Chapter Text
Aaron thinks it’s fair to say that this party is out of all of their leagues.
And he’s been to a lot of parties. Mostly when he was younger in college, maybe a few times in high school. He still goes to some now but they’re usually for business purposes only.
Now, has he ever been to a rich white person party like this?
No.
But that’s exactly his point.
He fiddles anxiously with the cuffs of his sleeves as the elevator continues to rise, floors ticking by at the same rate his heart is beating. It’s been a while since he’s worn this suit, so the fabric is a little tight in some places and uncomfortable in others. It only makes him feel more cramped inside the metal box.
When Aaron first heard that the theme to this party was “Masquerade”, he expected this apartment to look fully like someone plucked it out of a Bridgerton episode. But when the elevator doors finally part, he can already feel the vibration of an upbeat playlist down the hall instead of the fancy slow dance music he was predicting.
He stands partially corrected.
Only partially.
The music intensifies as he stands outside the door to the apartment, conversations filtering through the cracks. He readjusts the mask on his face and braces himself for the overwhelming environment this door separates him from.
He slips inside.
The first thing that catches his eye is that the apartment is surprisingly small compared to the luxurious nature of outfits people are wearing. Upon entry, he’s met with a neat kitchen off to his right and the cozy living area straight ahead. There’s a bathroom to his left and past that is a short hallway that he assumes leads to a bedroom. Past the living area is an open doorway concealed by a sliding door leading to the moonlit balcony.
The next thing he notices is that this apartment has definitely reached it’s maximum limit on human beings. Groups of people form circles together throughout the space provided as if they were lunch table cliques. A few hover over the island in the kitchen talking way too loudly and probably already drunk out of their minds while others are immersed in some drinking game on the couch. Someone’s chair breaks next to the game and an uproar of cheers and laughter joins the atmosphere’s ensemble.
The same constricting feeling that he had in the elevator doesn’t lessen until he spots Denny’s familiar black mask over by a bookshelf near the balcony doorway. It stands out against the soft color palette everyone else has, but nobody appears to mind. His friend has a giant smile plastered on his face as he talks to the woman in front of him. She laughs at something he says and Aaron rolls his eyes, making his way toward the balcony.
Leave it to Denny to start messing with a white woman not even five minutes after he arrives.
“Denny, you’re engaged,” Aaron comments playfully over comms as he steps out into the cool breeze of the night. The balcony is surrounded by a glass railing topped with a black lining. A bar hugs the wall at the end of the balcony with a few stools by the counter, all full.
“I’m just talking to people for information, A Boogie. Mind your own business,” Denny responds.
Aaron laughs silently before inserting himself in a conversation amongst a group of strangers. He introduces himself, but he isn’t really paying attention to their talk on new tariffs or whatever.
It’s been two months since their last encounter with Isaac at the research facility. Kevin contacted someone up top about a traitor as soon as he made sure Aaron was taken care of in medical, but no progress on locating who it is has been made. If the traitor is as high up as Aaron thinks they are, then it’s without a doubt whoever it is has heard that they’re being looked for. Which doesn’t help their case at all.
Not to mention ever since then Aaron can’t stop thinking about what it felt like being trapped in that room. There have been moments—especially recently—where it feels like he can’t breathe. Like he’s drowning in an ocean of nothing with waves bigger than himself. Like oxygen is a nonexistent resource that his lungs are collapsing over themselves to find and every time he thinks he’s breached the surface he gets sucked back under. He’s excused himself from one too many exchanges for it not to be noticeable, but much to his appreciation, nobody has said anything.
That particular moment in time is always fuzzy when he thinks back on it. Sometimes he finds himself wondering if it was all a dream. He knows it wasn’t but the memory is a constantly lingering presence that teeters at the corners of his mind like it is one. He’s not even sure if it’s something he does want to remember fully.
A flash draws him from his thoughts. He spares a glance toward the multi-story office building across the street. It’s the briefest of seconds but it happens again. Aaron reaches up to his comms only to find that Kevin has beat him to it.
“Herm, your flash is on,” Kevin says.
“I’m letting y’all know I’m in position,” Herm says.
“Well do it subtler please,” Kevin responds.
“How you gon’ tell me how to do my job, Kev?” Herm asks. “I’ve been in this business longer than you.”
Denny huffs, “Yeah, we know.”
“We get it, dawg,” Aaron joins in. “You’re from the sixties.”
Aaron finally catches sight of Kevin’s theatrical golden mask as his friend makes his way back inside. Another great example of how not to go undercover because if he thought Denny stood out, Kev’s on a whole other level. At least Denny’s makes sense—he’s always showing off to be extra. Kev just looks like somebody who was expecting a masquerade ball to be held in an apartment building instead of a party. Though, in all fairness, Aaron did think the same.
He laughs as he recalls the time Kevin came into the meeting room in cowboy boots and got torn to shreds by the rest of them.
He quickly comes back to as he realizes he’s still in the group of people who are now all looking at him weirdly. He smiles awkwardly and excuses himself, mentally cursing Kev’s cowboy boots.
As he makes his way to relax by the balcony, he shuffles past a taller man with wide shoulders that reminds Aaron of the bouncer he met at the entrance to the complex. Katherine was able to add all of their names to the guest list despite the fact that Zane and Herm are positioned in a different building for this mission.
“I’m also your boss,” Kevin says in response to Herm’s earlier remark. “I’ll dock your pay.”
“Come on, Kev. You know he needs that to get home tonight,” Denny says.
“Denny, is that the girl you were talking to sending you weird looks by the kitchen?” Herm asks with a smile.
