Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

there is something wrong with you
there is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me
HERA LINDSAY BIRD, "Mirror Traps"

London is supposed to be a simple op. The pipeline from a diplomat's dipshit daughter getting caught up with a bad crowd – privilege and access are so boring if there's not a little wrong sprinkled in – to their associations becoming an international incident is a very short one. The slippery slope always ends the same way: one minute she's snorting primo coke off a supermodel's navel and the next she's unintentionally ferrying information from one arms dealer to another, too drunk off bottle service and a hip-hop artist's latest vanity vodka line to care that she's destroying the world to chase the high of manufactured danger.

But this kind of cake walk mission is better suited for the agency idiots filtering up through the ranks from the Ivy Leagues. They bumble around the field for two years and bide their time until their fraternity connections land them cushy desk jobs that are better suited for their real talent of using power and influence to coax even more power and influence out of anyone stupid enough to think they can simply buy a seat at the real table.

Jake has never had any such aspirations, doesn't even have the pedigree for it, but Maverick went as far as to promise a few days off to parlay this trip into a long weekend away if they did a simple spot and grab job first. Someone higher up asked that the mission be done as cleanly as possible, which meant that he couldn't trust Lennox and Lee to it, and that no one would accidentally get shot during the op, which also counted out Avalone. Jake would've held out for a few more concessions, but Natasha's soft spot for her mentor meant that she barely put up a fight when accepting the assignment. Now Jake is stuck spending Friday night in a club with so many LED lights that it looks like the birthday party plucked from a ten-year-old's wildest laser tag dreams.

"Should I be offended by how game you are to volunteer me for these honeypot missions?" Jake asks as he scans the room again for the bored-looking blonde whose pictures were plastered all over the case files he flipped through on the flight across the pond.

He can practically hear Natasha grinning before her voice comes across so clearly through the earpiece that he'd swear she was whispering it next to him. "You're the one who's always telling me about how much of a catch you are, Don Juan."

"Sue me for wanting to feel a little appreciated by you, Phoenix."

Natasha is about to remind him of how frequently she appreciates him when they both spot the party girl at the same time. Tall, leggy, and already tipsy from pre-gaming in the limo on the way here, she's practically a Spring Break cautionary tale. Her entourage of straphangers are no better, looking like they came back from Fashion Week and immediately hit the martini bar on the drive down. If this were one of those Bond movies, they'd be moving in slow motion while a mysterious wind blew through their queen's hair.

"Showtime! Make me proud, baby."

Natasha snickers when Hangman grumbles something indecipherable as he makes his way down from the balcony. Earlier in his career, Jake might have had fun with this kind of government-inspired debauchery in the name of patriotism, but the excitement of getting away with doing something illicit while on the company's payroll has fizzled away now that there is no challenge to it. He could seduce a debutante in his sleep. It's just a matter of buying her a couple of drinks, flashing a hint of his pearly whites to dazzle her, and then leaning in close enough to trail a finger down her little black backless dress as the DJ pumps up the obnoxious EDM until she's grabbing the front of his shirt and whispering something about finding "a more private place to finish this conversation." It's so predictable and tedious that he might as well be working off an IKEA manual.

Following the usual beats, Jake already has their target's necklace off and is passing it into Natasha's waiting hands when the mark – "Ginger with a J," she giggles like it's the funniest thing anyone has ever said – coos about how much she looooves this song before dragging him onto the dance floor. A remix of "Stars Are Blind" that is arguably worse than the original thumps around them while the strobe lights become an epileptic's worst nightmare. Her circle of model friends run onto the floor after their meal ticket, their squeals adding to the pounding at his temples. As the mass of people pulses around him, Jake looks around for Natasha. At the mission briefing, Bob had promised that it would take his tech thirty seconds to copy the server address encoded into the sapphire gem once it was in her possession and since Bob is never, ever wrong about these things, Jake has to believe that his partner is taking her sweet time to torture him. Sure enough, he spots her at the bar, backlit by blue light as she holds up a drink to toast to his misery.

