missthis_ass | (no subject)

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coop

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She should have checked on Coop sooner.

It's not like she's been completely out of touch, she's texted him a few times, she knows he survived the rest of of the Purge after they'd lost each other in their escape from the warehouse. She knows, too, that he'd lost someone close to him and that's part of why she's kept her distance. Chloe isn't very good at sympathy. She's good at a lot of things and some of those things might even make Coop feel better, but she has no idea how to offer that or how to even talk to someone after they've lost a person they care about.

Truthfully, she probably shouldn't even know, but Darrow isn't a very big city and word travels, especially when the man killed had been somewhat notorious himself. Especially when his killer had wound up dead not long after by the hands of someone she knows.

It feels like something private and sensitive and she doesn't like knowing it, because knowing about it means she should do something, but her talents fall incredibly short of coming up with an answer. So for too long she does nothing.

Then one day it comes to her in the form of a newspaper article detailing an auction to be held in early January. She scans the story and she almost goes after the list of items being auctioned by herself before she realizes this might be exactly the sort of thing to make Coop feel better and it's easier, too, than showing up at his door with nothing but a bit of sympathy for him. Nate might not want to be left out of this, but she decides since this is still technically her score, she gets the final word of who accompanies her where.

And so she goes to Coop.

When she knocks on his door, she's holding the newspaper in one hand, tapping it against her thigh, and she has a case of beer in the other. Maybe it's not entirely about work, maybe there's a bit of comfort to be offered, but she has to start with alcohol.

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For a second, Coop thought the knocking was coming from the crappy movie he was watching. He was sprawled on the sofa, a drink and a pizza box on the coffee table and now he was trying to figure out why a knocking sound was coming during a moment in the movie that was all explosions.

"Oh shit, it's not the movie," he mumbled, levering himself up to his feet and padding over to the door. He hadn't really been expecting anyone but there had been the odd person coming by to check on him.

He pulled the door open and found himself at a loss for words upon seeing Chloe there. She'd texted him a few times but having her show up was a surprise.

Coop leaned against the door frame and said, "Hey. What's going on?"

"I brought you beer," she says, pressing the case into his chest so he can take it from her and she can let go of it. Then she taps his arm with the newspaper. "I brought you work."

Then she grins and leans past the case of beer so she can use her free hand to slide around the back of his neck, pressing a kiss to his mouth. A little part of her still feels guilty about it, as if she's doing something wrong, but she's really not. She's long ago reasoned this with herself, knowing it wouldn't make Nate happy if he knew, but also knowing Nate wouldn't say a damn thing about it.

Besides, whenever he was sleeping with her, nothing she ever did with another man made Nate happy. He'd been pissed about Harry, too, and that had simply been a necessity to get them what they wanted at the time. It had all been part of the plan, it's just that she hadn't told him about that part until it had been done.

"And I brought you that," she adds with another grin. "Figured it'd be a pleasant enough way to start the evening."

Coop caught the beer against his chest, glanced down at where she smacked his arm and then made a sound of surprise and then pleasure when she kissed him. It all happened so damn fast that he hadn't really been able to reply before her lips were on his and he was kissing her.

It didn't last as long as maybe he would have liked but when she pulled away, he was a little more relaxed than he was before she'd arrived.

"Well, you're the best visitor I've had in awhile," Coop told her, stepping aside and giving her space to come inside. "Come in, you can share some of this beer and tell me about this work and other things. I've been out of the loop for a few weeks."

"I know," she says, giving his chest a light poke as she passes him by on her way into the apartment. "I've missed seeing you around."

It's said lightly and with a grin flashed over her shoulder as she turns to look at him, walking toward his living room where she can still hear his television, but she does mean it in her way. It's hard to know what to say to someone like Coop, someone who's actually come to mean something to her, especially when she's so used to being flippant with nearly everyone. He's lost someone, though, and so it's not the end of the world to let him know there are still others who think about him.

"It's terribly rude, you know," she says. "To have deprived me of your company." As if she couldn't have shown up at his apartment any time.