There’s shuffling on Denny’s end of the line and Aaron has to bite back a laugh as his friend responds, “Dammit, Herm.”
Zane’s chuckling cuts through, “You guys are awful at this.”
“I don’t see you down here white man,” Denny retorts.
The line falls silent after that, but Aaron can feel how badly Zane wants to respond. It’s become an unspoken rule that they shouldn’t crowd communications too much, though, so Aaron is left to the peaceful silence of his own company.
He basks in the moon’s light and allows his head to fall forward in what feels like the first breath of fresh air since he arrived. Street lamps cast a warm glow on the road below him, illuminating the parked cars forming a line next to the sidewalk. It’s surprisingly busy for near midnight with car engines purring as they fly up and around a corner, but then again, a lot of cities never sleep.
The new watch Zane cooked up a month ago hugs his wrist tightly to the point where it’s itchy. He reaches down to fiddle with it and is debating on heading back inside when suddenly a figure appears next to him.
He feels more than sees that it’s Denny.
“Why are you sulking over here?” Denny asks.
Aaron scrunches up his face and looks up, “I’m not sulking. I’m admiring the environment.”
Denny gives him a look then that Aaron thinks he’s been on the receiving end of one too many times. He rolls his eyes and the expression shifts into a smile as Denny clasps him gently on the back, “Get your head in the game, Boogie. We’re close to getting this guy.”
Aaron nods, but it feels distant—he feels distant. He glances up at the moon again, a familiar pop song drifting through the air behind them. Denny doesn’t disappear from his side despite lack of conversation. It’s one thing he appreciates most about their brotherhood. How they’re able to be in each other’s presence and feel comfortable enough without the need of a discussion. He’s reminded abruptly a hospital visit from one of Denny’s first cases.
“Hey,” Aaron begins. His voice is soft and he wonders at first if Denny can even hear it over the orchestra of partygoers around them, but then the other turns his head, so Aaron continues. “When you got shot, at the start,” he says, stumbling a bit over a few letters. Images of white hospital walls and doctors rushing through the hallways flare behind his eyes. Denny hooked up to a bunch of wires, a steady heart monitor beeping in the background. Sunlight filtering in through drawn curtains and the air vent above gently humming. Funny enough, that’s actually how he first met Herm. He had walked in on a conversation between them about how they’d make great comedians in some distant universe. “How’d you get past that?”
Denny doesn’t turn his head away, but his eyes narrow and travel to some foreign land that exists on the brick wall of the building across the street. There’s a long stretch of silence between them that feels heavier, a lot more serious than their usual banter. It’s so long that Aaron begins to fear that he’s crossed a boundary and Denny won’t speak at all. But, eventually, his best friend does.
“I didn’t. Not for a long time, anyway. It doesn’t go away as easily as it’s advertised in the movies. Part of me still hasn’t gotten over it. I think realizing that I wasn’t alone was what pulled me out of it, though. You saw Herm at the hospital. I swear he must’ve been usin’ an extra room as his home for the week or something ‘cause every time I was awake he was there. Kev spent all his free time by my side and always brought some game for us to play. I smoked him in every one. Zane never got time off work and you were off in another state for most of it, but you both still made time and that was better than anything I could’ve asked for. After a bit I realized I had to accept that in a field like this—it was bound to happen at some point. And that it was probably gonna happen again. Doin’ this job, though—seeing all of y’all always bein’ in the same situations. I hate it more than anything. But I also wouldn’t trade it for the world. Y’all are family.”
Denny turns to him and Aaron is suddenly scared because he hasn’t seen little man be this serious in a long time. “It’s different for everyone, but know that we’ll always be here to help you, Aaron. You’re my brother, man.”
Aaron somehow manages to push past the lump in his throat to shake the outstretched hand before him and speak, “Same goes for you.”
Denny’s unforgettable smile is back in full swing as he pats Aaron once more on the shoulder, “I’m gonna get something to eat.”
Aaron had been so absorbed in the other’s words he had completely forgotten they were at a party.
As if reading his mind, Zane’s voice crackles over the commlink, “Target coming down the street now, arriving shortly.”
Aaron watches as a black car with tinted windows drives around the corner and comes to a stop in front of the complex. Two men get out of the passenger and driver seats, rounding the car and opening the back door for another man. Their target of the night, if Aaron had to guess. With messy blonde hair and a confidence to his stance that Aaron only ever sees in rich men who do wrong things, Theodore Busch steps out of the vehicle wearing a dark grey suit adorned in an extravagant amount of silver jewelry. He can see the intricate details put into the silver mask on Theodore’s face despite being on nearly the top floor of the complex. It puts everyone else’s outfits to shame.
“How are we supposed to tell this guy apart?” Denny asks.
“He looks like ‘Sexyback’ would play every time he enters a room,” Aaron supplies helpfully.
Denny scoffs, “I’m not talking about me, Aaron. I’m talking about our target.”
He has like ten jokes for what Denny just said, but he doesn’t get a chance to speak any of them into existence.
“That’s why I have a tracker on him,” Zane says. “Don’t worry about that. Focus on getting the hard drive before it gets to the buyer.”
Yes, because figuring out where the tiny little hard drive is on Theodore’s six foot person is easy.
He leaves the balcony railing to go distract himself with the bookshelf inside.
They got an anonymous tip last week on a hard drive being sold that supposedly holds important agency data on it. The whole “anonymous” part made Aaron nervous at first because the last time they got an anonymous tip it ended up being a setup, but Kevin apparently has an idea of who it is, so he let it go.
