missthis_ass | [november 1]

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nate

[november 1]

They've been awake all bloody night.

It's hardly the first time she's done this, it's not as if she's ever worked a regular nine to five job, the sort where she goes home at the end of it all and does normal domestic activities before falling into bed at an appropriate hour and then getting up to do it all over again the next day. A life like that sounds, quite frankly, absolutely horrifying to Chloe, but Darrow has presented her with a unique set of challenges she's never faced before.

And she's responded by developing a routine.

It's only as six in the morning creeps closer that she realizes it, her eyes burning from the lack of sleep and she hates it a little, but a big part of her is too tired to really care. This is all going to be over soon, just thirty minutes more, and the only thing she can think about is crawling into her incredibly comfortable bed and pulling the blankets over her head until she feels mostly human again.

That and the fact that she'd come too close to losing Nate tonight.

It's not something she wants to talk about, not even something she wants to think about, but they're holed up in her apartment, both of them armed, neither of them speaking much, and she knows it's the elephant in the room. Nate had gotten kidnapped by some coffee loving cult and Chloe had come to rescue him.

The fact that she'd brought Coop doesn't negate what she'd done in the first place. This Purge business had started and Nate was the first person she had gone to look for. It's telling, it makes her affection for him obvious and she hates that it's obvious. Nate has always been able to drive her a little crazy, if only through his ability to get under her skin when so few others have and over the past few hours, during which they've seen relatively little action, she's glad neither of them have said a word about it.

But the truth is that she thinks about crawling into bed and in that little waking dream, she isn't alone. Nate is there, too.

"Sun's coming up," she says softly, looking out the window at the city below. For a few hours there had been plenty of activity for her to watch, people running up and down the street, plenty of fights, one of which she'd broken up by shooting at the ground around them when it had gotten too violent. For the most part she's kept out of it, though, and by now the street is nearly empty, save for broken glass and garbage, the remnants of the crime from the night before.

"It's almost done." She finally looks away from her vantage point, turning her gaze toward Nate where he's sitting at the other window. "Coffee? Or have you gone off the stuff?"

Her feelings for him might be complicated at best, but she's not about to stop teasing him.

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Nate hasn't let his gun out of his hands since Coop left. As soon as he'd had it back in his grip he'd been determined not to let go of it until the night was over, and even now, sitting in Chloe's apartment with his eyes fixed out the window, he has the gun in his right hand, his finger steadily on the trigger. It's not the first time he's been in this kind of situation, not even the first time he's been kidnapped, but he sure as hell has no intention of repeating the whole ordeal again.

He knows he's lucky that Chloe had looked for him, that she'd managed to find him, but he hasn't properly thanked her yet. She doesn't seem to want him to, either. They'd raced out of that warehouse with a body count behind them, and when they'd met back up at Chloe's apartment she'd hardly said anything at all. Nate's used to her teasing him and he'd expected it fully. He knows he was an idiot for getting himself into that situation in the first place, knows that getting kidnapped by a coffee worshipping cult is probably not a highlight of his criminal career, and he'd expected Chloe to have something of a field day with it once they were safe again.

She hasn't though, and in the hours they've spent sitting at their respective windows, keeping vigil, he's done his best to pretend like he doesn't know why.

He doesn't know how long it's been since either of them spoke, but eventually she tells him it's almost dawn, and Nate glances over at her, nodding. He's exhausted, there's dried blood in his hair that he hasn't bothered to wash out yet, angry red lines around his wrists where the plastic had cut into his skin, but he hadn't been about to let his guard down long enough to shower or rest while this was going on. He's been running on adrenaline more than anything, and now that it's starting to wind down, he can feel every ache in his body.

"So long as you don't have to sacrifice me to the coffee gods to make it," he answers wryly, shaking his head. "I'd kill for one." He moves from the window, finally shifting his gun from his hand to the back of his jeans.

"I think I can manage a pot of coffee without needing blood," she answers in a dry voice, one she would like to think hides just how weary she is, but she knows it doesn't quite accomplishes what she's going for. Chloe isn't the sort of woman whose voice ever cracks or wavers and it doesn't now, but there's a bone deep sort of exhaustion evident in her words, regardless of her attempts not to let it show. It's not only that she's tired from a long night, she's been in harder and more stressful situations before, but she's very aware lately of just what kind of trouble she might be getting herself into with Nate.

Maybe that's part of why she slept with Coop. There's no denying she's attracted to him, but there are plenty of attractive people in Darrow and she has to wonder if she hadn't gone after him with the intention of sabotaging herself, if perhaps she had hoped Nate might find out and get angry with her for having slept with the man who is, arguably, his best friend here. That's not entirely fair to Coop, it hadn't been just about that, but Darrow is a place that allows for a lot of introspection, which isn't something she particularly enjoys, especially when it leads her to places like this.

