#the way im gonna have to go rename the last one and my links KjSHFKGJH

[narcolini]

for brothers, pt. 3

angel reyes x oc: tatiana ‘pidge’ clarke, hurt/comfort, 2358 words

for day 10 of whumpril : shivers & ‘i’m scared’

a/n: omg i knOW i know. i know i said the last one was just an extra scene/epilogue but now theres another part and kjSHFgj`hfg its fine. its fine. the fic is sentient. thanku to @cositapreciosa for prompting this

tagging: @drabbles-mc @hausofmamadas @darqchilddaydreamz​

Tati’s shaking when she finally finds the courage to knock, stood on Angel’s doorstep at God know’s what time. Not from fear, but from the cold that’s sunk itself beneath her skin, gripped the bones like a vice. She shouldn’t have left without a coat, shouldn’t have abandoned the Jeep three miles down the road. She shouldn’t be doing any of this at all.

He takes a minute to answer. She stares at the chipped paint in front of her, hearing him shuffle behind, before light finally tips out into the night. He’s got the door open just enough to see who it is, and his arm's tucked back behind his shoulder, gun in hand. She knows to expect it.

‘Woah. Shit, Tati.’ He swings the door open, stepping in front of it. He’s half dressed: jeans, a-tank, handgun. ‘You okay?’

‘No, not really,’ she answers, not bothering with pretences. He’s knows her well enough to know she’s not from looks alone. Her teeth are chattering between the words. ‘Can I come in?’

He hesitates, just long enough to make her feel real shitty about herself, real stupid and careless, and selfish for showing up here, for letting her feet carry her here on autopilot, but then he nods. Steps aside. Lets her in without any judgement at all—well, with only a hint of it.

He locks the door behind her, leaves the gun on the side table. ‘You couldn’t call or something?’

She scans the room. Dark, minus a lamp in the corner and the glow from the muted TV. Warm, too. Like he’s had a fire lit, but that’s just her. Just the difference of being in here and not out there, with the cold that’s chilled her so thoroughly. There’s a throw along the floor by the couch, thrown off, no doubt, at her arrival.

‘Were you asleep?’ she asks, forgetting he had wanted an answer out of her first.

‘Nah, I was just… I was up, yeah, watching TV and shit.’

Couldn’t sleep either, then. Probably as worried as she is, though he’d never admit it unless he had to. Unless he was having a fucking panic attack and she just happened to be there when he did. Vulnerability was the one thing that didn’t survive their break-up, a sacrifice that she didn’t used to mind. Now, she wants to ask how his chest feels, how the anxiety sits beneath his ribcage. If it weighs the same as her’s does, if it makes him do dumb shit like walking around in the middle of the night. If it’s even there at all.

‘Sorry, I should’ve called, you’re right.’ She nods, pulling her arms into herself. He may as well know the truth of it, the order of bad decisions that led to her being here. ‘I got, I don’t know, freaked out, and I just had to go for a drive or something. Couldn’t sit inside anymore. But then the jeep reminded me of EZ, and I kept picturing him there, in the back. The blood.’ She gulps. ‘Really fucking crazy shit, man.’

Angel walks past as she explains, then bends to hook the throw with his fingers and bring it up from the floor. Not to put it back on the couch, she realises, but to put it over her shoulders instead. No comment, no disruption to her story. Just the blanket around her, a tight-lipped smile, and then a sigh as he drops into the couch afterwards.

‘I pulled up at a gas station and left it there,’ she continues. ‘Walked around a bit and then, I don’t know. I realised I was walking here and I’d come too far to turn around again, and it was so fucking cold that I just thought—’

‘It’s cool, Tati,’ he interrupts, dragging it out. ‘I’m not mad’

‘But it’s not fair for me to just show up like this.’

‘So? None of anything we’ve seen this week has been fair.’

Not exactly true, though, is it? Because EZ started the shit with Yuma, but she can’t say that to him now.

When she doesn’t reply, he rolls his eyes and gestures to the seat behind her. ‘Will you just sit down, Pidge, we’re past all this shit. You know I’m here for you.’

She does as he says, landing with a thud. ‘Still feel like shit about it, though.’ If she had anyone else to go to, she would, but it’s just him. Especially at this hour.