He is halfway through reading the summary on the back of a mildly interesting book when an unfamiliar figure enters his peripherals. Neither of them say anything, so he tries not to make the way his eyes go hunting for information too obvious by flipping through pages. He can hear the other person move around the flowers in the vase on the bookshelf next to the one he’s scouring. Their rings clank and scrap obnoxiously against the porcelain until it gets too unbearable for him to pretend to ignore.
He finally looks at the other person. A man, judging by the short black cut and lean build. He’s wearing a dark green suit, smooth, warm skin shining a light golden in the lampshade above them. The guy looks oddly familiar, but it’s one of those faces you think you know from a show instead of in person, so Aaron’s not too sure. The mint colored mask is a little less detailed than other ones Aaron has seen around the party. It looks like it was made in a rush, but the man doesn’t seem bothered by it one bit as he leans into the bouquet full of pink flowers.
“You a big fan of flowers?” Aaron asks in an attempt at small talk since it doesn’t seem like the guy is going away anytime soon. He doesn’t know why he asks about flowers because if he was really curious he probably could’ve just asked Kevin over comms, and his friend would be able to tell him all sorts of things about them with that big nose of his.
“Yes, I must admit I am,” the man says. His voice is a higher pitch than Aaron expected it, but there’s a soft, gravelly undertone mixed in there somewhere. The accent gives posh, but more so in a way that’s warped to fit in to the whole ‘rich person’ scene of the party instead of it being authentic. Aaron is picking up heavy disappear-behind-a-bus-as-it-drives-by vibes from this guy. It brings back that constricting feeling from earlier. “These ones in particular are lovely.”
Flower Man gently lifts cups the flowers with lighter pink petals, “Oak-leaf geraniums if I recall correctly. Originated in South Africa believe it or not.”
“Never heard of them,” Aaron replies. He shuts the book he was flipping through closed and places it back on the shelf.
“Ah, they aren’t too common,” Flower Man says. He reaches for the darker shade of pink petals next. “You’ve probably heard of petunias, though.”
“I’m sorry,” Aaron begins, unable to stowaway the question that’s been burning in his mind any longer. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
The smile he flashes in Aaron’s direction feels like it’s slowly crawling across his skin, searching for the perfect place to bury. And he’s not even looking directly at the guy. “You do.”
He can’t help the way his hand pauses mid-grab for another book, gut coiling at the parasitic tone as the words hang threateningly in the air. His head snaps up toward the man, but there’s no sign of Flower Man anywhere. There wasn’t even a bus or anything. The guy up and disappeared in front of his eyes like a magician.
The door to the apartment opens and in walks Theodore, all high and mighty. You’d think he was the one who threw the party to begin with.
“Target has arrived. Eyes open,” Zane reports.
Aaron doesn’t think he’s ever seen a more perfect example of why that saying is necessary. Theodore fits right in amongst the crowd and it makes him second guess how he told Denny it would be easy earlier. The way Theodore glides through the crowd—chin held high and shoulders pushed slightly back—makes Aaron double down on his self-consciousness by simply looking at him.
He’s about to head toward the flash of gold he saw in the kitchen when he spots the corner of a white note card sticking out from the bouquet. Hesitantly, he plucks it out. The suspicion that was already curling in his gut for Flower Man blends into an aching dread as the cursive scrawl sinks in.
I ran out of sticky notes, hope you don’t mind.
It’s not addressed to him, but Aaron knows it’s for him.
The lampshade was relieved of sticky notes for two days following their mission at the research facility. After that time was up, there was one final sticky note he found on one of his Celsius cans in the fridge. Instead of one word, though, it was a small message that also had no address, but it was written in the same messy manner the note card in his hands now is written in.
Don’t take it personal.
Ever since then he’s been spinning the other six notes around in his head despite them all being the same word. It was an obvious dig at the events that took place. He asked around to try and find who wrote it, but all he got in response were weird looks, so he gave up after a week.
At least now he has a description to match the handwriting. And the agency’s supposed traitor.
Aaron reached up to his comms, “Hey, guys. I think our mole is here tonight.”
“Yeah, me and Zane were just talkin’ about how it might be the buyer,” Herm says.
“That would make a lot of sense,” Kevin chimes in.
Denny gives an incredulous drawl, “How?”
“Think about it,” Kevin’s voice sounds a little off, but Aaron couldn’t tell you why. Maybe it’s the slow-pace of the words replacing his usual fast-pace ramble. “The hard drive contains agency data, right? They might not have enough on us.”
“But I thought this person was higher up than us?” Denny asks. There’s a pause before Denny adds, “Also, say ‘data’ again for me. One more time.”
“Guys,” Zane starts, but whatever he says next is overlapped by Kev.
“Don’t—everyone says it differently,” Kevin says. Yeah, Aaron’s not making this up. It sounds as if the other hasn’t gotten any sleep which he knows isn’t true, or at least it wasn’t true when they first arrived.
“I don’t know about ‘everyone’,” Denny says.
“You good, KL?” Aaron asks.
“Yeah, ‘m—“
Kevin doesn’t get to finish because Zane interrupts, ”Guys, my tracker signal is gone!”
A beat.
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Aaron asks.
Herm can be heard in the background of Zane’s next words, “I don’t know—it’s not showing up on my radar. Says it’s out of range.”
“But you’re only across the street?”
“Yeah, and I was able to track him just fine a couple buildings away,” Zane explains.
“Come o’er here then an’ jus’ like chill on another floor be’ow us or somethin’,” Kevin tries, but his words slur together into an incomprehensible jumble at the end.
“Kevin?” Aaron and Herm ask at the same time.
“I got him,” Denny says and Aaron glances over just in time to watch as his friend takes determined strides through the busy crowd toward the kitchen. Kevin is slumped against the counter, empty glass before him and the partygoers around him none the wiser to his current state.
