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[clashingqueens]

poorlywiredcircuits‌:

Nico scoffed at Mickey’s suggestion, shrugging a shoulder. “I am never setting up for anything, I do not play sniper. If I am seeing a sunset, it is from up close and usually in a nice dress.”

Nico’s face quickly pulled into a frown, eyebrows furrowed as she took in the information before her. Emmeline Armand, she knew that already. “Such a waste, she was talented.” Shifting her stance, Nico started putting puzzle pieces together in her head. Same job, same informant, same client. That could only mean…

“Your brother is dead then, no? And you are wanting revenge? It is lucky for you that I am still alive, but then I do not take freelance jobs.” All of Nico’s jobs came through the Mafia and Mickey obviously knew that. She couldn’t figure out why else she would be here otherwise. She wasn’t sure what Mickey thought she could help her with though, either.

It seemed as if Mickey was done speaking, so Nico turned away and stabbed her knife into her cutting board before rifling through a few different drawers in her kitchen until she found what she was looking for. Turning back towards the couch a few steps away, she opened the folder in her hand and began flicking down crime scene photos one after the other.

As Mickey spoke of Beckett, Nico’s body tensed briefly. He had been the closest thing she could find to a friend, a smart man with an even smarter mouth, and Nico would miss him. They had planned to have gelato together in a few days, so his death must have been recent. No matter, she would get the autopsy report and the photos from that as well.

Straightening back up, Nico gestured to the photos and moved back to give Mickey an opportunity to look. “Emmeline Armand, Brazil. Alexei Kazankov, Uganda. Meifeng Wu, United States. That last one was labeled a terror attack, but I think we both know that it was not. Someone is hunting us.” Nico looked down at her nails. “If you want more, you can pay me. Information is not cheap, disgraziato. If they had it, maybe they would still be alive.”

“I know.” Mickey answered honestly, inscrutable gaze fixed on Nico’s face. In her mind’s eye, she could see each of the dresses that Nico had worn. The last time she had set eyes on the other woman, she had been wearing a sundress. Light had reflected off her bared shoulders.  “Somehow you’ve managed to make killing in a dress an art form.”

The next look on Mickey’s face was one of dark confidence. “Rest easy, Nicoletta. My brother isn’t dead. If he was dead, you’d know. Your organization would know. Everyone would know if he was dead.” They might have rejoiced. It wouldn’t have been for long, though. If they thought Mickey was brutal now, they had no idea the hellfire she would rain down after the death of her brother. She and Simon had discussed it time and time again. 

Last time they had been sitting in a Turkish prison, both of them beaten bloody. Each of them had sworn to make the world suffer, a blood pact between two people who had been together even before taking their first breath. It had been a necessary capture, one that had needed to happen in order for Simon to get close to a general with a bounty on his head. That evening while Simon broke out of their cell and stabbed him in the jugular, Mickey had slowly peeled the flesh from their torturer in revenge for the pain he had caused her twin. “I want my brother back.”

Tracing Nico’s movements once more, Mickey watched as she dropped the file on the couch. Corpses stared up from the photos, both men and women with high kill counts and even higher skills. Her upper lip twitched, threatening to morph into a snarl at the mention of Alexei Kazankov - displeased by the idea that someone had killed him before she had. Guess their unfinished business would forever remain unfinished. 

“I’m not just here for information, Nico.” Mickey murmured, taking her eyes from the photos and returning them to the Italian’s beautiful face. “I’m here for you.” It was a jump, for sure. The history of murder attempts spanned long between them but that was the business. Mickey never took anything too personal unless someone made it so. In taking her brother, someone had made it personal. Her brother’s safety meant more than asking Nicolette Fiore, mafia darling for help. “I’m proposing a partnership.”

voyeur | mickey & nico

[clashingqueens]

nicoletta-fiore:

When Nico was certain that Mickey was not going to strike back (well, not yet anyways) she straightened up to her full height and put one hand on her hip, the crystal wine glass dangling from her other hand as she observed the damage done to her pillow. “No, vecchio. Which is better than new. Can you not learn to catch knives?” Pinching the bridge of her nose, Nico took a breath and then decided she was over it, it wasn’t worth arguing about. Striding past Mickey as if she weren’t even there, Nico placed her glass down on her kitchen countertop and grabbed a rag, tossing it on the floor over the spilled wine.