He laughs, rubbing a palm over his brow. ‘Yeah, likewise. You think it feels good every time I need you for something?’

No, but she doesn’t mind helping. It’s the only thing that brings them together anymore. Besides, he’s yet to show up at her place in the middle of the night, shivering and desperate for it. Who knows how she’d feel then, how disrupted sleep would shape itself in he. She might not be generous at all, if roles were reverse. She might not wrap him in her blanket and let him babble about his night unprovoked.

‘You want a coffee?’ he asks, leaning his elbows on his knees. ‘A sweater?’

She nods. ‘Both would be good.’ She’d never have asked for them herself.

When he’s back, with two coffees and a hoody that smells like him, she’s finally starting to warm up. The extra layers and the caffeine does more than she expected them too. She’s no longer shivering, no longer doubting her right to be here, to come to him, no longer focusing on the tightness of her breath. If it’s not them, it’s him. His company has drawn the chill out and put her head straight again.

He’s sitting opposite her now, looking the same as he had when she arrived. Tired, indifferent, lived-in like she’s seen a thousand times before. If you went back a year, this is how it always was. Angel tired, worn through from the day, and Tati awake, just to be awake with him.

‘You gonna tell me what it is then,’ he says, resting the mug on his thigh. ‘Don’t think I’ve ever seen you worked up enough to go walking round, freezing your ass off. Not since that Potter bullshit, anyway.’

Not since the DEA had a target on Angel’s back and she was helpless to it. Just like now, really. Different shooter, same victim.

‘What’s got you so spooked?’ he asks, insistent on it now, and nudging the hesitance out of her.

‘Honestly,’ she pauses, incase she changes her mind last minute, and tucks the confession back to bed, before deciding, no, fuck it. She is, and she’ll tell him. ‘I’m scared, Angel. Like, really fucking scared.’

He frowns, which isn’t the reaction she was expecting. She didn’t think he’d crumble, obviously, or rush over to comfort her, but she expected more than that at least. More than brows tucked together and a squint like he can’t make her out.

‘The shit with EZ, Yuma. You.’ She forces a breath. ‘It’s freaking me out.’

‘But why?’ he asks. ‘None of this is new to you.’

She scoffs, yeah, that she’s aware of. It’s been years since she had the right to be surprised, or overly concerned, about club business. But this is different. Because they’re different.

‘Before, if something happened to you…’ She puts her hands to her face, fingertips against her temples then combing through her hair. ‘Fuck, I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I’m saying something I’m not.’

His lips pull down around the mouthful of coffee he’s just taken, a grimace, almost, as he swallows. ‘You wanna translate that for me?’ he says afterwards, nervous humour in his voice. ‘The fuck does that mean?’

He expects her to laugh back, probably, to tell him to engage his brain for once, but the words are already fighting through the lump in her throat. Now’s not the time to waste them with jokes, or bickering. Whatever the fuck it is they do now.

‘If something happened to you,’ she explains, slowly, ‘like, right now.’ She gulps, and the more she speaks, the more she’s sure she shouldn’t—but there it goes, out of her lips anyway. ‘I don’t know that I wouldn’t spend my whole life regretting how we left things. How we’re leaving things.’

He looks down, away from her, like the woven rug beneath his feet is calling his name. She carries on like she hasn’t noticed. Don’t read into it, Pidge. It’s too late to go back now.

‘I’m not saying we should get together again. Or assuming you’d even…God. I don’t know.’ It’s not making any more sense now she’s putting it out there, a voice to the thoughts that’ve been tormenting her all week. If anything, it’s just tightening their grip on her, stirring the worry into a real threat. ‘It just feels different now, and it scares me.’

She waits for a nod, a reaction. He doesn’t move.

‘I can’t stop thinking about wasted time,’ she admits.

He snorts then, so sudden that it’s a surprise to both. ‘Wasting what? I see you all the time, Tati. We’re, y’know.’ He shrugs. ‘We’re good.’

‘Are we?’

‘Are we not?’