“What was he drinking?” Aaron asks when Denny reaches their friend.
Denny picks up the cup and peeks inside with an arm on Kevin’s shoulder, “Nothing. It was just water.”
“You wanna ask about that traitor theory again, Denzel?” Herm asks.
“Shit,” Aaron whispers to himself off comms as he sees Flower Man—now dubbed as Mole—discreetly watching the scene unfold from the group Aaron was standing in earlier on the balcony.
“I gotta get him out of here,” Denny says.
And Aaron—well, Aaron’s heart rate spikes abruptly at the thought of being alone again even though he knows—he knows that he’s not actually alone and the team is only a call away. But the idea of having none of them within the same room throws him back inside that damn facility two months ago and he doesn’t know if he can handle it again.
“Denny—“ he doesn’t even mean for it to come out as a plea, his voice sounding small to his own ears. He really doesn’t mean for it to come out at all. The second it leaves his mouth, he regrets it instantly, shame crawling underneath his skin like a disease. Kevin’s drink has been spiked with some shit they don’t even know and Aaron’s worried about being alone because of something that happened two whole months ago—
“I got you, Aaron,” Herm says before he can spiral any further. Some time must have passed without him realizing because when he looks back over, he sees that Denny has already left with Kevin in tow. He feels his shoulders relax and a bit of tension ease out of his body even with his previously lingering thoughts. “And Zane’s on his way up now.”
“So, about that,” Zane says, static seeping out of the edges of his words. “The elevator broke. I’m stuck.”
It takes a minute for the words to register in any of their brains, but when it does, the comms explode.
“What the fuck?” Herm says incredulously.
“How the hell did you manage that, Zane?” Denny asks.
Zane jumps to defense, “It’s not my fault!”
Aaron, never being able to take much of anything serious, especially when he’s nervous, snatches the joke from the center of the table. “I know you used to be fat, Zane, but I thought that era was over.”
He gets a few laughs and Denny says his name in light-hearted annoyance. It lightens the mood, flipping their brain chemistry. That alongside Herm’s reassurance is enough to clear his head.
Zane’s smile is audible as he explains, “I should be able to get myself out of here, but it will take a few minutes. Not used to being in the field just yet.”
“Alright, so what do these guys look like, Aaron?” Herm asks.
He searches the crowd once again as he explains to Herm how both of their targets are dressed. Mole is sitting on a stool at the bar talking with one of the bartenders who then turns and messes with something on the wall. Theodore has joined in one of the games around the couch. His back is turned toward the rest of the party, already with a drink in hand. Aaron maneuvers himself closer in case he needs to intercept something and mumbles an apology to a woman he almost bumps into.
The music shifts mid-song into something softer and more mellow. A slow instrumental reverberates throughout the room and Aaron swears under his breath as some of the guests pair off into partners. Each match collectively making their way toward the center of the room and effectively cutting off a straight line to the apartment’s entrance. If he was nervous before, it pales in comparison to the blender his insides feel like now. The woman near him giggles as another woman approaches her and takes her by the arm, guiding her gently toward the mass that’s forming with a light kiss to the back of the hand.
“Buyer is on the move,” Herm says.
This is definitely a Bridgerton episode now.
He turns his attention back over to Theodore who is now holding a flat, black object between two fingers behind him. Despite the light’s reflection bouncing off the silver disc, it goes unnoticed by anybody else.
Except for their traitor who is currently stalking through the crowd toward Theodore as if nothing else in the world matters.
But Aaron’s closer.
He pushes off the wall, discarding the fossil carefully back onto the shelf it belongs on. He shuffles around people as they gather in a circle to watch the dancers. He shoots them all apologetic looks even though nobody seems to mind, all too transfixed by the performance.
Mole is two people away when Aaron manages to slide behind Theodore and slip the hard drive into his palm. Their traitor falters for a second, giving Aaron enough time to blend back into the crowd.
The song overhead intensifies in momentum, syncing with his determination, and the steps in the choreography suddenly become sharper, more purposeful. The buyer will be on his tail in no time, but as long as they can take whatever fight it is away from the harmless guests, then Aaron has no problem with it.
Well, actually, there are a few problems with it he can think of.
Like close combat.
He should really work on that.
He makes it to the edge of the dance circle closest to the apartment door. He slides the hard drive into a small slip up his sleeves and thanks his younger self for the idea to put the slip there. Aaron reaches up to his earpiece to inform his friends when somebody grabs his arm from behind and yanks him backward. The movement drives a yelp from him as it jerks his shoulder socket almost to the point of popping. It doesn’t, and he feels the crowd part ways like the ocean did for Te Fiti in Moana with and uprise of cheering. Suddenly his body is clumsily following the dance routine everyone else is doing but underneath somebody else’s guidance.
He looks around frantically and his eyes meet a deep brown in front of him, familiar mint green mask outlining their traitor’s facial features.
Familiar features.
Features he knows.
“Noah?” Aaron asks, barely above a whisper. His heart pangs violently in his chest as if he’d been shot. Months of conversations flash behind Aaron’s eyes and he’s positive they can all show on his face because Noah begins to smile. It’s a cruel smile, similar to the one he flashed at Aaron earlier by the bouquet. The one that gets under your skin and tries to pry you open bit by bit until there’s nothing left.
“I told you that you knew me,” Noah says as if it will justify his actions. His grip tightens significantly around Aaron’s wrist above their heads as he leads them both into a twirl. He pulls Aaron closer, the dance routine a perfect guise for hushed dialogue. “You don’t know how to dance, do you?”
Aaron’s gut twists and adapts from hurt into a burning rage, “Fuck you.”
