Work Text:
The thing is, Lydia Martin is the best at what she does – always has been, regardless of whether it’s high school chemistry or extracting information in exchange for money - the latter in which she feels she thoroughly exceeds her peers in. There may be one or two in her league, but somehow she doubts it.
And if there were, they certainly couldn’t pull off this lipstick the way she does.
Currently, Lydia – or Maxine Stephenson, as is written on her passport – is sitting in the dappled shade of a poolside bar on a beach in Florida, smiling flirtatiously at a slightly balding man who is suspected of selling new arms technology to an unknown buyer.
She gives a calculated flick of her hair and a bat of her eyelashes – to indicate that she’s interested, but just not interested enough so that he will try to gain more of her attention - and is almost immediately ordered another martini by the guy who just can’t seem to believe his luck.
The man – a Mr D Haynewood – is talking relentlessly about his new promotion – still not revealing what he does, she notes, despite his passion for some bright pink, sludgy drink with a slice of lemon and umbrella in it. She makes another note to step up his alcohol intake, to help loosen his tongue, and smiles at him.
“So, you’re what - on vacation now?” she asks with faux inquisitiveness, resting a cherry red nail on the rim of her glass.
He looks proudly back at her and declares, “Business actually. Important stuff. Stuff I probably shouldn’t talk about.” He winks at her in a conspirative manner and Lydia resists the temptation to roll her eyes, but she’s just been told exactly what she wants to hear.
So she angles her seat closer to him, leans forward slightly and asks, very sweetly and all fake innocence, if any fun on business trips is allowed.
Although she very much doubts that he’ll be the one having fun.
-
Lydia is used to things in her life going to plan. Whether it’s because her nail polish bottles are always organized by colour or because her weapons are organized by type and then by size or her meticulous planning that she’s been in a habit of since second grade. All of this, she supposes, is what has resulted in her 99.9% success rate.
So when she leads Haynewood back to his room, a full five hours later with the moonlight casting longs streams of pale light across the overhead palm trees, she is more than a little surprised - and slightly pissed off - when she hears a slight thwip and an arrow buries itself in Haynewood’s throat.
Fuck, she thinks viciously, pondering the choices between staying and acting the helpless bystander, or pursuing the archer.
She chooses the latter, because damn her if anybody ever interrupts her work.
Spotting a shadowy figure slipping through the palm trees some five hundred meters away, she slips off her heels and takes off at a sprint, already considering the fact that this was a fruitless attempt at catching a ghost.
By the time she reaches the point where the assassin had slipped away, there is nobody in sight and not a grain of sand is out of place.
-
Between checking and double checking the security tapes and identities of the people staying in and around the hotel, she calls through on an encrypted line to leave a single message of: “White lilies ready for delivery.”
This meant that the job had fallen through.
Her job had been derailed. She’d failed, she’d actually screwed up, Lydia thinks, a bitter taste at the back of her mouth and something that almost feels like the burn of embarrassment and shame on her neck, but she refuses to think about it, or even acknowledge it.
Instead, she turns back to the computer screen and checks through the camera footage for a third time.
-
Despite all appearances in high school – she’d been named the Homecoming Queen after all, and was notorious for throwing parties – she prefers to work alone – or freelancing, if you want to call it that - purely because too many people involved in an equation can result in unpredictable circumstances. The only person who she remains in contact with work-wise is one Danny Mahealani, who handles information for her and occasionally passes work her way.
He also happens to be the best friend of her ex-boyfriend from high school, but they both prefer to ignore that.
“I managed to refine some stills from that footage you sent,” he says to her over the phone, voice distorted due to the fact that she is currently in Paris and he in California, and because it’s 2am where he is and the tiredness is bleeding through, “but they’re pretty blurry and you can’t really make much out.”
She taps her fingers in annoyance. “Can’t you find out who would have hired an assassin recently at least?” she asks, voice tense from frustration, despite her posture being relaxed, trying to play the part of an American tourist in Paris. An untouched croissant and lukewarm coffee sit in front of her.
He sighs but says, “I could try, but I can’t promise anything, Martin,” and hangs up.
She huffs, twirls a strand of strawberry blonde hair around her finger and orders a fresh coffee.
-
She’s on a stealth mission in Switzerland when it happens again. The mission had been simple – get in unnoticed, get the information needed and get out, preferably without being noticed. Supposedly easy and wouldn’t require her to bat her eyelashes at anyone.
So when she slides through a third floor window with making not a single sound, only to see the two people she was supposed to be eavesdropping on lying dead on the – rather expensive, she admits sadly – carpet, a single arrow embedded in their throats, she sees absolute blood red, because this had been what she had discovered on the last three – no, four – jobs that she’d taken, the last four jobs that she hadn’t been able to complete because apparently more than one person has their eye on a target, and considers burning the place to the ground purely to make herself feel better.