Ignoring the rest of the mess for the moment, she reached for the pillow and retrieved her knife, inspecting the fabric to see if it could be repaired easily. “Russia, hm? I avoid it if I can, I never liked the cold.” She mimed a shiver, tossing Mickey a small predatory grin. Placing the pillow back down on the couch, she crossed her arms casually with the knife still present in one hand and shrugged, “If you came all this way and ruined my sunset for a vendetta against a rat, I cannot help you.”

Eying Mickey carefully, knowing how quickly their conversations tended to turn, she posed a question of her own. Well, she supposed no actual questions had been posed so far, but the underlying meaning was obvious. “Now, either you are simply checking to see if I put a hit out on you – which is offensive, by the way, that I would not be willing to go myself – or you are looking for something else. You want to know what I know. Who I know. Si?” She rolled back a little on her heels, her eyebrow arching as she waited for the other woman to answer. Nico couldn’t help but feel a little full of herself, certain that Mickey wasn’t simply there to accuse her of a lazy crime. If she was, well… Nico would have to reevaluate what she was planning to do with her knife.

Like a stereotypical housewife, Nico needled at Mickey with impatience. As the Italian huffed and puffed and flounced over to her countertop, Mickey merely turned to follow her constant movements. When Nico correctly deduced Mickey’s reason for visitation, she was glad that she wouldn’t have to waste time beating around the bush. It seemed the more Mickey spoke, the more irritated Nico became. Of course, that had very little impact on anything Mickey did and there was something elegant about the way Nico kicked her chin up with indignation.“More’s the pity. I would have thought a sophisticated lady like yourself would appreciate the view of the sun setting behind the Kremlin when you’re setting up to kill the Minister of Defense.”

As Nico stood there, gloating in her triumph for figuring it out, a grim smile worked its way onto Mickey’s own face. “I’m sure a worldly lady like yourself has met Emmeline Armand?” She peered up into the taller woman’s face. “I’m sure you have. You were both present at the Monaco Incident in 2015. Lovely French woman, blonde hair, soft lips?”Mickey’s teeth grazed her own bottom lip. “Well, as it turns out, the same thing happened to her in Brazil. Same situation. Fake job, police, a sniper rifle trained at her head.”Simon had been lucky where Emmeline had not been. “Of course, I thought it might have been a coincidence that we shared the same informant but then I learned through one of Emmeline’s partners that she had also been hired by someone going under the name of Janus.”

Her stance relaxed, Mickey spoke as just was discussing nothing more than the weather channel. Of course, if she had gotten emotional, she wouldn’t have been the right fit for this job. Besides, her one and only focus was getting her brother back before someone beat her to it. There had been a definitive ache in her chest since she had been separated from Simon - one that she knew wasn’t going to go away. She had to get him back, and if she had to kill every single person in this world to get him, she would. If her enemies had been frustrated by her relentless ambition before, they would be frothing at the mouth by the time she was done.

And Nico knew it too.

“But if two examples aren’t enough, Beckett’s been taken out too.” She watched Nico’s face carefully when the words left her mouth.

voyeur | mickey & nico

[clashingqueens]

voyeur | mickey & nico

nicoletta:

The sun was setting, painting the sky in soft pinks and oranges that spilled into Nico's flat and gave everything a rosy hue. She was leaned against her modest balcony, watching wispy clouds blow away as the sun sank behind the Tuscan hillside, when she became aware that she was no longer alone. She took a sip from her wine glass, casually using the glittering crystal to reflect an image of the intruder, assessing the threat. Surprising Nico was difficult, but she supposed if anyone could do it, it was certainly Mickey White. The American assassin and her brother were a fantastically consistent thorn in Nico's side, always meddling in things they should really leave to the actual professionals and somehow walking away virtually unscathed. Nico's free hand flitted to her side, thumbing through the fabric of her silk shirt to find a scar she had gained from a bullet graze in Paris. She couldn't help the small smile that came to her face at the memory, quickly following it up with a scowl and a soft tut as she tried to reign herself in. If Mickey was here, surely her brother was nearby and that always spelled trouble. However, if he wasn't around... well, then perhaps the blonde pain in her ass was here for an entirely different kind of scuffle this time. 