"Not need to kill, cowboy," she says as she moves toward the kitchen. Her hand passes fleetingly over his back as she walks past him, barely a touch at all. She's not prone to overt displays of affection unless it means she's about to get laid as a result, but she's been standing by that window all bloody night without looking at him too closely, itching all the while to touch him and make sure he's still really here.

She had been scared. Far more scared than she'll ever admit, but she hasn't felt fear like that since the moment in the cave when she had thought Charlie might kill Nate.

The promise of coffee is enough to move him, enough to make him stow his gun for the first time all night. He trusts Chloe to make it as strong as he likes, trusts her to do it without trying to murder him, and for a moment he's just relieved he's not in that shitty warehouse anymore. He's gotten out of worse scrapes before and he hadn't been truly scared for his own life, not really, but it does unsettle him a little that he could die like that.

He's spent years chasing treasure that most people couldn't begin to dream of, has put his neck on the line for scores that he couldn't bear to walk away from. He's been betrayed and shot and left for dead more times than he cares to count, but it irks him that after all that, some barista moonlighting as a two-bit cult leader could have been the end of it.

Chloe's hand ghosts across his back and she hardly touches him at all but he feels it, automatically moving to follow her to the kitchen. "Good," he says, shaking his head. "I doubt I could shoot straight right now anyway."

It's not necessarily true. Nate's an excellent shot and he's fought running on emlty before, but in Chloe's apartment he feels relatively safe, and the weariness is setting in. Maybe he wouldn't admit it to anyone else, but he knows she'd be able to tell in the set of his shoulders anyway. She knows him better than anyone else in this city. He leans against the kitchen counter, watching her as she moves about. He still has his guard up, one ear trained on the door with his eyes darting occasionally to the window, but it does seem to be wrapping up. The siren will shrill again soon, and the city will be left to pick up the pieces. Nate's not sure how they expect anything to just go back to normal now, but he's too tired to care.

"I suspect you'd rise to the occasion," she answers, shooting Nate a smile as she tucks her gun into the back of her jeans. It's not the safest place in the world for it, but she hadn't bothered with her holster earlier, too worried about Nate to take much time, and now she's not quite ready to put it back in the locked drawer where she usually keeps it. The siren hasn't gone quite yet, after all, and while she thinks they're relatively safe in here, it's just not worth the risk.

At this point, she'll probably stay armed for at least a few days. Maybe this was the only night where such things are legal, but it's given her a very clear picture of just how many people in this city are willing to hurt others. It's not as if Chloe has ever been known for her kindness, but she's never kidnapped someone in order to sacrifice them to who the hell knows what sort of weird god they were trying to impress. If that's what it had been at all. Maybe they just wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone.

She measures out the coffee into her press and fills her kettle with water before hitting the button to start it boiling, then leans against the counter and looks at Nate. He looks tired, but otherwise mostly unhurt except for the place where the knife wielding barista had pressed in a little too hard. It had been easy enough to ignore when they had been running for their lives and even during the past few hours when they'd been keeping watch, but now she can see bits of dried blood on his throat.

With a narrowed expression, she pushes away from the wall and crosses to where Nate is standing, then reaches out to grasp his chin. She turns his head slightly, then releases his chin and touches her fingers to the place where he's been cut. It isn't too deep, but she still goes to the sink where she wets a paper towel, then comes back to him and presses it to his throat, cleaning off the blood. She's not exactly gentle, but she doubts Nate expects her to be.

"Doesn't hurt, does it?" she asks.

The sound of the kettle boiling relaxes him a little, almost as if he can pretend things are going back to normal. He's still ready to move into action if need be, but he slowly lets himself ease into the comfort of Chloe's apartment, the sound of the kettle boiling and the promise of coffee.

Chloe looks at him for a moment with a concerned expression and Nate's about to ask her what's wrong when suddenly she's moving across the room to take his chin in her hand, turning his head. He only tenses for a split second before he lets her, forcing himself to relax into the touch. In truth he'd forgotten about the cut, the sting of it dulled in comparison to the dull throbbing in the back of his head from the bat. The blood matting his hair together at the back needs more cleaning than his throat does, purely on the basis that it's kind of disgusting, but he doesn't argue.

When she comes back from the sink she presses the towel firmly against the cut, not bothering to be gentle with him. He's used to it, and he just tilts his head to the side again to give her room, glancing down at her out of the corner of his eye. "It's nothing," he assures her, shaking his head a fraction. He's had worse, she knows he's had worse, and in the scheme of things the cut barely registers. It'll heal quickly enough, and in the meantime he knows it'll sting a little, at most. "I mean, if you want to kiss it better, I won't complain, but it's fine."