She tells herself later as she walks away from the building, the blaze of the building warming her back, that it’s completely alright as long as she manages to completely cover her tracks.
-
She angrily phones Danny from a payphone outside a train station in Zurich, her fingers jabbing at the numbers.
“-hello?” he answers, and she doesn’t bother thinking about what time it must be there before she spits out, “Our mystery assassin got another one of mine, please tell me you’ve made some kind of progress with who they are. Because this?” she cuts him off when it sounds like he’s going to say something, “this is not just bad in terms of my business and personal income. They are showing me up.”
“If you’d let me speak,” he cuts in, “I could tell you that there has been progress.”
“Well thank god for that,” she mutters and drops her head onto the glass.
“There’s this group of people – I couldn’t quite say what they are. They don’t seem to be a gang or anything and there aren’t enough to make up an organization. But what I could find on them is that they do have an assassin – one that uses a bow and arrows. That might be your guy.”
She smiles down into the receiver, feeling slightly more settled that she was regaining some sort of control over this ridiculous situation. “Thanks Danny, you’re the best.”
“I know I am,” he replies and hangs up.
She walks onto her train to Lyon feeling less like she wants to commit another extreme case of arson.
-
Lydia is reclining in the plush, first class seats waiting for the train to leave, a book on the inner workings of the brain resting on her lap, when a tall girl drops into the seat next to her with a shy smile and holy shit she’s breathtakingly beautiful. Lydia immediately tries not to stare, gives a quick smile and – don’t be flirtatious Lydia, for god’s sake, just pretend to be normal- a “hey,” before turning back to her book.
The thing is, Lydia has never really dated much. Sure, she’d had a string of boyfriends back in high school, none of which had lasted long with the exception of Jackson, but there had never really been much emotion behind any of it. There had been one or two girls who she’d been attracted to – more than one or two, if she were to be completely honest with herself – and that incredibly beautiful, if not terrifying Mrs Blake who had taught them English for a few semesters and who Lydia had caught herself fantasizing about more than a couple of times.
It was just that romantic relationships where never really that important to her during high school, and in her current line of work are almost impossible to have.
But when the epitome of human beauty and grace is sitting beside you for the next few hours, Lydia thinks that she might reconsider that particular stance on it. So she puts on her most flirtatious smile, turns to her and says, “So, where’re you from?”
-
Allison Argent, as her name turns out to be – and god, what a name, Lydia thinks, it’s liquid silver in the moonlight – is also an American, a student in French and other Romance languages, but is on a gap year to travel around Europe and visit the other side of the family who live in France, she tells Lydia with shy smiles and dark curls waving around her head with each nervous movement.
Lydia tells Allison her name, but doesn’t offer her surname – she might look like heaven on earth, but Lydia is still a naturally suspicious person – and tells her that she’s studying physics and mathematics and that her dream is to win the Field’s Medal for mathematics. It’s not a complete lie; it was her dream when she was sixteen.
Lydia was worried that at first she was wrong about Allison flirting back or at least being interested, but upon finding out that they had family living in the same town back in California, Lydia had suggested “If you’re ever in town, maybe you should drop by and we can get to know each other better,” with a subtle tone implying intimately that the listener would only have caught on if they were listening to it.
Which Allison must have been, for she looked back at Lydia through her eyelashes and replied that yes, she would definitely like that very much.
As Lydia gets off at the station in Lyon several hours later, she reflects upon the incredibly slim chance of this encounter ever happening, but, rather uncharacteristically optimistic of her, decides that a chance is a chance.
And if the text she gets from Allison, telling her that she’ll be in Vichy for a few weeks, if Lydia wants to drop in, complete with a suggestive “;)”, is anything to go by, then it’s definitely a strong chance.
Lydia’s current job is in Lyon itself, to try and find out who is financing a corrupt minor local politician on the side. So she tells herself, that if this job goes to plan, unlike the last four, she’d taken the next few weeks off, turn off her phone and the mind set that she slips into while on the job and spend it with Allison.
-
Lydia decides to complete this job a little earlier than she normally would, mostly because she wants to get it over and done with and flounce off to Vichy, but also because she – irrationally, she testily reminds herself – wants to beat her mysterious assassin in the off chance that they also have their eyes on the same man.
So she twists her hair into a bun, slips on her leather jacket with a pistol hidden underneath just in case and acts as if she’s taking a casual stroll down and around the block and –
- and there are two ambulances parked outside the house, lights flashing red and blue in the dusky evening and she forces herself to walk on and keep her face from betraying just how fucking furious she is right now.
The local paper the next day just describes the ‘tragic passing’ of an ‘upstanding citizen and pillar of the community’, but doesn’t actually explain how he died. Lydia knows that the cause of death was an unmarked, finger-printless arrow to a vital area before she can even check the coroner’s report that she managed to hack.