"Come on, let's get out of here," he groans, unsure if he's talking to Nat-in-his-ear or Ginger-with-a-J.

It turns out that Ginger-with-a-J doesn't love this song enough to resist Jake tugging on her elbow as he motions discreetly towards the back of the club. Maybe it is his imagination, but it feels like the crowd parts for them like Ginger-with-a-J is Moses crossing The Red Sea. It takes her exactly forty-five seconds to lead him to a bathroom and push his jacket off his shoulders and then another fifteen to teeter on unsteady Louboutins while trying to climb him like a tree. Jake takes pity and hauls her onto the counter next to the sink, but just barely manages to stifle a yawn as she starts to kiss along his ear. The lighting in the club must have been great if Ginger-with-a-J took his bored expression for something mysterious, but it could also be his natural confidence. It is Spycraft 101: if you walk into enough rooms with the swagger of someone who belongs, eventually people will be mesmerized enough to let you in everywhere else.

As she kisses down his throat, Jake examines his reflection in the mirror. He looks as tired as he feels. While Ginger-with-a-J moves her hands towards his belt, Jake contemplates taking a nap before the West End production of A Streetcar Named Desire tomorrow night. It certainly won't help prove his point to Natasha that he can be cultured if he falls asleep halfway through the play. He's still thinking about whether the vindication is worth sacrificing three hours of his time when the door violently bursts open and Paris Hilton's autotuned voice crooning about her heart and soul and body filters through interrupted waves of sound while the door swings in and out on its hinges a few times before slowing its momentum to a stop.

"What the fuck are you doing, Don?" Natasha shrieks like a banshee. Half of her face is hidden behind a pair of oversized sunglasses so Jake can't see if she breaks character when he jumps away from Ginger-with-a-J like he has just been electrocuted.

"Hold on, is that your name?" Ginger-with-a-J asks with disbelief, her face shifting from hot and bothered to just plain bothered that she was making out with a man named Don. Don is a used car salesman. He's an accountant. He's the investment banker living in a Mediterranean Revival style home in Mar Vista that her debutante mother thinks about when ignoring her father's latest affair with his secretary. Hot girls who spell their names with an ironic J and hang out with Vogue cover models don't kiss guys named Don. Ginger-with-a-J frowns just as Natasha yanks her off the counter like she's auditioning for a new season of The Jersey Shore. "What the fuck, lady?"

Jake steps between them quickly, laying on the smarm so thick that he wants to smack himself when he says to Natasha, "Cinnamon, babe, this isn't what it looks like…"

He can't keep a straight face when Cinnamon pushes him out of the way and lunges for Ginger-with-a-J like a crazed monkey, the two of them crashing into the opposite wall with an oof. Ginger-with-a-J is so caught off guard that she doesn't notice Nat slipping the necklace out of her pocket and dropping it onto the floor. Jake gives their fight a five-count to make it more believable that it would fall off in the scuffle before he separates the two women, holding Cinnamon back a little too bodily while he tells Ginger-with-a-J that maybe it's best if she goes.

"You're both fucking insane!" Ginger-with-a-J fumes because guys named Don are not allowed to ask her to leave. She's halfway to the door when Jake shouts at her to wait. He can see her smug smile in the reflection. For a second, the world in which Ginger-with-a-J has never faced rejection makes sense to her again, but then he takes an ice pick to the illusion by grabbing the necklace off the floor and handing it to her with as apologetic a look as he can muster. Ginger-with-a-J gripes about what a clusterfuck the night has become as she steps out of the bathroom and onto a dance floor full of people writhing to a dubstep remix of "Tiny Dancer."

Once the door shuts behind her, Natasha puts her hands on her hips and asks, "Cinnamon?" The corners of her mouth tug up into a grin as Jake shrugs that he was trying to be thematic. He steps closer to her and speculates that maybe Don has a thing for women named after ground spices.