“Woah, no need to be so crass. I’m just having a friendly discussion here,” Noah says. “I’ll take that as a no, then.”
Out of spite, Aaron fixes his stance and starts to move in unison with Noah. The energy surrounding them is all encompassing and they move in perfect time with the music. When he was younger, he took a few classes in musical theater. The teacher he’s thinking of wasn’t the best, but she was able to get across a few lessons in dancing well enough for it to have stuck with Aaron all these years later.
From an outside perspective, their performance definitely looks romantic, intimate maybe, and Aaron doesn’t even want to think about how none of his friends are going to let this go for a long time.
“I stand corrected,” Noah says, eyebrows raised in what Aaron would dare to deem as him being impressed.
If looks could kill Noah would have been reduced to atoms. Aaron can’t find any words to describe the hurricane his head is consumed by at the moment, so neither of them speak for a solid minute. The music dives into a slower paced rhythm and they begin to sway in graceful elegance. He can hear Noah breathing, deep and calm compared to his own fast-paced heartbeat. It makes him even more mad.
“Where’s the hard drive?” Noah asks bluntly as the music begins to crescendo once again.
Before Aaron can respond, his attention is drawn to a small red dot that appears on Noah’s chest, right above his heart. Noah’s eyes flicker down and then back up, eyebrows raised once more.
This time it’s definitely in an unimpressed manner.
Noah sighs like the dot is a gnat flying around his food. “Call him off, Aaron.”
Aaron holds his former colleague’s gaze as he plays out his options in his head. Neither of them are armed, so if it came down to it, he wouldn’t have to worry about guns or knives or anything. Resourcefulness has always been a skill of Aaron’s according to Kevin. And the other partygoers could get easily caught in the crossfire. Especially after the panic a bullet would cause.
He swallows down everything screaming at him that this is a bad idea and reaches up to flip his earpiece to the new speaker mode Zane ended up going through with. He turns the volume down so that only both of them can hear the response.
“Herm—“
Aaron doesn’t get a chance to finish.
“No.” The cold sincerity in Herm’s voice catches him off guard.
Noah’s expression doesn’t waver and their choreography rotates with the rest of the pairs around them. The red dot never leaves its place against Noah’s chest.
“He said ‘no’ in case you can’t hear over your awful music taste,” Aaron says.
Noah lets out a small laugh at that, “You are cleverer than most people at the agency give you credit for, I will admit. And I am curious about how you came to that conclusion. I do apologize for the slow song as I was expecting to be talking with Denny, but I suppose life is full of surprises for the both of us.”
Footsteps shuffle passionately across the floor as the routine takes them all into another rotation clockwise. Noah’s eyes flicker down briefly and Aaron follows them, throat tightening.
He takes a unsteady breath as he finds the new red dot sitting directly across his own heart now, a mirror image of the one on Noah’s.
Looks like Herm’s not the only one with a fancy toy.
Herm does not appreciate how his night is going.
First, he had to find a backway into the office building he’s sitting in right now because the keycard he stole doesn’t work. What kind of person carries around a keycard to their work that doesn’t even function?
Then, he had to navigate his way through the building with nothing but his sniper light to guide him, because Kevin is ordering in a new batch of better flashlights and didn’t want to use the worse ones. They worked perfectly fine in Herm’s opinion, but leave it to Kev to want to order brand new tech as soon as it drops.
Everything was going great after that and he thought his inconveniences for the night would be done with. That they could get this mission over with simple and easy so he could go home and rest.
But then Kevin’s drink got spiked with something and suddenly all of those inconveniences don’t seem too bad. He watched Denny lead Kevin out through the scope of his sniper, fingers tensing around the grip until they began to hurt. He started to multitask with keeping an eye on Aaron while also trying to see when Kevin and Denny exit the building.
And then everything goes even more to hell because Aaron disappears from his vision into a cloud of white people.
He sees Aaron reemerge in his scope with the person he described to be the agency’s rat a few seconds later, and any joke he has is replaced with a massive urge to shoot this motherfucker in the face.
He presses a button and the red dot shines brightly exactly where he aims his crosshair.
Herm knows what Aaron’s going to say before he says it. And he’s going to have a conversation with the other about it later.
He hopes his tone conveys that message well enough.
The two of them share a conversation Herm can’t hear well because of the music. Aaron turns his speaker mode back off a few moments later, but Herm’s attention is directed elsewhere as a second dot appears.
His chest tightens, face scrunching up in confusion as he starts looking around at the other windows in surrounding buildings for a flash of light. Something catches his eye below him and he looks down.
“What the fuck?” he whispers to himself. Peeking out of a window a few floors below him to the left is the barrel of another sniper. “In the same building as me? That’s what we doin’?”
His jaw clenches as he turns back to the party, switching the sniper light back off. The other dot disappears a moment later. He’s about to radio to Denny and ask for help so Herm can watch Aaron since he promised to do so, but the universe must have other plans. Denny exits the apartment complex down below a second afterward with a half-conscious Kevin slung against his side who definitely should not be left alone.
Herm swears.
Zane hasn’t said a word since his public announcement that the elevator broke down, so Herm assumes white man is still stuck.
One more glance at Aaron through his scope forces a sigh of frustration to escape his body. He shakes his head but reaches toward his comms anyways. “Aaron, I’m gonna clear out the party. Then I gotta take care of this guy or we’re gonna have a sniper on us. You good?”
Aaron takes a second to respond, but when he does he masks it as if he’s answering something the buyer said, “Sure.”