She pulls out her phone, grits her teeth and presses ‘dial’ on Danny’s contact number.
-
A few hours and several threats to various dubious creatures of the underworld, Lydia has the name of the group that the assassin is supposedly linked to – ‘Full Moon’ – and she has to scoff at how absolutely terrible and pretentious it sounds before she goes back to thinking about exactly what she’s going to do to the assassin once she’s found them.
Lydia has never killed somebody unless it was out of complete necessity – dead bodies tend to bring attention, and a spy that brings attention is a bad spy. She doesn’t keep count, but if it came to more than ten, she’d be surprised – and yes, she does include the time she killed the man who was stalking and terrorizing her in high school in self-defense.
But quite honestly, she’d like nothing more to do than loose an arrow into the assassin’s head.
-
Months later, and a complete cold trail on the assassin and a few erratic texts from Allison – sometimes they’ll exchange over fifty a day, other times she can go weeks without hearing from her - Lydia finds herself in a rather classy bar in New York. To the average onlooker, she would look just like any other girl in the early to mid-twenties waiting for a date dressed in a pale sea-green, strapless dress and killer heels. But what they wouldn’t know is that the jade green earrings that she’s wearing – that do compliment the whole outfit rather nicely, if she does think so herself – are actually miniature speakers that only she can hear, transmitting a live broadcast of a rather shady business meeting going down a few rooms away that she’d bugged a few hours previously.
She sips at her drink patiently and towards 11 o’ clock they begin to wrap up the meeting, so she lifts a hand to the side of her head, making as if to comb her hair out of her face, when in fact she’s surreptitiously turning the speakers off. The first time she had used them, she had left them on and one of the bosses and his secretary had decided to make use of an empty boardroom. Since then she’s always remembered to turn it off.
She finishes off her drink and makes to slide off her stool, prepared to play the part of ‘date left her hanging’ when Allison Argent, of all people, slides onto the stool next to her and says with a smile, “Hey you.”
And that, quite frankly, is enough incentive for Lydia to stay, especially when Allison adds, “How about I buy you a drink?”.
One drink turns into two and by the third Lydia finds that she can’t seem to lift her eyes from Allison’s jaw line – her memory didn’t do it justice, just like it didn’t do Allison’s chocolate doe-eyes justice either – and after the fourth drink she stops thinking about how amazing she looks in that dark charcoal cocktail dress with ankle boots and starts thinking about how she’d look even better out of it. The fifth drink is interrupted with the bar closing but Allison’s urgent and suggestive whispering of how she has a hotel room nearby ends up with Lydia pressed into the wall inside of the hotel room, her hands in her dark curls while Allison leaves a trail of kisses down Lydia’s neck, her leg hooked over Allison’s hip.
“I really love this dress,” she manages to gasp out, Allison’s hands roaming over her waist, “but I’d really love to see you out of it.”
And if that isn’t the smoothest line Lydia has ever thought of - well, it doesn’t matter because as she pulls Allison in for a kiss, Allison unzips the back of her dress and makes a comment about how this would probably be more comfortable on the bed and lets Lydia lead her to the bed, where she completely strips her of that beautiful charcoal dress and –
- and she was right, Allison is gorgeous, all pale skin and soft curves beneath her, eyes lidded with lust and lips perfectly parted, hands pulling Lydia’s own dress off her shoulders while she kisses that jawline, and undoing the clasp of her bra, hands roaming everywhere and Lydia has to pull her back up to kiss her again.
-
Lydia wakes up in a haze of contentment, Allison’s face buried in the crook of her neck and her arm slung around Lydia’s waist, breathing softly and damn, Lydia is definitely rethinking that relationships stance. Allison shifts slightly next to her, eyes flicking open, lips parting into a smile.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Lydia replies, her own smile spreading across her own face.
Allison pulls her in to give her a kiss next to her eye and asks, “Would you like to shower first?”
Lydia shakes her head, smiles and says that she can have it first.
She needs the time to think about what she’ll tell Allison.
Allison smiles at her, and climbs off the bed and heads into the bathroom. The sound of water hitting the tiles echoes throughout the hotel room and Lydia forces herself into a sitting position, her joints sore in a pleasant way. The sheets pool around her waist as she instinctively looks around the room, and just as she forces herself to stop her eyes catch upon what is very distinctly a bow and arrow traveling case.
Suspicion pooling in her gut, she pulls her phone from her purse, takes note that her beretta is in there, still loaded in case she needs it, and searches the latest news regarding the members of the business meeting from last night, and discovers that all the prominent players have all been discovered murdered.
With what is not mentioned, but she has a feeling that it was mostly certainly with an arrow. She suddenly realizes that twice Allison had been within an hour and a half’s drive of the assassinations, and dammit, why hadn’t it occurred to her sooner.