"Oh, but our girl spells it with a J," Natasha reminds him and it really should not be as hot as it is. 

Jake plucks the ridiculous sunglasses off her face and leans down to kiss her, walking Natasha back until he's got her pressed against the black onyx wall tiles in three strides. Her hands pick up where Ginger-with-a-J's left off as she unbuckles his belt. Right before she's about to make this entire nuisance of an evening worth it, Bob hisses over comms, "For the love of God, can't you two keep it in your pants long enough to hand me the drive and finish the mission?"

Natasha is chastened enough to take her hands off him, but Jake just groans into his comms that he told Maverick they didn't need the geek squad on this one.

"Fuck you, Hangman. It's called tactical support," Bob bites back. Before the bickering can start, Natasha pushes Jake back and straightens her obscenely short dress before guiding him towards the door. Always committed to the bit, she seeks out Ginger-with-a-J in the throng of people on their way out and shoots her one last withering glare before they leave.

The van is parked a block away from the club. When Bob throws open the doors at Jake's attempt at a secret knock, he looks as unamused as ever. Ignoring Jake completely, he turns to Natasha and asks for the hundredth time this year why she keeps doing this to him.

"Why can't you sleep with a guy you met at an open mic night like every other woman dating below her station?" he asks miserably as Nat hands him the replica.

"Below her station? Catching up on your Austen while we do all the real work, Floyd?" Jake smiles wide and flips Bob the bird.

"Without me, you're basically just a gigolo, Bagman," Bob snipes.

It's not that he expects Natasha to defend him, but even a play nice would've been considerate. He would whine about feeling unacknowledged, but Natasha looks like she's busy trying to work out the Pythagorean theorem in her head. After a beat, she turns to them and says distractedly, "That was too easy, right?"

"Maybe I'm just extremely charming," Jake says before turning the full force of his megawatt smile on Natasha to prove his point. But she's too deep in her thoughts, already turning over the night and trying to look at it from a different angle. Her devotion is great for the purposes of national security, but far less commendable when it's standing in the way of them finishing what they started earlier in that executive bathroom. "So am I driving us back to the hotel or…?"

"Something is off," Natasha repeats like her warning lights won't stop flashing.

"No, there isn't," he groans. "It was a very straightforward mission—"

"Honey, not even you are that charming." Natasha pats Jake on the cheek before sidestepping him to peer over at Bob's screen. While they've been debating Hangman's appeal, Bob has managed to hack into the server and is currently scrolling through file names at a breakneck speed. With a hand on Bob's shoulder, she squints at the screen and asks, "Hey, what's that?"

Bob clicks on a video file. The screen opens to a tilted shot of the front page of last week's Dagens Nyheter before a pair of grubby feet tied together at the ankles kicks it away. The camera looks like it has fallen off the tripod so the only perspective they are offered is the skewed view from the floor. There's a muffled announcement over a loudspeaker in the distance and then someone closer says something garbled offscreen. Failing to get a response, the person repeats it just as unintelligibly as before but with more menace this time. There's a skirmish and then a hoarse voice slowly starts to sing the chorus of "Great Balls of Fire" so defiantly that it might as well be spoken poetry at a human rights rally, a painful kicked-in-the-stomach quality to the rendition. It's clearly not what the other man wants to hear because the chair legs are dragged back across the screen right before the video cuts off.

"Oh my God," Natasha gasps, her face drained of all the color and her knuckles looking stark white as she grips the back of Bob's chair.

Bob stammers, "It can't be…"

"Am I missing something?" Jake asks stupidly. A bad Jerry Lee Lewis cover is nothing to get worked up over, but he might as well be a ghost himself because Nat and Bob are communicating with looks like they're a set of twins with their own language. It would be impressive if it wasn't so annoying to be on the periphery of it. Before he can ask again, something shifts in the air and the stillness is suddenly replaced with a flurry of coordinated activity.

Natasha looks like she's about to puke when she starts to say, "We have to call—"

"Already on it."

