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averagejoesolomon · 1 year

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Oh. Oh no. Oh, gang. None of us were ready for this one. If you're new here, you can read Full Circle in full on Ao3.

Chapter Nine

Spies are supposed to notice things. Matt knows this for the same reason he knows anything worthwhile—because Joe Solomon told him so.

And with the way Joe says it, spies are supposed to notice everything. Every twitch of a finger, every lilt in a voice. Every noise, every movement, every silence. As far as Joe’s concerned, the world is alive, and those who fail to notice its every breath are destined to end up dead.

But it’s Matt’s privately held belief that some things just ain’t all that noticeable. Sometimes the biggest changes are the slow, steady sorta things that happen when no one’s looking. After all, an autumn chill always starts as a summer breeze. Acquaintances always seem to stumble sideways into friendship, rather than sprint toward it dead on. A fella can stare out across the same cornfield, day after day, dawn after dawn, and still be shocked when the stalks finally spring up to his knee. Sometimes, the world avoids the notice of even the most perceptive people.

This is all an awfully long-winded way of saying he’s lost eyes on Michael.

And it’d be nice if he could peg this as one of those less-than-noticeable things, but the truth of the matter is that he ought to be able to tail someone like Michael. The bigger truth is that Matt ain’t thinking straight, and he hasn’t been thinking straight since he got here, and maybe that’s the biggest change of them all. Maybe he’s finally starting to notice it.

If he has any remaining sensibility rattling through his head, it comes in the form of Joe’s voice, threaded through an earpiece. “What do you mean, you lost him?”

“Can we save the lecture for later?” says Matt. “Just get your ass down here and help me find him.”

Matt rounds a corner where black and white tile transitions to hardwood. The mansion’s floor plan is nearly complete in his mind, constructed from patches of barely-there recognition, but some pieces are still missing. There are rooms he hasn’t yet entered, hallways he hasn’t yet ventured down, and way too many goddamn corners. He hasn’t had enough time to do this right. He never has enough time, these days.

It doesn’t help that this stretch of mansion looks exactly like the rest, made up of the same brown-on-brown woods, the same exhaustively detailed molding, and the same towering windows. Gold frames line the walls and the drapery is sewn from silk. Each godforsaken hallway stretches farther than Matt’s entire childhood home and he doesn’t know what he’s doing here.

He skids to an aimless stop at the junction of one identical hall and another, a realization fast on his heels. With a stark and sudden sense of blind foolishness, recognition hits him and he knows, too late, that this is the place he should have started. It’s just how these things tend to work—he’s noticed that much.

Matt can think of nothing more damning than the sight of Michael standing just outside of Henry’s office door, one hand on the gold-plated knob and the other wrapped around a crystal clear bottle of scotch. A blue-ribbon cigar still hangs from the corner of this mouth as he pulls the door shut behind him, humming down an otherwise empty hallway. The latch clicks shut at exactly the same time Matt’s shiny new shoes scuff against walnut herringbone and Micheal glances up. Meet’s his gaze. Smiles a crooked, satisfied sort of grin.

“Well, hey there, Georgetown,” says Michael, words caught behind the clench of his teeth. He pulls the cigar from his lips before he goes on. “Finally figured out where Henry keeps all the good whiskey, I see.”

Matt’s out of time, and he doesn’t have the patience to spare on pleasantries. “Party’s back that way, Harvard,” he says, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. “Not much to see back here.”

Static cracks through Matt’s earpiece, with Joe just on the other side. “Do you have him?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. “Don’t engage.”

Matt can feel the lack of backup in his bones. There’s an empty space at his side where Joe ought to be, but he’s just too close to back down. For the first time since they started tracking the Circle of Cavan, Matt has all the proof he needs to lock his lead into a corner. He’s been run ragged by the year it’s taken to reach this point, and he won’t let this one slip away.