The kettle whistles to indicate the water is ready and just a moment later the siren goes off, somehow louder than she expected it to be and she doesn't jump, doesn't even wince, but her gaze cuts toward the window for a moment and she still can't bring herself to relax. That siren means the worst of it is over, she knows that's what it means, but she still expects something else to happen for a moment and she waits, halfway between Nate and the kettle, watching the window as if something might come crashing through the glass.

Nothing does. There's one last scream from outside and then, slowly, the sounds begin to die off completely and Chloe goes to the kettle and pours the water into the press.

"Sit down," she tells him without answering his little joke. That's Nate all over and that's her usually her, too, but she's not in a particularly light mood at the moment. In other circumstances she might yell at him, she might tell him what an idiot he's been, it's not like it would be the first time she's stormed out on him, but none this is his fault, no matter how she looks at it. The people who are to blame have already been dealt with, most of them, and it annoys the hell out of her that she can't do anything more.

"Five minutes for the coffee," she says, then disappears from the kitchen. She goes to the closet in the hall and retrieves a hand towel, then comes back to the kitchen and wets the towel in the sink before she looks at Nate expectantly and gestures for him to sit in one of the chairs so she can look at his head.

He can't help the way the tension leaks a little out of his shoulders the minute the siren sounds. He knows it shouldn't mean anything; people are still people and a siren cutting through the silence doesn't necessarily mean that they'll go back to being decent, but it does mean the worst of it should be over and done with. The law should be back in place, and Nate never thought he'd welcome that, but he does now.

She ignores the joke but he'd expected that, too. Another time she might have given it straight back to him, but he knows already that she's not in that kind of mood. He does as she instructs, and it might be the first time he's ever done what she's told him without argument, but he does. He sits and waits for her to reappear, wishing a little that she hadn't decided injuries trump coffee.

"I said it's fine," he argues when she brings back the towel, but he doesn't protest any further when she moves towards him with it. It's easier to sit quietly and let her take her frustrations out on bossing him around than it is to talk about what happened tonight or why she's here at all.

"Your head was nearly bashed in, it's not just fine," she answers, coming up behind him with the damp towel and carefully parting his hair. He could do with a shower -- they both could, really -- but she wants to make sure he's not going to open up some gaping head wound if she shoves him under the spray after getting some coffee into him.

It's bad, but it's not that bad, that's what she discovers as she carefully cleans the sticky blood from his hair. At this point it's stopped bleeding and she thinks they both ought to be careful so as to not open it back up again, but she doesn't think he needs to see a doctor. Not that he would, she's sure. Her tendency isn't toward gentleness, not usually, but she's careful with him now. There are always situations in which they've been careful with one another and she doesn't want to think about it for very long, but her hands are light on his hair and when she's done, she leaves one palm against the back of his neck for a beat too long.

"No stitches required," she says after a few moments, then looks at her watch before crossing the kitchen to get the mugs. "And just in time for the coffee to be ready."

She's doing her best to be gentle, he can tell that much, even if the touch of her fingers does make him wince a little. It's unusual for her to be like this and he'd wonder at it if he didn't think she'd just go out of her way to be rough in retaliation. She cleans the wound up like she's done it a hundred times, and Nate knows for a fact that she probably has. They never plan for things to go horribly wrong, but they're also more than used to patching each other up.

When she's done her palm presses into the back of his neck, and Nate can't help but lean into it, kicking himself for it even as he does it. He's stronger than this, but he can't deny the fact that it feels nice, that this is better than licking his wounds alone in his apartment with a case of shitty beer like he normally does.

He hadn't expected it to need stitches but he's glad to hear it confirmed, at least. Chloe moves back towards the kitchen, and it's only the promise of coffee that convinces Nate the loss of her hand is a good thing.

"Black, please." Normally, Nate is the kind of guy who dumps enough cream and sugar into his coffee that it's barely coffee at all, but right now he needs the bitter strength of it to wake him up. The siren might have gone off but he doesn't trust sleep just yet, not until the city's had time to wind down. He waits quietly, and when she reappears with two mugs and hands one to him, he takes it from her gratefully, letting his fingers linger against hers for a brief moment. "Thank you," he says, and when he flicks his eyes towards hers he hopes she knows he means for more than just the coffee.

He's not going to say it outright, and he doesn't think she'll make him, either. But there's not many people in this city who would have come for him, and he knows what it could have cost her. She's joked before about always saving his ass, but this time he's glad for it, more than he'll admit even to himself.

"Just don't get used to it," she says as she sits down in the chair across from him and puts her foot up on his chair just between his legs. "The coffee service, I mean, I'm sure I'll still be swooping in like a bloody superhero to save your ass well into my eighties."