"I haven't been great company for awhile now," Coop admitted, kicking the door shut and following her inside. He grabbed one of the beers from the pack she'd brought and then brushed by her to flop down on the couch, sighing.

"But, you're here now and you can set eyes on this beautiful face," Coop said, gesturing to himself before he patted the spot beside him. "Now, come on, sit down and tell me about this work. Or you can kiss me again but I've got beer breath now."

To illustrate that, he took a pull from the bottle and grinned lazily at her.

"I like beer," Chloe points out with a smirk as she takes a bottle as well, then tucks herself into the space beside him. Reaching over, she first takes the paper back from him, then leans into his space again to give him another kiss, this one longer than the first. It's not solely born of affection, though she does like him well enough, there's still heat in it, still a promise of something more to come later and she's aware of what most people would say about her offering sex as a comfort when she hasn't even told him she's sorry for his loss, but she's fine with that.

Chloe knows where her talents lie.

"Alright, love," she says when they've parted again, then taps his thigh with the paper. "This story here is what I'm interested in. There's a large scale auction being held in early January, something where the rich and passably famous in Darrow go to mingle and be seen and spend obscene amounts of money on the sorts of items you and I might very much like to get our hands on."

Coop had never been as easy with affection as Chloe was. It was something he envied her for, being able to sit and touch and be with someone without the thought that they were going to stab her in the back or out and out walk away without another word. He supposed that could still happen here, with her and the others that he cared about, but he also knew that he'd be a lonely person if he kept up the cynicism he'd had back home.

After she pulled away, he settled back onto the couch and eyed the paper she was carrying.

Coop found himself nodding as she spoke, grateful that the auction was in January and gave him some time to get himself back together and confident again. "So, you want us to lift the items? You know where they're being kept?"

"First task, I want to get my hands on the list of items they're auctioning," she says. "We can figure out if there's anything worth taking and where they're being kept and I want to see if there's anything about that bloody compass."

It's a stupid thing, this compass, and she doesn't believe for a second that it actually works, if it exists at all, but she wants to find it simply because she knows there's someone out there willing to pay her and obscene amount of money for it. Enough that she'll be able to give Nate and Coop some of it for their troubles helping her find it and enough that she'll be able to finally buy herself a nice car.

"That's being kept under lock and key, too, but it should be easy enough for us to get in and out," she tells him. "The company doing the auction has an office near the bank downtown."

Coop closed his eyes, trying to recall if he'd ever set eyes on the office she's indicating. He's passed by the bank a few times but since banks weren't really his thing, hadn't paid all that much attention.

All he got was some hazy images of a nondescript building so he opened his eyes and nodded. "I've got some good stuff for getting into locked spots. Living Numbers and all. One of the few good things that DOPS left me with."

And he was damn sure glad he'd taken them to Darrow. Fuck DOPS and their kidnapping ways. Hopefully Bayliss and Nelson were writing up reports on their lost items. "Is it a guarded building? Security? Rent a cops?"

"I've walked by a few times and it looks like private security," Chloe says, then pauses to take a sip of her beer. "Though I'd have to see them tested to know just how good they are."

Because sometimes private security can be a surprise, taking their assignments very seriously and better at protecting their jobs than they really had any right to be. Other times they're all a bit of a joke. The only way to know for sure is to send someone else in, someone she doesn't care about getting into a little bit of trouble and she thinks she can find someone to pay for something like that.

"I was thinking we find some fool who doesn't give a damn and wants to make a spot of cash," she says. "Send them in acting as if they were a drunk wandering in from off the street and see what happens."

"Well, you've just described me, Chloe," Coop pointed out, raising his bottle in acknowledgement before downing it and shrugging. "I'm a damn fool who wants to make some money but I don't think you had that job in mind for me."

It would be too bad though since Coop thought he'd do a damn good job acting drunk because he'd more than likely be drunk. He reached for another bottle of beer and then sat back, sighing.

"Okay, send someone in, see how security acts and then plan from there? If they're inept, it'll be easy. If they're actually well paid and trained, then time for some thrilling heroics or at least, a little more thought."