Bob minimizes the window to find a secure channel to Maverick while Nat asks if the agency has anyone stationed in Stockholm right now.

"Can someone fill me in?" Jake asks again.

Natasha looks up like she is seeing him for the first time. She takes a shuddering breath and gulps, "That's Rooster."

"That might be Rooster," Bob interjects, but it is about as convincing as when Jake's mother would tell him that they might get ice cream on the way home from the movies even as she turned onto Town Creek Drive and pulled into the Dairy Queen drive-thru.

Even though Nat almost never refers to him, it doesn't take Jake more than a second to put the alias to a face. His mind instantaneously makes the connection to the picture on the mantle above her fireplace at home. It's from a climbing trip to Kilimanjaro she took in her mid-twenties and the group is dressed in snowsuits that might have been borrowed from a rap video. Natasha looks delirious from the mulled wine as she hugs a guy wearing a goofy bear hat that matches his beard. They are each flashing a thumbs up at the camera while holding gigantic marshmallows between their teeth. She has never looked happier.

"As in your former partner Rooster?" Jake asks incredulously. "Didn't Bradley Bradshaw die five years ago?"

"Apparently not."

*

Maverick denies Phoenix's request to personally go to Stockholm to get Bradley. This is not as simple as picking someone up from the airport after work. They cut the London trip short to come home early and wait. And wait. And wait. It's not enough that they have Rooster's location narrowed down to a city and are in the employ of people who could figure out the exact building within the hour; they must deal with all the inter-agency red tape nonsense first. The thing that no one ever mentions about a well-meaning rescue op is that it's a jurisdictional nightmare. The CIA claims that since it's their man, it is their problem to solve whereas the NSA argues that because it is their man who is the problem, the CIA should not be handling it at all. Ultimately, the NSA wins the dick measuring contest, but after they confirm that the exfil was a success, it becomes an even more torturous waiting game that Natasha is entirely too impatient to play. There are protocols to be followed and vetting to be done, which they both know is an extremely long process, but Natasha seems to think she can charge past all that through willpower alone.

She grinds the soles of her shoes down to the memory foam in those first few days like if she keeps moving, she will somehow walk the distance from DC to Sweden and be that much closer to where Rooster is. Natasha paces along hallways and paces down conference rooms and paces in front of Maverick's office for an update, perfectly willing to tap dance all over his last nerve until he finally asks her to give him some time to do the shit that he normally hates doing.

"You're going to be diplomatic?" Jake chuckles.

"Worse," Maverick grouses. "Sorting through administrative bullshit."

"I can wait," Natasha says like a tireless sentry.

"Take a beat," Mav counters. It's less of a suggestion and more of an order this time. After a second thought, he adds, "At home, Agent Trace."

*

It is only after Jake has heaped eight dollars' worth of Stilton and Fontina on buttered sourdough bread and is in the middle of an exaggerated flip that Natasha breaks her self-imposed silence to ask, "How long is a beat anyway?"

"Longer than a bit, shorter than a while?"

"Thanks for that, Dr. Seuss," Natasha sneers, rolling her eyes before sliding off the kitchen island to grab a bottle of beer from the fridge. She pops the top and takes a swig before joining him at the stove. Jake's prep station to make a couple of sandwiches is admittedly a little involved, but he doesn't need to hear the judgment when she squints at a jar in the corner and asks, "Did you pickle scallions?"

"Alex Guarnaschelli says a hint of acidity brightens a grilled cheese sandwich!" he replies defensively. Without his culinary expertise, the only things in Nat's fridge would be half a jar of Grey Poupon, leftover Indian food growing its own ecosystem within the container, and three sad looking olives floating around in brine. He's just about to tell her that she would've died of botulism years ago if not for him when Nat reminds him with a smirk that if he had just bought Kraft singles last week, they could have been eating by now. Offended, Jake hisses that he is not even going to justify that with a response.

"You know that you're a snob, right?" she laughs.