Herm moves the scope down until it lands on the balcony’s glass railing. A loud crack splinters the air around them as he lowers his finger against the trigger. That section of the railing shatters into a million shards that glimmer in the party light like a thousand tiny suns.
People are screaming, but Herm doesn’t wait around any longer than he has to. He doesn’t even pack his sniper up off its stand. Instead, he slings the backpack he set down against the wall back over his shoulder and rushes off toward the staircase. The office cubicles he passes are uncannily dark, and his eyes have to readjust to the lack of light. His hip crashes into a wall at least twice in his hurry.
Fortunately, it’s a straight path to the staircase once you get around the rows and rows of cubicles. It’s tucked away off to the side because everyone uses elevators nowadays. By the time he reaches it, it’s easier for him to make out the shapes of furniture in the darkness.
His old man bones are spared for now.
As his brain struggles to keep up with each step he flies down, Herm is pulling out the pistol from the backpack and checking the ammunition. He would rather this not turn into a shoot-off, but as he has experienced in the past, it usually does.
The floor he stops on is three below the one he came from. There are only a few cubicles, but he’s mostly running between a labyrinth of hallways with meeting rooms on one side and desks on the other. He subconsciously limits the sound of his heavy footfalls against the rough carpet as he runs. The pistol in his hands pivots sharply around each corner he takes and he tries not to think about the time crunch he’s on.
Herm is halfway down another hallway when a figure peeks out from the furthest corner with an arm raised. He throws himself at the door on his left with a brief prayer to the man upstairs that it isn’t locked. The impact and force from his shoulders opens the door with reluctance at the same time a gunshot fractures the hall, sound echoing in the confined space.
The bullet grazes his shoulder, white-hot and searing before it soars into the glass window of a meeting room he passed, those tiny suns now dead stars with no sparks of light to reflect.
He grunts, hand coming up to clutch at the piercing throb in his shoulder. It’s met with warmth that coats his hand in the gradually growing dark stain. Red paints his fingers as he pulls his hand away. It’s not a lot, thankfully, but the gash is enough to hinder his aim.
Another crack followed by bits of the wall by his ear exploding onto the floor.
He leans further away.
There aren’t any medical supplies inside the backpack as much as Kevin and Zane have been advocating for them, so Herm will just have to deal with it for now.
He waits for another bullet to ricochet off the metal surrounding the door before he raises his own pistol and begins firing back in the direction he thought he saw the other person in.
They exchange shots for what must be at least two minutes, each kickback from his gun causing the pain in his shoulder to intensify. Debris from the destroyed walls they’re both hiding behind lies dormant on the floor like spilled guts. One of them will have to pay for this later. It’s probably going to be Kevin.
Herm waits to time his next shot carefully. One thing he knows about other snipers is that most of them have an unholy level of patience.
This person does not fall into that category.
It’s obvious in the predictable pattern the person exposes themself to; in the amount of times they emerge around the corner. Their razor-sharp aim makes up for some aspects of impatience, but not enough to conserve bullets.
They peek around the corner and fire off one more shot before an empty click resounds across the hall.
Herm takes the chance.
He fires at the silhouette’s head, but the prickly sensation spreading across his arm forces the barrel to dip.
The cry that tears itself from the other sniper’s throat turns into a gurgle. He winces, both from the pain in his shoulder and the unnecessary brutal death he just gave this person.
There are a lot of lives Herm has taken in this line of work. He remembers every single one of them. Including those that he believes had it coming—which is most of them. It’s not something you can forget.
But every single time, no matter what the person has done or did or will do, he attempts to make it as quick and as painless as possible.
On his third year at the agency—first in sniper training—Herm had watched as somebody else died in his arms. He didn’t know the kid. Had never met him once, had never seen him around, had never even spoken a word to the little man until his final moments. It was just some kid in the park who got caught in the crossfire and hit with a stray bullet.
But that kid had just graduated high school and was on his way to New York University with an almost full-ride scholarship. That kid had spent the last month buying Christmas presents for his family with the little extra money he had. That kid had begged for Herm to tell his parents how much he loved them and for Herm to express the same to his siblings.
A kid who died under Herm’s watch and had bled out so slowly that he had time to explain to Herm that the beach was his favorite place to be because the water made him feel like he was floating.
Herm promised then and there that nobody he ever takes out will have the time to explain their favorite anything. That they will never have those last few minutes of their life be experienced in nothing but pain.
Something thuds against the ground and it draws him out of his thoughts.
He switches the backpack to his uninjured shoulder and cautiously makes his way down the hallway with the pistol still raised. The sound of choking stopped completely a few seconds ago and when he swivels around the corner the sniper lies unmoving on the ground.
It’s a woman, probably in her mid-thirties, decked out head to toe in black. Long, wavy blonde hair covers most of her face and her chest remains motionless as he steps closer. He avoids looking at her neck in every way possible, but the blemished fabric around the collar of her outfit in his peripherals is inescapable. He can’t make out specific features in the dark, but he thinks he recognizes her vaguely and the badge clipped to her bullet-proof vest proves him right.
“Senior sniper,” He reads silently. He’s been offered that promotion numerous times, but he’s always turned it down because accepting it would mean he’d have to leave Kevin’s team. It’s a well-respected rank and the fact that this woman was in it has him wondering just how deep this Isaac guy has his hooks sunken into their operations.
A metallic smell meets his nose. Herm closes his eyes and turns his head away from the body to collect himself for a few moments. His mind was a little discombobulated throughout the fight. It was being torn between one side screaming that his shoulder feels like it’s on fire and the other side shouting about how there’s a gun being fired at him. So, he lets the grim silence seep into his mind and push past the fight he just had in order to focus on whatever previous events were going on. He takes a deep breath, slightly tainted by metal, and feels his shoulders relax partially.