"Some fool whose ass I won't care about if it ends up getting kicked," Chloe specifies with an amused roll of her eyes. She isn't about to grab just anyone, because they still need information from the resulting interaction, but she's not about to assign this to someone she actually wants to continue working with down the line. Among other things.

"Thrilling heroics is always a little more fun," she admits. "But I wouldn't mind a bit of easy work after our last thrilling heroics. I kept finding bits of Nate's blood in my apartment for weeks."

She hadn't meant to bring up the Purge. In fact, she'd planned on specifically avoiding it, given it's the night his friend died, but it's too late to take it back now and all she can do is hope she hasn't made him feel worse.

"Yeah, well he's Nate," Coop said, frowning at the mention of the Purge and what that night had brought along with it. He could barely remember what his and Philip's last conversation had been about but it hadn't been anything close to resembling a goodbye.

That fucking bastard. Coop wasn't supposed to be this upset about someone but here he was, pissed off and sad and unsure what to do with those emotions.

"He does everything to extremes and that seems to include bleeding," he managed to say, pushing through the moodiness that wanted to take over. She didn't deserve to have to deal with him in as shitty a mood as he could be in.

"If there's ever been a more apt description of Nate, I'm not sure I've heard it," she agrees with a roll of her eyes, but she knows it isn't that simple. A few years ago she would have probably just skated right past the elephant in the room and refused to acknowledge it, but Nate has always been so bloody moral and more than once, it's because of his influence that she's found herself doing the right thing instead of the easy thing.

And it would be so easy to just distract Coop. To feed him more beer or drag him into a conversation about the potential job or just drag him into his bedroom, but she's not sure it would be the right thing to do.

So she shifts again, leaning against him, then puts one hand on his chest before she says, "I'm sorry about your friend."

"Thanks," Coop said, eyes falling and lips turning down into a frown. "I shouldn't be so surprised because he was a bastard and could piss off the wrong person with the blink of an eye but goddammit, I wish he hadn't."

Coop knew that now Philip was gone. Unless he showed back up again before he was shot back home that he wasn't going to be sent back all clean and shiny and fine. No. That was it for him.

Coop smiled and shook his head, covering her hand with his. "I just need to get over it."

Chloe has at least one friend like that, someone who has a tendency to piss the wrong person off just by looking at them the right way, and she knows if he had died on that night, like she'd been afraid he might, she wouldn't be over it yet.

Of course, she also wouldn't want to talk about it either. Mostly she would want people to leave it alone.

"I don't know if it's ever as simple as that," she settles on saying. "Even with experience, things like that aren't easy to just get over. Even if he was a bastard." That's about the most comforting thing she thinks she can muster and it's not that she doesn't want to try, but she doesn't want Coop to think she's pitying him.

"Most of the people I know just walk out on me, you know?" Coop told her, shaking his head. "When they leave, it's because they've seen some fault in me or found something better so the leave. It's shitty but at least I know they're still alive."

Philip had left but Philip wasn't coming back. He wasn't going to pop back up after a few years with some stories about the kinds of things he'd been able to do after leaving. He was gone. As good as gone as he could be.

"I don't even mind people that wanna leave either," Coop told her, shrugging. "Whatever, I know what kind of person I am. But, at least they're alive."

Coop says he doesn't mind that people leave him, but Chloe has to think that's not entirely true or he wouldn't have brought it up. That's not something she's about to press, though, not about to point out that she thinks maybe he does care. Ordinarily she might. On a regular day, she would probably delight in giving him a hard time about it, but not when they're talking about his dead friend.

"It is shitty," she agrees. "There's not a whole hell of a lot you can do to argue with death."

Chloe has lost people to death, but even so, it terrifies her. When she had come to Darrow, she had been in the middle of one of the more frightening moments of her life and that includes all the times she's had guns pointed directly at her.

"The reason I was so... out of sorts when we first met is because only moments before, one of my dearest friends, Charlie, who had been dosed with a drug, was trying to kill Nate. Sully, Nate's partner, he had his gun on Charlie. I thought for certain I had lost one or both of them that day."

"And then I pop up telling you my name's Charlie," Coop said, wincing. "Sorry about that. Probably a shitty reminder. Just another reason I don't use the name."