Smoke twirls from the end of Michael’s cigar and scotch spirals around the edges of the decanter. He’s grinning wide, like he knows something Matt doesn’t, and suddenly Matt’s got Abby’s voice in his head all over again. I can think of at least one reason. “That’s where you and I disagree,” Michael says. “Y’see, the Jack Daniels Henry’s serving up at the bar is all well and good, but nothing can beat the Macallan the old man keeps in his office drawer.”

And there’s Joe’s voice again, talking sense where Matt’s lost all of his own. “I’m coming to you,” he says. “Do not get yourself killed before I get there.”

“He says this one is a personal gift from Scotland Yard—so you know it’s the good stuff,” Michael goes on. “You wanna sip? You won’t regret it.”

Matt’s not in the habit of taking drinks from strangers. And he’s certainly not in the habit of taking drinks from international terrorists. “I’ll settle for the Jack, thanks.”

Michael shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

As if claiming the lost opportunity for himself, Micheal brings the crystal straight to his lips and takes a generous swig. If Matt were thinking straight, he might have noticed it sooner—the lilt in Michael’s words, the sway in his shoulders, the subtle tint of red in his cheeks. Things being as they are, it takes Matt longer than it should to realize that Michael is drunk. And longer still to realize that he is very good at hiding it.

Matt’s teeth grind against a stale bruise, sending a sore pulse through his battered jaw. “How many drinks have you had tonight?”

In this line of work, there are right questions and there are wrong questions. The right questions are tricky and elusive, but if a guy can pin down just the right ones, they’ll lead him toward the kind of information that saves counties, preserves democracies, and keeps all the right people alive. The wrong questions, on the other hand, usually just end in a brawl. Judging by Michael’s white-knuckled grip around the neck of the whisky, it looks like Matt’s fixing for the latter.

Michael closes the distance between them, and even though they’re the same height, he seems to loom larger than Matt. They’re on his home turf—he’s had years to learn every expansive inch of these halls and it shows in the way he walks. Familiarity forms to his gait, with nothing but comfort stitched into the shoulders of a perfectly tailored suit. When he does finally reach Matt, his gaze lingers on the crooked tie and taught buttons, as though remembering that this outfit was bought straight off the rack. “Question is,” Michael says, amber smoke tucked into his breath, “how many have you had?”

Only then does Matt realize Abby must’ve done a real number on his heart, because it seems to have shattered into a dozen different pieces. The jagged remains are scattered all across his body, taking up space in his ears, his jaw, his shoulders, his fists, his lungs, his stomach—a pulse, pounding in rampant rhythm against the rolling boil of his blood. It burns him from the inside out until every part of him is flushed and furious.

But Michael carries on. “Because, y’see,” he says, cigar embers flitting toward the floor as he pokes at Matt’s chest. “It’s a party, Georgetown. And at these parties, people usually have a drink or two—but you haven’t had anything to drink all night, have you?”

Matt swats Michael’s hand away. “Not much of a drinker.”

“By choice?” Michael asks, talking another swig. “Or by trade?”

“I reckon you already know the answer to that,” says Matt, “because a guy like you wouldn’t ask a question he doesn’t already know the answer to.”

Michael smiles again. Always smiling. “I reckon I do,” he says. “Because you and I aren’t so different, are we? So maybe we stop pretending otherwise.”

Spies are supposed to notice things, but it takes an awfully keen eye to notice Matt. He folds seamlessly into the crease of every crowd, and blends thoughtlessly into the background. He’s the sort of person who can cross the boarder from East Berlin to West Berlin without a second glance—who can walk the streets of Moscow just as naturally as he can walk the streets of DC. A fella has to look, and look hard, to spot Matt when he doesn’t want to be spotted.

He doesn’t want to linger too long on what Michael’s motivations might be. He’s been hunting the Circle long enough to know that they probably involve torture, and sacrifice, and all of the information Matt doesn’t want to give. But anyone willing to put in enough effort to tail him all evening is probably willing to put in the effort to hurt him, too.