Natasha slips an arm around his waist and leans into Jake's side. She offers her beer bottle to him like it's an olive branch. When Jake takes a sip, he immediately makes a face and counters, "Says the woman drinking artisanal ale."

"That's called having taste, babe," she says without any real bite, her voice drifting off like she's somewhere far away.

Natasha is only clingy like this when she wants something. In this case, he suspects that she is finally ready for him to ask what's on her mind. Jake has been down this path enough times to know that even if she wants to share, Natasha will immediately shut him down unless she feels like it's her idea.

"Can we talk about it?" he asks before turning off the burner so he can give her his undivided attention. She shrugs so Jake presses on. "It takes time to debrief a guy who has been off the grid for five years."

Like everyone else with clearance, Jake has read the file on Rooster's disappearance: how it went south when he went to meet a contact in Prague; that, at the time, Phoenix was half a world away on a job for Stinger that required an agent who was fluent in Pashto; the way the agency blamed Bradshaw's hubris for insisting to his mission partner, Bernie Coleman, that they didn't need backup on standby in a region where communications were spotty at best and nonexistent at worst.

There were no bodies recovered, of course, but that wasn't rare in their line of work. The official story was that Bradshaw got into a climbing accident and was presumed dead because the weather conditions at the time made survival impossible. Without any immediate family members to question the narrative, it was an easy sell. Within eight months, the CIA had closed the file and moved on.

In all the time that they've been together, Natasha has mentioned Rooster only a handful of times, usually so offhand that she has moved on to another topic before Jake can take the opening to ask any questions. They all have their own screwed up coping mechanisms and he assumed hers was to ignore it, but all it took was this one spark of hope to make it obvious how much she wasn't over his disappearance and how deeply she still blamed herself for not being there to prevent it.

"If I hadn't given up on him," Natasha starts in a barely-there whisper, "he would be home. He would be okay."

"He is going to be okay."

"Oh yeah?" Natasha folds her arms across her chest. "Were you okay?"

Jake winces. His preferred fucked up coping mechanism is absolutely to ignore everything so he hasn't let himself think about that in years. What are spies good for if not to compartmentalize their baggage into packing cubes that they never plan on opening? He could tell Natasha that it's not the same thing – that his circumstances were a bit more complicated than dying – but that's not what she needs to hear.

"Eventually," he admits. "But you made me feel like I could be so I know that you'll do the same for Rooster."

*

At the top of the fourth with only one out left, Rafael Devers tries to belt it out of the park with a first pitch swing that misses so spectacularly that he practically does a 360 at the plate. While the Nationals fans around them cheer, Jake leans over to Javy and says in a low whisper, "The problem is that your boys think they can take over someone else's home turf with no questions asked."

Javy raises the brim of his Red Sox cap slightly as he tilts his head to make sure Jake catches him smirking. "Aren't you just a bull in a China shop tonight?"

Granted, it's not Jake's most subtle segue, but he's not keen on waiting until the seventh inning stretch for answers. If there's one thing Javy Machado is good at, it is disguising his meticulousness as loose-lipped carelessness. Jake's best friend has never dispensed a single piece of information that he didn't already plan on sharing before he even started the conversation. A man with the code name Coyote needs to be clever enough to leave subtle crumbs so that the people he ensnares feel like it is their genius that unearths the path and not Javy's strings pulling them along it. The NSA made him the liaison to the CIA to throw the redheaded stepchild of espionage agencies a bone, but the truth is that they knew Javy would gather more intel than he ever doled out, his proverbial vest lined with hidden pockets crammed full of secrets that he shouldn't know.

"You played hard to get when I suggested catching a game, but now you're into foreplay?"

"I contain multitudes," Javy replies with a shrug.

Jake chuckles. "Keep telling yourself that, pal."

"All I'm saying is that if you're going to try to fuck me, at least buy me a Nat dog first."