The faint sound of music snaps him back.
He moves past the body and begins making his way toward what he thinks is the direction the woman’s sniper is set up.
The end of the hallway opens up into a large conference room. There’s a long wooden table surrounded by rolling chairs in the center with a television hanging off the wall of one end. A supply closet is in the corner of the other end accompanied by a tall plant that climbs halfway to the ceiling. The wall facing the outside is completely covered in windows exposing the crowded streets below as partygoers still file out like ants. But the sniper rifle isn’t standing in one of those windows.
It’s in the window in the supply closet.
Not the most efficient position unless you were expecting to get rolled up on, which Herm will admit he’s done before. For a Senior Sniper, though? Really?
“Aaron? You there?” Herm asks. He sets his backpack down and unzips the biggest pouch. The woman propped her window open a lot more than Herm did, thankfully, so it’s easier for him to give Aaron an out if he hasn’t already found one himself.
Which, he very clearly hasn’t judging by the two silhouettes still in the middle of the apartment room. His friend’s light blue mask looks like it’s almost glowing in the fluorescent lighting.
Aaron doesn’t answer him, still locked in whatever conversation is going on, but his body language is different. Stiff in a way that Herm has rarely ever seen; the other is almost always in an astounding state of relaxation and easiness with his shoulders loose. Smaller in a way Herm never associates with Aaron; the other is always making the room feel a thousand times bigger and lighter with the energy he carries. It looks wrong—severely out of place. Herm doesn’t like it one bit.
“I’m sendin’ a grapple your way. Get outta there,” he explains. He pulls out the grapple gun from the backpack and readjusts himself to get a clearer shot. The only reason they even have a grappling hook in the first place is because Herm has had to jump out of a window one too many times, all five resulting in a very unpleasant leg day. And yes, there’s a reason the team has a backpack full of emergency gear. It was Kiki’s idea after the facility because she noticed how stupid some of the shit they all pull is. Everyone gets a turn with the Backpack of Bullshit—a name they all agreed upon in the span of five seconds—depending on the mission. Aaron and Kevin want to get a name tag for it.
He swaps the lines quickly so it resembles a zip line. It’s sturdier for Aaron to slide across and has been tested a “reassuring” total of two times. It technically shouldn’t even be in the field, and it doesn’t reassure Herm at all, but he doesn’t have another choice. The other line can hold the weight of a person, but “safety standards” as Kiki put it. He also changes the hook and switches to one with a spike at the edge of it so it can bury into a wall.
Aaron tears himself away from the dance at the same time Herm fires. For a brief moment, he wonders if the line is even long enough to make it to the other side. Especially at the angle it stretches at. But the hook finds a home in the wall slightly above the balcony, digging itself deep enough that cracks spiderweb out. He tugs on the line to make sure it holds.
His heart stops for a second as gunshots ring out across the street. When he looks up, though, Aaron is swinging across the gap with a—is that a chair leg? How the hell did he find that?
Herm shifts to the side to make room for Aaron. A bullet shatters one of the windows in the conference room as their mole continues firing. A few more people scream from down below and Herm would return fire if there wasn’t risk of his friend being collateral damage.
Aaron crashes inside, bits of glass cutting his skin as his side rams through part of the window that’s still in tact. Well, was still in tact. He stumbles into the back wall, grasping onto a shelf nearby and nearly taking it down with him. Herm is back at the window instantly, unhooking the line so that it falls uselessly across the gap, slapping against the wall on the other side.
He peeks through the scope of the woman’s sniper rifle in preparation to fire back as Aaron collects himself. Their traitor is staring them down from the balcony railing with both hands on his pistol. Herm’s fingers dance over the unfamiliar terrain of a new gun before finding and hovering over the trigger. He pauses, though, as he sees a figure approaching their mole from behind.
Zane.
Looks like he made it out of the elevator after all.
Their mole swears as their gun clicks empty. Herm can get a good look at him now and vaguely recognizes the fact that he has seen this person around the agency before. They’ve never spoken to each other, but Herm’s been in the same room with the guy for sure. The man fishes into his pant pocket to find another mag only to come up with nothing.
He slams his gun against the top of the railing, the clang reverberating off the building walls around them. The guy turns around and Herm watches as his expression of anger flashes into one of shock as he’s met with the barrel of a gun. Zane grins in a stupidly triumphant way as sirens fade into existence in a distant part of the city.
Herm scoffs, but finds himself smiling regardless.
“Woah, Herm, what the hell happened to your shoulder?” Aaron asks. His voice is hoarse and he clears his throat slightly. A gentle hand comes to rest over the spot where blood has soaked through the fabric of Herm’s shirt. “You good, dawg?”
“Yeah,” Herm replies. He turns around and finally takes his friend’s state in. “Just got nicked. I’ll be alright.”
Aaron, on the other hand, looks worse for wear. Physically and mentally. Part of his suit is torn from the glass he met when he swung in. His face is littered with shallow cuts, one cutting through the edges of his lip. But that’s not what has Herm’s brows creasing in concern. Aaron looks exhausted and like he’s traveled across all seven continents in one night. His shoulders are sagged as if a weighted blanket had been placed on top of them and it seems like he’s struggling to keep his head up. There’s a deep, glazed over look in the other’s eyes that has Herm questioning if Aaron is even in the room with him.
“Are you good?”
“What? Yeah,” Aaron says.
“What’d he say to you?” Herm asks. He packs up the grapple gun and is about to sling it back over his shoulder when Aaron takes it from him with a vague gesture toward Herm’s injury.
