obviously over-tired. Let me get you back to your room.”

He’s on edge and it’s scary, because like every other emotional on the wheel, he doesn’t show it outright. You have to read between the lines, strain your ears for the inflections in his vocal cords, squint hard enough to make out the raise and tense of his shoulders.

Even then, only a higher power had the key to open the door and peek at what could be ticking away inside of him.

You could see, because you’re really not an idiot, he was anything but pleased with your wide tales of backseats and men with serial killer glasses and bullets to the chest.

But why? The answer was there but you just couldn’t...

“I’m sorry, Adler,” you cut into his whirlwinds so you can address him head on. “But why have you turned this into such a big deal?”

“Who says it’s a big deal?”

“You’re worried. Don’t tell me you’re not because I can see that you are.”

He stops mid warpath to smooth his heckles down, the broad, sweeping lines of his shoulders lower as he exhales.

You hadn’t seen him like this before and you have been through literal war zones together.

The man’s hand slides across your upper back, you allow him to guide you towards the exit of the safe house. Not until you’re both in his car, putting your seatbelts on, he speaks to you again.

“The truth is Bell,” he turns the key to have the engine rumbling to life beneath you. “I’m worried about you... psychologically I mean. You know how important all that shit is in our line of work.”

You fight down an incurring eye roll and let your forehead roll onto the window. “You mean you’re scared I’ll go crazy and go on some killing spree... or something...”

There’s not another word spoken for the whole drive.

Adler walks you through the stale cigarette stench and desolation of your hotel lobby, even the CIA had to cut the costs somewhere. You didn’t even begrudge Adler the privilege of staying in another hotel a little further down the street. Another hotel loosely translating to a better hotel, ten times nicer than this dive, you understood. Park stayed here too and knocked at your hotel, at precisely 7am, every morning, without fail, and she would drive you to the safehouse, in silence, every morning, without fail. You didn’t know where Lazar and Sims were situated. It was something about it being smart to be spread out too, so if you were ambushed they wouldn’t be able to swoop you all up in one go.

Still, it was funny, the various ways in which hierarchies were established.

Your quarters wasn’t a terribly dreadful affair if you tried not to be so miserable about it all. It was a tinderbox, but that could be part of its charm. It was cosy and reposeful for the bed to take up the vast majority of the room, the sheets were semi-fresh and tastefully white. And the walls were a forgiving shade of forest green, if there was mould slowly poisoning you you were none the wiser. The television was only on the fritz thirty percent of the time, and showed foreign programmes because you really weren’t a great deal away from the border.

Adler sits on a nearby chair, his tall form hunches over slightly as he appears to be particularly fascinated with the plethora of stains imprinted into the carpet.

You’re sat on the bed, wondering why he is still here, but you have no bone of contention with the fact. Every inch of you is fatigued, lead is setting into your muscles.

It does not spare you from the butterflies in your belly, they break out of chrysalis only for transpiration such as this- Russell Adler in your teeny hotel room by his own accord.

Despite the exhilaration, you try to be a Good Samaritan. “You don’t have to stay here with me. I’m fine now, I promise.”

He is depleted just as you are, he has even started running a hand through his hair. That’s a fault in his code, he never does that.

And because he never does that, you have never seen it tousled and ruffled like it is now, it is less insufferably debonair and more boyish, down to Earth even.

Before you can lose yourself to gazing, he stands and only has to move a step to sit on the bed beside you. Your breath is baited as he takes off his shades again and places them on your bedside table.

Vast, never-ending hands then grab you by your upper arms. His grip isn’t that of steel but it doesn’t need to be. His eyes, and the fierce beast leashed and obedient within them, stop you in your tracks better than any bear trap could.

“You promise you’re telling me everything about that dream? There was nothing else?”

It was an effective tool, this removing of the shades shtick, the tiniest instinctual iota of you wishes he would stop, to shove the damn things back on his stupid, ridiculously square movie star head and stop wreaking havoc in your chest.

“Adler...” you intone, shaking your head and raising your face so you are nose to nose, so your breath is mingling and he’s all you can see. “You’re being really weird...”

He instigated it. So not all of it can be placed on your shoulders, no, it’s not all your fault. Because his eyes do drift down to your mouth and up the path of your neck in the most strange, surrealist morsel of time.

That’s the only reason you press your lips flush against his and flutter your eyes shut. Rough patches like the ones on his hands interrupt the run of velvet that are his lips. Of course you taste and smell nicotine, it’s just not heinous and gag worthy like you often endeavoured to convince yourself.

They feel and taste like you had imagined. And you had imagined they’d feel and taste rapturous. But instead it is purgatory, because he did not push you away, but he did not kiss you back. He was not engulfed by your split-second fervour, but he was not fleeing in revulsion, he was not running to the en suite to throw up his lunch. He just... lingered in limbo, and waited for you to stop, so you did.

And even when you’ve parted, he is unmoving and sturdy in front of you. His eyes are sliding across your face with something hazy, something reminiscent of the pockets in the safe house he filled with his smoke. It looks like craving, you refuse to believe it is.

“I can’t do that with you,” his hand curves up your shoulder and winds into your neck until it cradles your cheek. “Sorry.”

“Why?”

“Well, I could write you a list.” He takes his hand away and then he takes his body away and you already yearn for how that half of the bed had dipped under him. “But it’s nothing about you personally so don’t go thinking about it too hard.”

You hardly hear any of this, your body is shutting down.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, and you are. Because you’ve been Icarus and after being so careful, it was Adler’s lips that were your sun in the end. Not even his lips, just him. Everything and anything him. You had no wings of wax for him to melt, but streams of rejection still trickle into your bones and weigh you down to the ground all the same.

“Don’t be,” he says with flecks of amusement in a low, steady tone and your head shoots up at him, regrettably, with hope. “It’s the most action I’ve had in ages.”

His smirk is lopsided, a scythe craning into the war torn half of his face. He looks absolutely exhausted, but you don’t think he’s ever looked so handsome. It’s only coarse rock salt in your fresh wounds.

Maybe you’ve revitalised him, perhaps he was flattered and glowing from the inside out. There is not a speck of enmity on him as he goes about obtaining his shades and placing them back on his head. He is glacial, you are burning and scorched everywhere.

“Get some rest for me, kid,” is his farewell, he drags fire-touch across your arm once more and then he is gone. As is your sanity.

#russell adler #call of duty cold war #call of duty black ops 6 #gender neutral reader x Russell Adler #gender neutral reader #fanfic #unrequited love

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