The sound of approaching footsteps signal the backup Matt desperately needs. Bits of his shredded heart pile up in his throat until his breath gets caught in his chest, waiting for Joe to round the corner and start a fight that Matt desperately wants to finish.

Except it ain’t Joe who stands at the other end of the hall. Of course not. Because, of course, Matt heard the sound of heels, not loafers. And he didn’t just hear one set of footsteps—he heard two.

Abby is the first to arrive, because Abby is always the first. Beautiful, agonizing Abby, who turns the entire world toward her favor with nothing more than a wink. Who barrels down the length of a hallway at the very first sign of trouble. “C’mon, boys,” she says. “Don’t tell me you’re having all the fun without us.”

Rachel isn’t far behind, but she holds her place in the shadows, watching on without a word. She’s a well-placed punch waiting in the wrist, and she always times her swings to land at the most impactful moment.

At the sound of Abby’s voice, Michael takes one step back from Matt. Then two, and three. He swipes at his nose with the same hand that holds the bottle, his gestures easy and electric, like a boxer on the edge of the ring. “Just having a conversation, one man to another,” he says.

Abby lands between the two of them with the kind of graceful speed that shouldn’t be possible. “Ah, I see. Boys only. Well in that case, I’ll be on my way,” she deadpans. “Unless one of you wants to tell me what’s really going on.”

Righteous and certain, Matt offers up the facts. “He was in your father’s office,” he says. “Alone.”

The sisters are smart—smarter than Matt, and certainly smart enough to put the pieces together. Smart enough to know that Michael’s presence is evidence enough of his involvement with the break-in. Smart enough to know that this is bigger than them, and that Matt really ought to take it all from here. Matt is met with a lone moment of clarity as realization dawns across Abby’s face, and the parts of his heart still caught in his chest burst with the possibility of watching her tear straight into Michael.

But Abby turns on Matt, instead. Her voice is low and stern as she says, “I told you he wasn’t our guy.” Her eyes bounce back and forth between his own, trying to get a read, but there’s nothing there for her to latch onto. “Did I not tell you, straight to your face?”

Just like that, the night is on it’s head again. “You did, but—”

“So, what,” she says. “You didn’t believe me?”

“Of course I believe you—”

“So you just think I’m clueless?”

“I would never—”

“Those are your options, Matt,” she says. “I told you Micheal wasn’t our guy, so either you don’t trust me to be right, or you don’t trust me to tell you about it when I am.”

Matt is ten days into an eight-day trip. He’s on leg three of a one-stop operation. He’s a full year into a mission that was supposed to be wrapped up months ago. Everything about the Circle of Cavan demands more, more, more from everyone who touches it, and there’s no way Abby can know that. Abby doesn’t even think the Circle exists. “Abby,” he says, struggling to express a sentiment that's stashed behind a bright red classified stamp. “Just—trust me when I say you’re out of your element here. I know you think you’re right, but—”

She holds up a hand, straight in his face, and the last remaining sections of his heart stretch into thin little threads that wrap tension into every muscle he has. “You’ve had a hard night,” she says, “so I’m going to forget that you said that. As far as you’re concerned, I’m right, and I’m always going to be right.”

Maybe that was the case before their dance, but it’s not going to be the case anymore. And Abby is going to have to get used to that. “And just what makes you so certain, huh?” he snaps. “What piece of infinite wisdom do you possess that makes me the fool and you the all-mighty goddess of all things covert?”

Matt’s never seen Abby’s eyes so wide. “How about the fact that I was with Michael that night,” she says. “Or is that not a tight enough alibi for you, Nebraska—?”

“Hey—hey.” Matt’s so used to hearing Joe in his ear that he doesn’t realize he’s hearing the words in person until Joe psychically shoves his way between Matt and Abby. “What the hell is going on?”