The older woman sitting in front of them whips around to give Javy a dirty look, clearly regretting not forking over the extra twenty dollars to get seats closer to the third base line and away from frat boys with no sense of decency. Ignoring her, Jake flags over the ballpark vendor making his way down the stairs to their row and asks for two beers and a hot dog with mustard. "You happy?"

"And a box of Cracker Jack," Javy says to the man, "since he's buying."

"You're like a garbage disposal, Machado."

As if to prove Jake's point, Javy takes a massive bite of his hot dog. He chomps on it slowly like a kid whose mother told him he had to chew everything thirty-two times before swallowing. In the time it takes Javy to finish that first bite, the hot dog guy has moved on to a different section and the nosy woman in front of them has lost interest in eavesdropping on their conversation. Javy takes a sip of his beer before turning his attention back to the game with a frown. The Washington Nationals are trying to get a little hitting streak going against Javy's beloved Boston Red Sox.

"Chinese Wall," Javy finally says.

"Chinese Wall," Jake promises.

"Not even your girlfriend," he clarifies pointedly. Jake rolls his eyes. He will never understand why Javy and Natasha can't get along when they're so alike that they'd probably be an unstoppable force if they ever teamed up against him. He has given up on trying to get either one of them to shift this animosity towards friendship, resigning himself to the fact that like repels like and it's not so bad to have a built-in support base on the other side whenever he gets into an argument with one of them.

"Yes, Javy, I have watched The Good Wife," he groans. "I know what Chinese Wall means."

"That's your frame of reference?" Javy shakes his head in disbelief. Taking a deep breath to re-center himself, Javy's voice gets even quieter when he whispers out of the corner of his mouth, "There was talk of an illegal trade about a week ago."

Jake raises an eyebrow. Picking up on the code, he asks, "How illegal?"

"Extremely bad faith. Inked after the deadline. Enough to pique the commissioner's interest, you know?"

It would certainly explain Rooster being in NSA custody for the past five days if their sister agency thought the circumstances surrounding his rescue were suspicious. Jake hadn't put much thought into how convenient it was that the people who found the video also happened to be the only ones who would make a mountain out of that Jerry Lee Lewis shaped molehill, but he can see now why the NSA would be keen on investigating it further.

"Credible source?" Jake asks with a lump in his throat. Javy shrugs, prompting Jake to grasp at straws. "It could be some fucker on the DL spreading rumors because he's worried about being sent down to Triple A once a bigger dog rejoins the team."

"Gosh, that thought never crossed my mind!" Javy lets out a mock gasp, his hands going up to his mouth briefly to sell the scandalized Victorian mistress act. When Javy's arm swings down again, he whacks Jake with his half-eaten hot dog, a yellow streak of mustard smearing across Jake's white t-shirt in its wake.

"Asshole." Jake shoves Coyote away when he tries to dab at the stain with a used napkin.

"You should get cleaned up. You look like a toddler." There's not an ounce of remorse in Javy's voice. Jake starts to shuffle to the end of their aisle when Javy calls out that the restroom on the third floor usually has a shorter line. Jake turns back in time to catch the box of Cracker Jack Javy throws at him. "Just in case you're feeling hypoglycemic, bud."

Jake doesn't have to open the box to know that the prize inside is worth a hell of a lot more than the caramel-coated popcorn and peanuts surrounding it.

*

Jake Seresin meets Penny Benjamin at her favorite picnic bench in East Potomac Park, close enough to see the cherry blossoms but far enough away that they are not bothered by the tourists bustling along the path to soak it all in. For someone who claims to have no use for parks ("They remind me too much of the dead drops of my youth," she laughed once as they watched a runner throw a bag of dog poop into the trash), Penny loves people watching: millennials trying find the perfect spot for an artsy Instagram picture to tag as self-care; frazzled office workers searching for a moment of peace during their too-short lunch hours; retired school teachers in wrist weights pumping their arms back and forth as they try to get in the recommended ten thousand daily steps before it's time to watch The People's Court.

