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Adrian Chase does have emotions. People get confused, sometimes, when he tries to explain. He says he doesn’t have emotions like people do. Really, he just means that he experiences them a bit differently.
He does feel things, though. He feels joy when he kills someone, or when he blows shit up with Chris. He laughs as the adrenaline pumps through his system and there’s blood spraying and people shouting and guns going off. He feels annoyed when people make changes to a plan at the last minute, or Chris decides to spend time with Ads instead of him. He feels mad. He feels mad a lot, actually. Usually at his overbearing, boundary-obliterating mother.
But a lot of the time, his own emotions are just as hard for him to understand as other people’s. They’ve always been hard. It helps him compartmentalize, like he does with everything else in his life, from his hobbies to his habits to his relationships, to make it easier. Simpler.
When Adrian feels things, he feels them one at a time. It’s too complicated when he feels multiple feelings at once. He has to pick one and focus on it, because otherwise, he simply can’t process anything at all. He gets overwhelmed. He shuts down, his brain stops working.
Adrian hates it when his brain stops working. He hates having feelings, a lot of the time. They’re illogical and stupid. He watches his friends make dumb, emotional decisions all the time, and he constantly resolves that he will never be the type of person to react like that. He watches Chris cry over his piece-of-shit racist dad with confusion. He watches Adebayo struggle over her divorce with Keeya. He watches Economos cope with crippling anxiety. He watches Harcourt just being so fucking angry, all the time.
And he just…doesn’t really get it. How their emotions drive their every decision. It’s never been like that for him. Logic first, feelings second.
At least, that’s what he tells himself.
About a year ago, Adrian started to feel a new feeling. A funny, fuzzy feeling. Sometimes it sits in his chest, sometimes it flutters in his stomach. It makes him feel hot and fidgety. It only ever happens in the Checkmate office, he’s noticed. When he pays more attention, he realizes it only ever happens around you.
It’s a complicated feeling. He doesn’t like it. So he ignores it. He avoids you.
It’s hard to do when you get paired up with him on missions all the time. You do work well together, he can’t deny that. You’re good at your job, and you’re funny, and pretty, and you’re nicer to him than anyone else in the office.
Maybe you're a little reckless sometimes, but so is he. Still, it stresses him out—a lot—when he sees you pull a risky stunt in the field. But you’re capable, and he’s a feminist. So he grits his teeth and lets you do your thing, even if that means standing back and watching you throw yourself into the line of fire.
Then when you get back to the office, he goes to his desk, writes up his reports, and ignores you until his stomach stops hurting, and the urge to handcuff you to your desk (or somewhere else where you will be safe for the rest of eternity) goes away. And he starts to feel normal again.
Chris calls him out on it one day when they’re in the car on the way to the bar for Friday night drinks with the team. Adebayo’s driving, Adrian’s in the backseat. You come up in conversation, naturally, because you’re part of the team, and you’ll be there, at the bar.
Chris says, “Hey, how come you keep avoiding her? You guys are always killing it in the field together, and then you get back to the office and pretend she doesn’t exist.”
Adrian says, “She makes my stomach feel weird. And she stresses me out.”
The car falls silent. It’s an awkward silence, but Adrian doesn’t notice the awkwardness, because he never does.
“What do you mean?” Ads says after a moment.
“Whenever I’m around her, my stomach feels all fluttery. It’s uncomfortable. I don’t like feeling like that.”
“Oh my god,” Chris laughs. “That’s so fucking embarassing. You have a crush on her?”
“What?” Adrian says, taking immediate offense, because he would know if he had a crush on you. Wouldn’t he? “I do not!”
“It really sounds like you do,” Ads says. “I hate to break it to you, but…butterflies in your stomach is a classic symptom. Like, straight from the textbook.”
“Butterflies?” Adrian asks, alarmed, having flashbacks to the Coverdale Ranch. “Wait—textbook? Is there a textbook?” He really should read it. There was this book about emotions and forest animals that he read when he was a kid that really helped with the basics. Happy bear, sad owl, angry fox. Maybe he needs to do some research—
“Not that kind of butterfly,” Ads says. “I mean—god, you’ve really never heard that phrase before? Like, when you feel nervous, but kind of in a good way, around someone you like?”
“I guess that’s kind of what it’s like,” he says. He does know what it feels like to be nervous, and…yeah, you make him feel like that, too. Anxious. He’s never thought about that being a good thing.
It doesn’t feel good. It feels terrible. All-consuming, distracting, overwhelming. His hands get sweaty, which is not comfortable inside the Vigilante suit, and his heart races a little which makes him feel ill, and then you become all he can think about, which is not great when he is supposed to be focused on shooting bad guys in the head, not how hot you look while you shoot bad guys in the head.