Glass shards crunch under their shoes as they shuffle their way out of the room. Aaron shrugs, “Just some bullshit. I’ll explain more at briefing later. Let’s go check on KL and meet back up with everyone.”
Aaron winces as the alcohol flows into a particularly painful cut across his temple. The paramedic nods to tell him he’s good to go before she moves on to Herm’s shoulder.
He gets up and goes over to stand next to Denny a few feet away, close enough for Herm to hear whatever they want to discuss about tonight.
Denny doesn’t acknowledge his presence. His friend’s eyes are on Noah as the guy is being shoved into the back of a cop car. Blue and red lights dance around them like some sick version of a disco ball. A light summer breeze sweeps through the city. It flaps the pieces of fabric around the shreds in his suit and he flicks a stray shard of glass off. The partygoers from tonight huddle together on the sidewalk as they wait for cars to come pick them up. Some of them are sending weird looks in his and Denny’s direction, but Aaron couldn’t care less in all honesty.
“So that’s your boyfriend?” Denny asks with a smile.
Aaron groans, “Please don’t make that a thing.”
“You danced with him,” Denny says, laughing at the image in his head. “I gotta ask Ayo to clip that when Kev sends him the camera footage.”
“I didn’t have a choice—“ Aaron begins to defend himself but now Herm’s started laughing too.
“He said ‘I’ve been waitin’ for somebody to ask me all night’!” Herm quips. Aaron smiles and shakes his head as they keep throwing fuel on the fire until Denny is doubled over and has his arms out trying to find support.
All the energy for banter slowly drains out of him, though, and he frowns as he remembers the conversation in the apartment. Aaron doesn’t think he can handle recalling too many details at the moment, so he uses Zane’s arrival as his departure and steps away toward the deserted back end of the ambulance.
He takes out his comm piece from his pocket and switches channels before placing it in his ear. “Hey, Katherine? You there?”
“Aaron! Hi,” Katherine says. The sound of technology whirring in the background is evident even through the settings they all have enabled. “I should make you all code names.”
Aaron smiles, “Please don’t. Look, are you busy right now?”
“Never too busy for you. What do you need?”
“If I send you an audio file from my watch, can you write a transcript of it for me? I can send you some extra details once we start making our way back to the agency, but I can send the file now,” Aaron says.
After Herm refused to stand down, Aaron managed to hit a small button on his watch so that he could record his conversation with Noah. He hid the movement while they were rotating with the rest of the dancers, so Noah didn’t seem to know it was happening. He makes a mental note to applaud Zane for adding that feature later.
“Yeah, of course I can do that,” Katherine says.
Aaron pauses and swallows like his next words physically hurt him to say, “Just…just make me a copy for now, okay? Not the whole team. Or, actually no, you can make copies for everyone, just wait until I send more details though, please?”
Katherine is hesitant, confused. “Yeah, okay. But why—"
“Is that Kiki?” Denny exclaims, coming up behind him.
Aaron startles and turns around. He’s in the middle of taking out his earpiece when Denny grabs it out of his hand. “Hey—Denny!”
“I didn’t know we had a commlink to Katherine!” Denny says. Aaron reaches for his earpiece but Denny pulls his arm back until it’s out of his reach. They grapple like for a few moments, arms tangled together and laughter illuminating the air around them as Aaron nearly tackles his friend. Denny’s not Herm, so it’s not really possible for Denny to have the upper hand he’s searching for.
Aaron manages to snatch it back and flip it off. He’s still laughing as he says, “Use your own, dawg!”
The cop car with Noah begins to drive away, engine humming as their laughter dies down. He doesn’t mention the way Denny’s gaze lingers a little too long on him in the moment of silence that stretches. Instead, Aaron changes the subject, “Is Kevin gonna be alright?”
Denny sighs and peers in the direction of a disoriented Kevin behind Herm and Zane inside the ambulance. He might be asleep, but Aaron can’t tell from the angle he’s in. “It wasn’t anything fatal, but we’ll have to deal with sleeping beauty for a bit.”
“We should take a picture,” Aaron says. He checks his pockets twice for his phone before remembering how he had left it at the agency. Kevin is always complaining—not literally, but Aaron can tell—about him being on his phone a lot during missions or meetings, so he decided to leave it behind from now on. “Do you have your phone on you?”
Denny grins excitedly, “Yeah, hold on.”
They move closer to the ambulance, interrupting whatever exchange was going on between Herm and Zane. Denny holds up his phone and snaps a photo while they giggle like teenagers. Denny sends it to their group chat immediately and Herm’s phone vibrates against the metal of the vehicle. Smiling, he shakes his head, “Y’all are crazy.”
Kevin’s figure stirs and his head tilts in their direction. His voice is rough around the edges and he sounds as if he’s waking up from a one hundred year long nap, “You’re all fired.”
They all laugh then, the sound another breath of fresh air for Aaron’s lungs as he clutches onto Denny’s shoulder. Each of their smiles so bright that it feels like if they really tried hard enough they could fix all of their problems with this one point in time. Herm’s apologizing to the kind paramedic lady for moving too much and Zane’s sauntering over to Kevin to check on him. The last of the remaining cops exit the apartment and signal to their officers alongside the other residents that it’s all clear.
And as Aaron looks up at the moon for the second time that night, Denny’s words from the balcony come back to him. They overpower the hostile ones until it’s all he can think about because here, under the moon’s comforting glow and his friends laughter in the background, is when Aaron finally hears those words for what they really are.
A promise.
And when Herm drives them all back to the agency half an hour later, there are two thoughts running through his head. One, he intends on returning that promise to all of them by any means necessary. And two, there are a lot of sticky notes Aaron has to throw away.