"What did the informant say exactly?" Penny asks as she watches Jake pour three packets of Splenda into his Café Americano. He waits for her to launch into another tirade about how artificial sweeteners are not good for his gut health, but it seems that Penny has finally given up on his microbiome when she remains silent. He'd be lying if he denied feeling a twinge of disappointment.

Jake closes his eyes and thinks back to standing in the out of service bathroom at Nationals Park and finding an iPod nano fitted with a small screen at the bottom of his Cracker Jack box. Squinting as he hit play, the video itself was no longer than thirty seconds: a flash of light interrupting the flood of night vision green; boots crunching on rubble as the screen shifted to a man curled around himself like a wounded animal to take up as little space as possible before scoffing, "An American intelligence officer has already been turned. You're about to let a fox into the hen house." Four seconds later the device started to smoke so Jake tossed it back into the box and threw it in the ADA stall with not for use emblazoned across the front in yellow paint. Remembering Javy's flare for the dramatic, he waited to hear the tiny explosion before leaving the bathroom.

"Why am I only learning about this now, Agent Seresin?"

Jake groans. Penny only calls people Agent when she wants them to think they have her respect until their heads are so far in the clouds from that thrill that there's nothing to hold onto when she lets them go. Jake remembers from personal experience that the precipitous drop back down to earth is not a pleasant journey.

The only thing worse than Penny not being the first to know something is if Maverick beats her to the punch so when she starts to mumble that of course Mitchell hasn't outgrown the rogue cowboy act, Jake quickly interrupts to tell her that Maverick doesn't know about it either. The last thing he needs is for a misunderstanding to spiral into another showdown between the two of them. Off Penny's raised eyebrow, Jake quickly adds context: "Until this weekend, the NSA thought this guy simply read one too many Clancy novels. But now..."

"Now you're suggesting that The Alliance was two steps ahead of us the whole time and arranged a fake meeting in order to plant intelligence so we could find Agent Bradshaw?" Penny's laugh is as painful as the early morning beeps of a reversing garbage truck. "Did you tell Pete this theory?"

"We both know that Maverick has no perspective when it comes to this, Pen."

"And you do?" she scoffs, harsh enough to make him flinch. "The Central Intelligence Agency does not exist to mitigate threats to your relationship, Jacob."

"My relationship is just fine," he insists, annoyed that she would even think that he felt threatened by a guy whose nickname was a chicken. But Penny is already smoothing the non-existent wrinkles off her jacket and standing up to walk back to the parking area when Jake begins to tell her that the first few days in the wild after a return are the most crucial if they want to pick up on any contact Bradshaw might make with the enemy.

"Sounds familiar."

"Occasionally, I do listen to you," he admits. Penny had taken him under her wing when he first joined, too important to be a handler but so high up on the totem pole that she could take on the unofficial role of guardian angel without having to go through any official channels. He never outright asked her why she did it, but Jake suspects it's because she recognized what it felt like to have the world shift under his feet with nothing to anchor him home. "We need surveillance on this dude. Eyes and ears on his house, a 24/7 tail…"

Penny shakes her head. "I am not sanctioning that kind of undertaking based on back-channel information that was gleaned from enhanced interrogation techniques." She looks at him like he has lost his mind for even asking.

"I know a little something about playing the long game, all right?" He hates talking about that and she knows it, but Penny wouldn't be good at her job if she didn't excel in making people do what they didn't want to do while simultaneously making them believe that it was their only option. 

"Jake, your hunch means nothing to Director Simpson. In fact, you're lucky he hasn't already stuck you in some basement to investigate Reddit conspiracy theories all day long."

"Cyclone's reasons for hating me have nothing to do with my hunch, Penny."

"You have never thought clearly when it comes to The Alliance. Must I remind you of the shit storm that was Portugal again?"

"That was three years ago! Are you ever going to let me forget it?"

"Neil Vikander shattered his femur in four places because you couldn't wait for backup before chasing after ghosts!"