She's back to sarcasm and light quips because it's easier. Because then she doesn't have to think about what might have happened to him had she not come looking for him, if she didn't know him so well as to recognize his gun and his tendency to rush headlong into situations where he just had to play the hero. Those situations were the ones that usually ended with Nate getting shot or kidnapped or injured in some way and tonight had been no exception.

Taking a sip of coffee and looking at him over the rim is easier than saying anything else. The comment is meant to be lighthearted, but she means it all the same. Nate is one of the few people in her life she's been able to rely on and although she's not the sort of person most would call loyal, he's earned it and she intends on giving that to him, even if they never speak of it.

"You need a shower," she tells him, giving the inside of his knee a nudge with her toes. "A long, hot one."

His lips quirk into a small smile at the idea. In all honesty Nate can't say he's ever imagined Chloe being eighty, let alone still saving his ass then, but that's possibly because he's never really expected to live that long. It's an odd thought. She kicks her leg up and Nate shifts his legs a little to make room for her, almost unconsciously.

"Yeah," he agrees, wrinkling his nose a little. It's been a long night, and he knows he'd need one even aside from all the blood and dirt through his hair. He knows that getting under the hot water is going to sting like hell and he's honestly not looking forward to it all that much, but he knows it needs to be done. He takes a sip of his coffee, knowing that he should finish the cup and go home. The streets should be relatively safe now, and it won't take him too long to walk back to his own apartment, throw himself into a quick shower and then fall into bed and preferably never get up again.

He can't bring himself to move just yet though, so he nudges her foot back with his thigh and smirks a little. "You could join me," he says, and he's only really half joking. They're both exhausted and it's hardly the best time for it, but he wouldn't be Nate if he didn't even try.

"It's my shower, you can bet your ass I'll be joining you," Chloe says, as if it's been decided all along that he's going to stay here. Of course it hasn't, she's been expecting him to leave since the siren went off, signaling that safety has returned to the streets of Darrow -- though she thinks that's mostly bullshit, too -- but he's made no move to go and now he's suggested that he might want to stay here.

This is how it always is with them. They don't ever say anything meaningful, don't address the things that might actually be going on between them. Asking Nate to dance with the one who'd brought him was as close as she'd ever gotten to telling him she wanted him to actually stick with her, but even then she hadn't been able to go any further with that. Because she had seen it, how much he loved Elena, and Chloe knows she would have never been content playing second fiddle to anyone. It's only different now because Elena isn't here and in Darrow, as far as it matters, she's the one who's most important to Nate.

"Besides," she adds, "If I let you in there alone you'll just open up your head wound, bleed out in the shower and leave a ring of dirt around the tub." She takes a sip of coffee then, arching an eyebrow at him over the rim of her mug, practically daring him to say anything else besides yes. They both know he's not leaving now and she feels something in her relax a little at the thought.

She says it like it's obvious, and doesn't leave any room for argument. For once, he's happy to go along with whatever she wants. He didn't really want to walk home anyway, for more reasons than the obvious. He would have gone if she'd kicked him out, obviously, but he hadn't really ever thought there was a risk of that happening.

He doesn't have to say he wants to stay because she knows anyway, in the same way he doesn't have to ask to know she wants him to, too. Whether it's because she thinks he'll get himself killed if he goes back outside or some other reason, he's not game to ask, but it doesn't matter. She raises an eyebrow at him over the rim of her mug and Nate smiles, a crooked lift to the corner of his mouth. It's probably a fair enough call, though he would like to think that as a grown man he could manage to shower without help.

"Wouldn't want to dirty your tub," he allows, shaking his head. He takes a gulp of coffee probably too quickly and it scalds its way down his throat, but it's a welcome burn. He needs the caffeine hit, and it's a nice reminder that he's still sitting here at all, able to drink coffee with her. Nate's always walked a little too close to the line and part of him gets off on it, a fact Marlowe had all too happily pointed out. "You'd probably drag my ass back from the dead just to make me clean it."

"Mm, and that'd be the only reason," she answers, her voice dry as she continues to look at him. Another woman -- someone like Elena, probably -- would be bothered by the fact that they never say anything of meaning, but Chloe finds she prefers it this way. It's not as if Nate doesn't know what she's thinking, probably because he's often thinking the same thing, and they don't need to talk about it in order for things to be understood.

At least, she thinks they're understood.

"It wouldn't be fair to make a woman in mourning clean her own tub, would it?" she asks and then finally breaks into a bit of a smile. The night is still clinging to her, as most of Nate's near death experiences tend to, but it'll fade with time. They've both chosen lives too dangerous for her to really let it haunt her for long without going crazy.

She nudges her toes against his leg again and nods at his coffee. "Feeling more human? At least a little?"

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[november 1]

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