“You should make a move,” Chris says. “She likes you too, dude.”
“She does?” Adrian asks, and he starts to feel the terrible fluttery feeling. Fuck. You’re not even here, and he’s feeling it.
This needs to be dealt with. Before he has one of his too-many-feelings meltdowns.
When they get to the bar, you’re waiting at a table already. You beam and wave at them when they walk in the door, and Adrian has one of those moments from the books. Where the people go “Oh. Oh.”
He walks right over to the table.
“I saved you a seat,” you start to tell him, and his heart leaps in his throat, because just the sound of your voice is making the feeling worse. It’s so bad he’s trembling, just vibrating all over, and he needs it to stop. And you can fix it.
Adrian asks, bluntly, “Can I kiss you?”
You stare at him. You clearly weren’t expecting it. He waits for you to think about it.
“Yes,” you say.
Adrian grabs you by the face and presses his lips to yours, hard. As first kisses go, it’s not a very good one. But when your hands drift up his chest, and your mouth opens under his, it makes the butterflies go away.
Adrian hears Chris whistling, and Adebayo telling him to shut the fuck up, and a sense of relief washes over him, and he thinks, I get it now.
Adrian thinks, after he’s got that all sorted, that things will be easier. That his body will stop doing funky emotional things and let him think logically again.
He is wrong. It was better for maybe a week. And then it gets so much worse.
It is better, still, in so many ways. He wouldn’t change a minute of it. Almost every moment he spends with you, he feels like a cat napping in the sunlight, bathing in warmth. Sometimes literally. The early mornings when he wakes up curled around you, the sun shining through your curtains, while you pet your fingers through his hair, they make him calm, more relaxed than he has ever been. He has always had a racing mind, a mouth that never stops talking, and your touch makes him happy. And that’s the best feeling to feel, isn’t it?
At work, though—he is more stressed than he ever has been. And it is fucking with him, big time.
Things are fine in the office. Better than ever, actually, because he can push himself in his rolling chair all the way over to your desk when he gets bored and chatter at you, and you will pause what you’re doing and interrupt him for kisses. He loves it when you do that.
He loves you, though he hasn’t told you that, yet. He thinks he does, at least. He’s never been in love before, so he’s not sure. He checked out a pile of books from the library, tried to do some research, but none of them really came close to describing the way it feels like he’s won the lottery every time you turn your head and smile at him.
Out in the field, though…Adrian is having a hard time. A really, really hard time.
When you go out on missions, he needs to be Vigilante. He needs to act like Vigilante. It used to be easy. When he put the mask on, that was it. Transformation complete. And being Vigilante is one of the things that makes him feel joy.
With you standing there next to him, though, he has a much harder time leaving all of the messy Adrian Chase stuff behind.
It’s illogical, he knows it is. Nothing has changed about the work you’re doing, about your professional partnership as Checkmate employees. He needs to do his job. You need to do yours. And he refuses to be the clingy boyfriend that gets in the way of that.
But if he sees someone point a gun at you, if he watches you do something dangerous on a mission, he gets a little desperate. When he goes home with you that night, he’ll fuck you relentlessly into the mattress until you’re gasping for air, because that’s how you make him feel, every time you do something reckless. Like he can’t breathe. And he hates himself when he lays there afterwards with you, beneath the blankets, and wonders if the good feelings are worth the bad.
A lot of the time, when it comes to the bad feelings, Adrian just rolls with the punches, lets things wash over him. That’s what he’s been trying to do, at least. It’s easier, most of the time, if he doesn’t deal with it. Or maybe he’s just been telling himself that for so long that he’s started to really believe it.
But right now, Adrian is feeling a bad thing he hasn’t felt in a long, long time.
Fear.
The kind that sinks all the way into his bones, the kind he can’t shake off. No matter how much he wants to wish it away.
His ears are ringing in the aftermath of the explosion. There are other Checkmate team members rushing around, clearing out the building. There are several people shouting through his earpiece, but it sounds garbled, staticky, and none of it is important, anyway. Not more important than what’s happening right in front of him.
He looks at the blood as it starts to stain your clothes, too much, too fast. He watches your knees hit the ground, then your side, as you slump over and hit the floor, face screwed up in agony when you take in a wet, rattling, pained gasp.
The rest of the room fades away, and he scrambles across the floor toward you in a panic, through the growing, slippery pool of blood. It leeches into the seams of his suit, sticky and hot and uncomfortable. A sensory nightmare, but he doesn’t even care about that right now, barely notices it at all, because right now his whole focus is narrowed on you.
You’re barely conscious when he reaches you, your eyes fluttering.
“Look at me,” he says frantically. “Hey, hey, do not close your eyes right now, baby, I need you to stay awake, please—” His voice cracks on the last word.