He isn’t getting it. Or maybe she’s the one not getting it. Maybe the only thing stopping her from saying that she would want to fix things, to get back together, is the self-awareness that she shouldn’t. Can’t. Won’t, until he gives any sign that he’s thinking it too.

‘Let’s just leave it,’ she says, falling into the cushion behind. ‘I’m clearly not thinking straight.’

Clearly, the shock of their rescue mission, of EZ half dead and bloodied, has taken a week to hit her, caught up at last and pushed her off the rails—straight into Angel’s easy-lounger. She doesn’t want to be with him—it doesn’t work, didn’t work—she just can’t face losing him, either. That’s all it is. If the worst happens, she doesn’t want to have forfeited her right to mourn.

Angel sighs, leaning back as she had, in his own seat on the couch. His arm goes up behind his head, face pointed to the ceiling. Thinking, hopefully, running desperate through his rationale the way she is. ‘You know, for once, Pidge, I actually think you should keep talking.’

She snorts. ‘Let me guess, so I can bore you to sleep?’

‘Nah.’ He rocks his head—a shake without any of the effort—and ignores her sarcasm completely. ‘So I can understand,’ he says. ‘You know I don’t think about stuff like this. Just block it out and keep shit moving.’

‘Yeah, maybe I should try that.’ Her method hasn’t helped tonight. It’s only made things worse, made her problem, his. ‘I don’t even know what I’m saying,’ she admits. ‘I’m just so fucking scared of regretting things. I don’t want to regret this,’ she points between him and herself, though he isn’t watching, ‘but I know that we don’t work.’

There’s a mark still, invisible but printed around them both. They had gotten worse and worse; bickering, arguing, fighting until they hated each other. It’s been six months now, and it only just starting to fade. Only loosening enough for moments like these.

‘Well, you must know something I don’t,’ he jokes, ‘cause I’m really not seeing the problem.’

‘Yuma,’ she stresses. ‘That shit isn’t just gonna go away, Angel.’

‘Not that part. The you fucking regretting this, part.’ He looks up at last, head lifting from the back of the couch to catch her gaze. ‘Does it look like I’m going anywhere? Shit, does it look like I want you to either? Whatever we got going on, it’s as much as a relationship as it was before.’

‘Angel.’

‘I’m serious.’ A smile creeps onto his features, eyes alight with the joke before he’s even said it. ‘You think I have time to get another girl while you’re still all up in my shit?’

Tati laughs, against her will, but it helps. ‘Asshole.’

‘Like, you really are cramping my style, Pidge.’

‘Okay, stop it. I’m fragile.’ But smiling, somehow, and then the laugh drops into a sigh, and the point of it—the actual point of what he said—comes back like a freight train. He’s not going anywhere. He doesn’t want her to either, regardless of where things stand.

‘Fuck,’ she breathes. He’s made her cry, somehow, but she can lie to herself and say that it’s not him, it’s the night she’s had. It’s the Jeep at the gas station, it’s the blanket round her shoulders and the almost-dead, almost-brother, and not Angel, that’s brought the wet to her eyes. ‘God, I hate this. ’

There’s a gap beside him on the couch, under his bent elbow, and he invites her to it, flicking his chin. ‘Come here,’ he says, soft, familiar. Too late into the night to care about their boundaries. ‘Gonna make me fucking depressed, watching you cry and shit.’

She snorts, standing and bringing her bundle of comforts with her. ‘That was my plan all along,’ she replies, barely managing the sarcasm. ‘Gotta drag you down with me.’

‘Yeah, real sweet.’

His arm drops as she does, settling around her shoulders, as she settles around him. Cheek to his chest, arm threaded between his waist and the cushions. As normal as it used to be. One thing less to regret.

‘You wanna crash here?’ he asks, thumb smoothing over her arm. ‘I’ll take the couch. Drop you back at your car in the morning.’

She should say no, but there are worse things she could do. And he’s warm, warmer than she has been all night, hot beneath her like he’s running a fever.

‘Are you sure?’

He tuts. ‘Man, if you make me beg, I’m taking it back. You can walk your ass right back to where you came from, Tatiana.’

‘Alright,’ she laughs, ‘fine. Thank-you. I’ll take it.’

There are worse things she can do, there are worse things that could happen.

>>> bonus scene