 Nico couldn't read Mickey as well as she would like and that quickly gave way to something akin to an obsession with the younger woman. Following her tracks, newspaper clippings and internet headlines, trying to piece together the puzzle in a way that she could chew on and digest and sat well with her. No matter how hard she tried though, Nico always found that Mickey kept her slightly off kilter. Maybe she liked that, maybe she didn't. She would never admit it either way. Pulled out of her musings by the very real possibility that she was about to have her life threatened, Nico let her fingers trail along the handrail of the balcony until they found what they were looking for.

In one swift movement, Nico slid a carefully hidden knife from its place in the handrail and turned around, flinging the contents of her drink in an arc towards where Mickey was standing. She held onto the crystal glass because it could prove a useful weapon if she needed it, and also just because she liked it and didn't want to see it broken... or at least broken for no good reason. Ducking down from what she assumed would be a counterattack, her knife split the air with precision and hit something that she hoped was body and not the new couch she had just flown in from Munich. Lifting herself partway back up to attempt to assess the damage, she greeted lightly, "Disgraziato. What brings you here to ruin a perfectly good Tuscan sunset, hm?"

Mickey supposed it was only understandable that Nico had reacted poorly to her presence considering the issue of breaking and entering. There also might have been the fact that Mickey had repeatedly tried to shoot Nico time and time before but to be fair, Nico had more than tried to return the favor. She still had neat little scar on her shoulder where the Italian had plunged a jagged piece of glass into her skin. Mickey only took this as a sign that Nico was sweet on her. Especially since Simon had twice as many scars from Nico than she did - something he was increasingly irritated about. However, after their last encounter, Mickey had been content to give Nico some space and focus on her career. She and Simon had continued killing their way through Europe, their last mission landing them in Saint Petersburg. 

That’s when everything went wrong. It should have been a simple mission - an in and out set up by someone they trusted. Instead, Mickey and her twin had been forced to engage in a firefight with half the politsiya. But, that hadn’t been enough. Someone had not wanted to waste any chances on terminating the twins. Simon had seen the red laser scope of a sniper rifle trained on the back of Mickey’s head, his quick reflexes knocking her to the ground as the bullet meant for her slammed into his shoulder. As she met her twin’s eyes in that moment, Simon nodded at her and she had understood what he meant. She needed to get out so she could come back for him. If they were both captured, they’d be forever separated and that wasn’t something Mickey could live with.Throwing herself out of the window had been a chance but it wasn’t the riskiest thing she had done. An old rival had called them cockroaches once before Simon had cut his throat - impossibly annoying and impossible to kill. Mickey had escaped - seething and heartbroken - but she had escaped nonetheless and now she knew someone had betrayed them. Her informant had gone underground after his lie but that’s why she had travelled to Italy.

Luckily for Mickey, her reflexes matched her brother’s, having been honed deep within the dark Appalachian mountains. She pivoted to avoid the arc of wine, hand shooting out to snatch up one of the expensive pillows on a nearby couch. She brought the pillow up in time to feel Nico’s knife thud into the fabric and stuffing. The impact forced her to take a step back but she shook it off. “Business, as opposed to pleasure. I hope this wasn’t a new pillow.” She gazed at the brunette, tossing the pillow to the side. “You see, Nicoletta, I found myself in a spot of trouble in Russia, recently and I’m just visiting all of my old friends. You know, catching up, grabbing a drink, seeing if they ratted my brother and I’s location to local authorities.” Her smile was wolfish, grey eyes smoking like a gun even if she kept her shoulders relaxed. “Now I know you wouldn’t do such a thing but you’ve always stressed the importance of being thorough.”