“It hurts,” you whimper, eyes screwed shut, breath catching on a shaky inhale. Relief punches through him, because if you’re talking, you’re alive, and if you’re alive, he can fix you. He can fix you, he has to be able to fix you, there are no other acceptable options.
But he’s still terrified, because—you’ve never so readily admitted weakness like this. You’re one of the strongest, most fearless people he knows. He’s seen you get stabbed and walk it off. He’s seen you pop your own dislocated shoulder back into its socket. That you’re laying here on the floor, that you’re crying to him that it hurts, shakes him to his core.
His gloved hands, unsteady, reach for the hem of your shirt, peel it away from your skin, and you hiss, jerking away from his touch.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says frantically. “I’m so sorry baby, I need to see—”
And when he does, his heart drops to the floor, because there’s a jagged piece of shrapnel buried deep in your side, the wound gushing blood. There are gashes from other remnants of the explosive littering your skin.
He swallows.
“It’s okay,” he tells himself, tells you, trying to stay calm for your sake. “You’re fine, you’re going to be fine.”
But when he looks back up at your face, you’re out cold.
“No. No, no, no, no—” He keeps saying as he reaches up to pat you on the cheek, trying to wake you up. Like if he says it enough times, he can stop this with sheer willpower.
If all he had to do was want, you’d be safe right now, at home in bed, legs tangled up with his while he played with your hair and you laid fast asleep against his chest.
“I need backup,” Adrian says into his earpiece, almost hysterical. “We’ve got an agent down, I need backup now—”
“Vig,” he hears, finally a clear voice crackling in his ear. Peacemaker. “You gotta get her out of there. The building’s on fire.”
Adrian looks up and sees the smoke drifting into the room. Fuck.
He gets one arm under your shoulders, another under your legs, picks you up, and starts moving. You jolt awake at the pain of being jostled. Relief floods through his system when he sees your eyes blink open, even as you groan at the pain.
“Hey, hey, you’re okay, baby,” Adrian says, trying to sound soothing and keep the panic out of his voice. “We’re gonna get you out of here. We’re gonna get you all fixed up.”
“Adrian,” you mumble, and he knows you’re out of it, because you never call him by his name while you’re out in the field, only ever Vigilante. Adrian is for home, you tell him.
Your head tilts back, and you frown when you see the harsh V of his visor instead of the green of his eyes. One hand reaches for his mask, but you’re out of it, and your hand is slippery with blood, so all you manage to do is leave a streak of blood across the red field of Adrian’s vision.
Then you pass out again.
“She needs a hospital,” Adrian says, arms heavy with the weight of you, trying not to freak out about the blood, your blood, clouding his vision. “Chris, she needs a hospital—”
“Oh, god,” Harcourt says as he bursts out of the doors. She puts a finger to her ear, starts running alongside Adrian and shouting orders. “Get her in the van—Ads, we need a hospital stat!”
Chris throws open the back door of the van. Economos and Ads are in the front, and both of them look horrified when they see the state of you, which is not helping Adrian’s own panic.
Chris takes you from Adrian, gentle as he can, and lays you on the floor. He tears his mask off, kneels next to you. You're both wet, drenched in red. You’re not waking up.
And he is so, so afraid.
Adrian sits at your bedside for hours. He’s exhausted. There’s a twinge radiating up his jaw because he keeps grinding his teeth every time he looks up at you and you’re not looking back at him.
You’re stable, the doctor said. The surgery went well. You’ll need to rest. No field work for six months, at least. You won’t be happy about that.
Adrian looks back at the floor and starts counting the laminate tiles for the fortieth time, so he has something to focus on other than the sunken dark circles under your eyes, the tubes hooked up to your body, the tiny stitched up gashes on your arms and your face.
Emilia told him to go home six hours ago, but she backed off when he told her, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off, he was staying right here, thank you very much. She had looked at him with wide eyes, because he had never spoken to her like that before, in an outburst of anger. All things considered, Adrian is normally a pretty chill person. But he can't, won't, ever be chill about this. About you.
He felt a little bad about shouting. But there’s no fucking way he was leaving this hospital while you were still here. The thought of you waking up alone made him sick to his stomach.
He would apologize later. But—he looks at you again, swallows past the lump in his throat, and loses his train of thought.
You’re looking at him. Your eyes are open, and you’re looking at him.
“Adrian?” you rasp, and he has one of those moments where he feels a gazillion emotions at one time and he thinks he might implode. All the air punches out of his lungs, his heart rate speeds up, his throat tightens. It’s panic, it’s relief, it’s guilt, it’s happiness, it’s—
He says your name, and he hates the way his voice is shaking. The way his hands are shaking. The way his entire body is shaking. He’s just shaking, with shock, with fear, with anger, and he can feel it. The shutdown. It’s coming on any minute. He has to pick one. He can’t do them all at once. He needs to pick one thing before he has a breakdown, and in that split second choice, he latches on to the first thing, the strongest feeling, the simplest one.