She hurriedly pulls her dress back on and as she hunts for her missing shoe, her phone begins to ring, Danny’s ID flashing on the screen.
“Yes?” she whispers into the speaker, keeping note of the sound of the shower.
“I have an ID on your assassin,” Danny says, “The name is -”
“Allison Argent.”
She can hear his surprise over the phone. “Yes, how did you -”
She cuts him off. “I would love to explain to you how I know that, but I have something important that I need to do,” and hangs up.
The shower abruptly stops and Lydia quickly decides to ditch the heels, palms her beretta and carefully aims it at the very surprised Allison Argent who has just emerged from the bathroom, towel wrapped around her.
“You took out Haynewood,” she says, her voice surprisingly calm and betraying none of the anger and hurt underneath. “And the two men in Switzerland. The politician in Lyon. A few men from last night.”
She narrows her eyes at her. Allison seems to be flicking between anger, confusion and fear, and keeps darting her eyes over to where her arrows lie on the table.
“You’ve been making my job very difficult,” Lydia finishes, unsure of what to say next.
Allison appears to be lost for words for a moment.
“Is this what it was to you then?” she finally demands, fury colouring her voice. “Some sort of sick revenge?”
Lydia’s hand trembles momentarily, before she steadies herself and says coolly, “If it’s any consolation, I only figured it out about five minutes ago. Some spy I am, right?”
Allison says nothing, just stares at her, hand clutching the top of her towel. Without saying another word, although she desperately wishes she could, Lydia turns and walks out that door and spends the rest of the cab ride home thinking about how she could have handled it so much better.
-
She doesn’t speak about it to anyone, she just takes that long, well deserved holiday in the Caribbean and manages to mostly forget about how unsettled and confused she feels.
Well, sort of.
A few weeks later she finds two people waiting for her outside her apartment who seem vaguely familiar. It takes her a minute to realize that one had been co-captain on the high school lacrosse team with Jackson and the other was his friend and had been the guy who could never shut up in class and had always stared at her.
Why they were waiting outside her apartment, however, was a mystery to her.
“…Yes?” she asks suspiciously, eyeing – Thomas? Steve? No, Scott, that’s it. She couldn’t come up with a name for the friend, although it turned out she needn’t have bothered trying as he bounced forward with “Hey, Lydia! Remember us? Scott and Stiles?”
He points between himself and Scott, who looks increasingly nervous. “We were in your chem class!”
“Yes?” she replies testily, one perfect eyebrow arching.
Scott attempts to give her a reassuring smile and Lydia realizes that he’s still the overgrown puppy she vaguely remembers him to be from high school.
‘We, uh,” he begins, “We kind of work with Allison Argent and we’re also friends so -”
Lydia cuts him off sharply. “Did she ask you to come here?”
“No,” he admits. “She, uh. She has no idea we’re here. Listen, just. Just give her a chance okay? Or just- I don’t know, just talk to her at least.” He smiles at her hopefully.
She looks at him contemplatively, and then turns and unlocks her front door. As she walks through, she turns. “Tell her to meet me at that really pretentious coffee shop on Main Street. Midday Saturday.”
And with that she closes the door in their faces and locks it.
-
Saturday rolls around to find Lydia sitting on a bench outside a coffee shop, knitted wool scarf casually thrown around her neck, paper cup of coffee warming her hands against the crisp autumn air.
“Hey,” says a voice. Lydia turns to look and sees Allison standing next to the bench, arms wrapped around her body, grey woolen cap pulled over her head.
“Hey,” Lydia replies, hating how stiff and awkward she sounds.
“Can I-?” Allison asks, and gestures to the bench. Lydia nods, and shifts over a bit to give more space. Allison sits down and doesn’t say anything, and for a moment they both sit there in silence.
“Listen, Lydia,” she begins, but Lydia cuts her off and says, “I shouldn’t have reacted like that. It’s just- I was startled and confused and angry and there are so many ways that that could’ve been handled better.”
She stops and looks at Allison, who is warily watching her as she speaks.
“Well,” Allison begins slowly, “it’s not as though either of us could have been honest about our day jobs.”
And there it is, a hint of a cheeky smile and that gives Lydia the courage to say, “Can we try this again? The part where we’re completely honest with each other and no dangerous weapons are being pointed.”
Allison smiles. “Yeah, I’d like that Lydia. I’d like that a lot.”
They fall into silence, watching the leaves falling around them and people drifting to and from destinations.
“They asked me to ask you if you’d consider working for us,” Allison says out of the blue. Lydia turns to look at her, eyebrows raised. Allison shrugs in response.
“That way none of our jobs would clash,” she says.
Lydia looks at her, strawberry blonde hair wound around one finger. “I’ll think about it.”
She moves to get up, but stops and looks back at Allison.
“Once condition though,” she says. “I’m buying the drinks next time.”
And the smile that stretches across Allison’s face is worth it all.