But Matt can’t help himself. The words are out now, and not even Joe can slow him down in this moment. “What were you doing with him?”

Michael, helpfully, decides that it’s his turn to jump back into the action. “Hey, control your boy, Pinstripes.”

Matt doesn’t need to see the look Joe sends over his shoulder to know it’s scary. “Now’s a good time to shut your mouth, man,” he says. “Otherwise I’m going to shut it for you.”

Michael scoffs. “I’d like to see you try.”

Joe ain’t one to leave a promise unfulfilled, even more so when that promise is actually a threat. With a challenge sparking in the air, his attention makes a quick shift from Matt to Michael, but Abby’s quicker. She steps right into his path and blocks him, her impeccable form against his scrappy swing. “I’d really rather you didn’t.”

Joe practically growls against her. “Get out of my way.��

“Mmmm…no,” she says. “Don’t think I will.”

The whole ordeal is one great big mess of Matt, Michael, Abby, and Joe. They dissolve into the sort of bickering that exists primarily in schoolyards and sandboxes, but beyond it all, Matt still has a question that’s been left unanswered. “Why were you with him that night, Abby?”

“For me.”

A new voice joins the fighting—although join is a generous word. When Rachel speaks, there is no fighting left to join. Her voice is the kind of quiet meant to bring others down to her level, rather than rise to theirs. It’s the soft, certain tone of someone with something important to say, and it ignites a deep, instinctual need to listen. “She was with him that night for me,” she goes on. “To tell him that I was in town. To tell him not to come by, because I’d rather not see him. To tell him to stay away.” She looks at Abby. “Isn’t that right?”

Abby, wordless, only manages a nod.

With this, Rachel turns to Michael. “And you thought you’d just come by anyway?”

Michael blinks, and it clearly takes him a moment to realize Rachel addresses him, now. “Oh, please,” he says, spit flying with the pop of his p. “Don’t flatter yourself, Rach. All of Baltimore is at this party—you think I came to see you?”

Slowly, with all of the poise that can fit atop certainly uncertain shoulders, Rachel steps out of the shadows and straight into the flame. As she walks, her eyes flit to the bottle in Michael’s hand, then back to him. “How much have you had to drink, today?”

Right questions, and wrong questions, and wrong questions again. “You aren’t my fiancé anymore,” he snarls. “And you don’t get to care about how much I drink.”

The words roll over her, easy. “Michael, my love.” She wraps her hand around his—around the neck of the decanter, ready to relieve him of it. “It’s time for you to go home.”

There is a moment, single and fleeting, when it looks as though everything could go right. Rachel could take the whiskey and lock it back up. Abby and Joe could stand down—Abby no longer fighting for Michael and Joe no longer fighting for Matt. They could all go back to the party, and they could dance, and eat dessert, and debrief in the morning.

But the moment Rachel tries to pull the whiskey away, Micheal decides to shove.

What happens next, happens quickly. Maybe that’s to be expected, in a room with five intelligence agents, but it still catches Matt in a moment of unpreparedness. Rachel stumble, stumble, stumbles back. Abby holds out a hand to catch her. The decanter falls from both grips and plummets toward the hardwood.

But Joe is faster than all of them. Joe is faster than anyone Matt knows, which is how Michael gets pinned to the wall, even before the crystal shatters at their feet.

Joe’s got the kind of grip that’s impossible to squirm out of—which is mighty handy, because Michael’s a squirmy sort of guy. He twists and thrashes on the tips of his toes as Joe steals the ground from under him. He tries to peel Joe’s hands away from the collar of his shirt, but it just ain’t worth the effort. “What the fuck?”

With a single, sideways nod toward Rachel, Joe says, “Apologize to the lady.”

If Michael wasn’t scared before, he sure as Hell is now. “Fuck you!”

Joe lifts him higher off the ground.

“Put me down. Put me down, you fucker.”