He is mad.
He chooses anger, because if he chose anything else, he would be a sobbing, useless mess, and he hates crying, because it makes his nose all stuffy and snotty, his face gets wet and salty, and it takes forever for it to stop once he gets started.
“Why the fuck would you do that,” Adrian says flatly. His voice trembles, throat tight with a different emotion that he does not want to deal with right now, so he refocuses on the anger, digs deep and lashes out, raising his voice and repeating the words like he might mean them more if he says them again. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
“Why the fuck did I push you out of the way of the bomb that was about to explode?” you ask, voice hoarse. “Because I didn’t want you to die, Adrian.”
“You almost died,” Adrian says. His hands shake as he speaks; he white-knuckles the arms of his chair to hide it. Tears prick at the back of his eyes, angry tears, because this wouldn’t be happening, you wouldn’t be lying there vulnerable and hurt in this hospital bed in front of him if you hadn’t put yourself in harm’s way to protect him. His heart palpitates, an irregular, anxious rhythm, and if he thinks for one more second about the way he held your limp body in his arms, he might actually have a heart attack.
It’s too much. He already feels so much, for you and around you and about you. You make him feel things that he thought he would never ever feel, and it makes every other emotion feel magnified by a thousand, and he’s so fucking angry he can’t take it. “You—you don’t get to—you can’t just step in front of me like—like what, my life matters more than yours? What the fuck were you doing?”
“I was doing my fucking job!”
“I would have been fine!” Adrian shouts, so furious his face is turning red. “That thing could have gone off in my face and I could have fucking slept it off and I would have been fine—”
“You’re not fucking invincible, Adrian!” you yell back, but the words catch in your dry throat, throwing you into a coughing fit. You haven’t had a drink in hours.
Adrian rushes to pick up his bottle of water, bringing it to your lips. “Hey, hey. Drink, nice and slow, baby,” he says, brushing a comforting hand through your hair. “Not too much. You’re okay.”
“You’re a fucking moron,” you continue, still pissed, pushing the water away when you’re done.
“I’m the moron?” Adrian cries. “You stepped in front of a fucking bomb. God, what the fuck were you thinking—”
“I was thinking that I love you,” you say softly, exhausted. Your head falls back against the pillow “And I didn’t want you to be hurt.”
It’s worse, that you’re speaking gently. He wishes you would keep yelling back at him. He wishes he could just scream until there were no more feelings left in his body to feel.
“I am hurt,” he chokes out. “I am hurt because I love you too and I am watching you be hurt and there’s nothing I can do to fix it—” A tear runs down his cheek, and he wipes it away furiously. “Fuck.”
He collapses into the chair at your bedside, head in his hands.
“I’m so fucking mad at you,” he says, but his whisper doesn’t match the bite of his words.
“I’m not sorry. I would do it again,” you say, your own eyes shining and wet. When he looks up at you, you hold out your hand out for his in a grabby motion, like a toddler that wants their favorite stuffed animal for comfort.
And he is so, so weak, because he is supposed to be mad, and he should walk away from you, but it’s like you’re magnetic, drawing him in, and he takes your hand and practically crushes it between both of his like you’ll disappear if he lets go.
“I do,” you whisper. “Love you.”
“I love you too,” he says, pressing his lips to your palm.
“Can I have a real kiss please?” you ask, and the corner of his mouth turns up. He stands over you and presses his lips against yours softer than he ever has before.
Adrian is normally nothing if not eager, forceful with his love. He never wants you to doubt how he feels; he wants the world to know he’s yours. But he doesn’t want to hurt you, so he keeps his touch light, tender, brushing a thumb over your cheek and resting his forehead against yours.
“You make me feel too many things at once,” he says.
“I think that’s a good thing, Adrian. It’s like, healthy, to feel the whole spectrum of human emotion.”
“It is, but it’s so inconvenient. Absolutely terrible. And it’s all your fault.”
“All my fault?” you tease.
“Absolutely. 100%,” he says, fighting a smile. “I think I’m actually entitled to a class action lawsuit against you at this point.”
“That’s not what a class action lawsuit is, babe. Maybe, and I mean maybe, you could sue me for like, emotional damages.”
“I would win,” he says firmly. “I am so emotionally damaged right now.”
You laugh, then wince when the movement agitates your injuries, and Adrian frowns.
“Don’t do that,” he says. “Stop laughing. Nothing is funny. You’re going to hurt yourself, again—”
“Don’t be such a drama queen.”
“Okay, now you’re trying to piss me off.”