It had never sounded right, really. He sounded like some old man who should hitch his pants up to his chin and start playing pinochle or something. Maybe one day in the future he'd start going by Charlie again but not that he knew more of her story, he'd probably never go by it around her.

"Do you know what happened to them?" Coop asked her, frowning. "Did Nate know enough to tell you that everyone made it through okay?"

"They were okay," she says. "I was lucky."

They were all lucky and she knows it. At the time she had been trying so hard to get through to Charlie, to have him really see her, and she doesn't know what it means that she succeeded. He's important to her and she loves him in her way, but like everything that deep, the thought of being the only one who was able to reach him frightens her a little. She shouldn't be that important to anyone.

"I'm sorry you weren't lucky," she continues, then sets her beer aside and turns on the couch, shifting so she can straddle Coop's hips. Some psychologist somewhere would have a field day with this, her telling Coop about someone she cares about, only to crawl into his lap in an attempt to comfort him, but she doesn't give a shit now. "But rest assured, I'm far too stubborn to die on you and I'm fairly certain Nate is like a supercharged cat. I'm sure he has dozens upon dozens of lives."

"That's good," Coop told her, sounding sincere even if his words were predictable and probably trite. He did really hope that the people he liked didn't lose anyone to death or walking out. Even if Coop didn't let it show, it did take a bit out of him each time it happened.

But, he can't dwell on that too long when she moves and settled herself very nicely right on his lap. He's still holding a beer but he does move to rest his free hand on her hip and lets his head rest against the couch so he can see her better.

"Well, I do appreciate two people I actually like sticking around this godforsaken place with me," Coop murmured, tracing circles against her hip. "I've already lost enough. Take pity on me."

"I thought that was what I was doing already, showing up here with beer and a potential job and all the rest of me," Chloe answers with a grin, walking her fingers up his chest teasingly. There are plenty of reasons why she probably shouldn't do this, why she should find an alternative to comforting Coop with sex or even just with fooling around a little, but she's put those reasons aside. Chloe's not the sort to let herself dwell on things and she's not going to dwell on that.

"Actually, I suppose all that falls under the category of distraction rather than pity," she muses thoughtfully, her hands sliding back down Coop's chest, fingers pushing up the hem of his shirt. She curls her fingers under, scratching her nails lightly against his skin. "Which is probably better in the long run. Who wants a woman crawling into their lap out of pity, after all?"

"You never know, there might be someone desperate enough for touch to let another person crawl on them out of pity." Hell, he might have been in that group at certain points in his life. Being on his own was good for his paranoia and distrust but bad for those nagging feelings of wanting to be around someone.

"So, if it's not pity," Coop started, sighing and letting his head fall back against the back of his couch, eyes closing, "then what is driving you to crawl into my lap and be affectionate?"

It's welcome, Coop doesn't want her to think otherwise but it was unexpected. He knew though that it was probably just the best way she knew when it came to trying to comfort someone.

Coop approved.

Chloe's not the best with honesty. It's part of living as a thief and she's never made apologies for it. The people in her life have known what to expect and she's never even felt particularly guilty about it, not even when she and Nate had planned on completely abandoning Harry after the job was done.

In recent years, though, after spend more time with Elena, the annoyingly kind person that she is, and with Charlie, who for a thief was oddly sweet, she's been trying. Mostly she's not very good at it, but she does try and she smiles now, tilting her head a little to look at Coop.

"I wasn't aware I needed a reason," she teases, her hands sliding further up his chest. "But if I do... maybe it's just that I give a damn about you and want to make sure you're okay."

"You say the sweetest things," Coop teased, smiling lazily at her. He hadn't really expected or wanted anything heartfelt because he wouldn't have known what to do with words and feelings like that when he felt like he did. He probably would have started crying or something equally embarrassing.

"But, that just prompts the next question," Coop continued, tapping out a quiet rhythm against her hip before speaking again, "of what is you're planning on doing now that you've made yourself comfortable? Should I be offering you a drink? Maybe something to eat? Something else I can do to help you out here?"