Joe shakes his head. “Not until you say the magic words.”

Something familiar finds its way to Matt, born out of a habit he wasn’t aware he’d forged. He and Joe have operated without mercy for long enough that Matt’s forgotten what it feels like. A part of him has come to enjoy watching Joe work—come to enjoy the way he makes things quick, and efficient, even if it means sacrificing decency. Maybe he’s even come to admire that part of Joe, because Matt would never have the guts to be so brash. But something about the moment feels raw and wrong now, with the sisters as their witness, and for the first time in a long time, Matt reaches a hand out to Joe. “Leave it,” he says. “He’s not worth it.”

Joe must not hear him. Or he must not care. Either way, he holds Michael steady in his bruised and blotched knuckles.

“Joe,” Matt tries again. “Drop him.”

With a bored back-and-forth of his head, Joe debates his next move. He settles on a sigh as he lets Michael fall to the floor. There’s something satisfying about the way he can’t catch himself on his own two feet. Instead, he falls to his knees—tie crooked, coat wrinkled.

Matt escorts Joe away, and the whole thing could be over, if Micheal weren’t trying to get the last word in. “You’re over, you got that, asshole?” he tells Joe, catching his breath. “I’ll find your fucking name, and I’ll find out every detail about you, and I’ll tell the goddamn world. There’s not a soul on either side of the Iron Curtain who won’t be able to spot you. You better damn well hope you don’t have any secrets worth keeping.”

There have been a few instances in his career when Matt has blacked out during a fight. Sometimes, the adrenaline gets the best of his memory. Sometimes, the exhaustion bleeds into his sight with little black spots. Sometimes he blinks, and when he opens his eyes, he finds someone unconscious at his feet.

This is not one of those times. This time, Matt knows exactly what he’s doing.

If there’s anything Matt’s learned in the past year, it’s that plenty of people feel the need to threaten Joe Solomon. This is the sort of thing that comes included with the kind of past Joe has, filled with unpaid debts, a sordid history with underground terrorist cells, and more than a few women scorned. The fact of the matter is that Joe is talented, and he’s used that talent against the wrong people for too many years.

Truthfully, Matt’s had just about enough of it. Michael’s threat is one too many, so when Matt rears back and takes a clean shot across Michael’s jaw, he hopes word gets out about it. And when he kicks Michael flat on his back, he hopes the world hears his message—Joe Solomon is under his protection now. Anyone who wants to get to him, will have to go through Matt first.

“Matthew.”

Matt lowers himself down to Michael’s level, on his own knees now as he grips the collar where Joe’s hands were last. The hall smells like whiskey turned sour. “Let me make this absolutely clear,” he says, voice coated in rust. “We’re going to walk away, and then you are going to forget you ever met us.”

Michael mops up crystal shards with his back. There are red-rimmed tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

“Matthew.”

Matt’s knees ache like a prayer. “Because if you don’t—listen to me—if I find out that even one of our covers is even the slightest bit compromised, I’m flying straight back here, and I’ll make you wish you forgot about us. Understand—?”

“Matt.”

Rachel calls him Matthew, like his mama, which is another one of those things he didn’t notice until it changed without warning. She used to carry the name with so much tender regard, as though nothing, nowhere, and no one could be as sweetly obvious as him. He’s not sure when she started saying it with this desperate, pleading edge.

When he looks up at her, she’s got tears of her own, welling up against her will. “Leave.”

Matt loosens his grip on Michael. His heartstrings creep back to the center of his chest and form a halfway functional knot, all beating in mismatched rhythms. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay. I’ll pick up surveillance—”

“No.” She’s sharp. She’s cold. She’s every bit as cruel as she was when he first met her. “I want you to leave. I want both of you to take your bags and leave this house.”

And there, on his knees, Matt begins to beg. “Rachel, I—”

“Go,” she says. “I don’t want to see you again.”

#Full Circle #ouch man #who did that?

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