"The only reason anyone cares about that is because his father is a senator from Nebraska and he's a nepo baby!"

"I'm a nepo baby!" Penny roars, her patience worn thin. Jake knows better than to keep talking even though he would tell her that she's a nepo baby in a very different sense, her entire career devoted to escaping her father's remarkably large and ominous shadow until everyone thought of her as Penelope first and foremost before they even remembered that she was a Benjamin. Penny takes a deep breath now, some sort of Zen yoga technique she learned at a retreat to keep her blood pressure in check, before she says in a frighteningly even tone of voice, "Bradshaw is the CIA's feel-good story of the month. If you get me actionable information, I will consider having another conversation."

"I can't collect intelligence without resources, Pen."

"DIY has been working out well enough for you so far, Seresin. You're a persuasive guy. I'm sure you will figure it out."

*

The NSA transfers custody of Agent Bradley Bradshaw to the CIA six days after rescuing him from an abandoned warehouse in Stockholm. With the division chiefs back home breathing down their necks, the European branch of the agency debriefs him expeditiously before shoving him on a transport headed for Ramstein Air Force Base. By the close of business on Wednesday, Maverick calls Natasha into his office to tell her that Bradley should be back in DC in twenty-four hours.

"He's trying to speed along the processing so Bradley can spend the weekend at home," Nat tells Jake later over takeout.

"Home?" Jake asks around a mouthful of Szechuan chicken. He can feel his right eye twitch like an early tornado warning system starting to activate. "Didn't he rent?"

"I'm letting him crash at my place for a while," Natasha reveals at a clip, averting his gaze. "Just until he gets back on his feet. I still have his stuff in storage so—"

"You do?"

Natasha nods. "He's going to be thrilled to see that stupid Bronco."

"I think his driving privileges died with him," Jake mumbles cruelly before clearing his throat to add, "Legally speaking."

"Bradley has no one else, Jake," she implores. "I owe him."

"For what? You didn't make him careless."

Jake has never been a particularly jealous guy because, up until now, he has never found someone he wanted to hold onto that closely, but when he takes a step back from this situation, he justifies that his irritation is less about what Bradley means to Natasha and more about how badly it will hurt her if the man turns out to be different than she remembers.

"As my best friend, I owe him this much," she clarifies exasperatedly. 

"I thought I was your best friend," he jokes. Jake really doesn't want to talk about what she thinks she owes someone who probably sold them up the river.

"You weren't my best friend even when I thought my best friend was dead." Her mouth turns up into a smile when Jake lets out a big dramatic sigh, but it disappears the moment he tells her that he supposes he can get used to having a third wheel around. Natasha squeezes her eyes shut like the bomb she planted is about to go off and they're still in the blast radius. "I thought maybe you could stay at your apartment for a few days?"

"Oh." That stings a little bit.

"Don't act like I'm making you homeless, Seresin! We go back and forth between each other's houses all the time!"

"The operative word here is we, Natasha."

It's true that they had both agreed to keep their individual places even though it was barely a fifteen-minute drive from his apartment in Georgetown to hers in Arlington and they spent more time in each other's presence than people living under the same roof. Natasha had mentioned something about needing space to decompress after difficult missions and Jake had glommed onto the idea like a life raft to justify the fiscally irresponsible decision to pay two rents and double their subscriptions when they could easily have merged their lives into one. The commitment-phobe's compromise to cohabitation worked so well for them that he had forgotten that the thing with juggling was that something was bound to drop eventually. Now, sitting on Natasha's couch with takeout cartons from their favorite Chinese restaurant spread all over the coffee table that he helped her pick out at Anthropologie, Jake realizes how stupid he was for thinking that going halfsies on a thing would make it hurt any less if someone took it away. It must show on his face because Nat clasps his hands between hers and reassures with a small smile, "I promise you don't have to worry about this. We're good."

"Who is worried?"

"It's only for a few days. Just to give me some time to catch Bradley up."

"Feels like it would be a pretty quick conversation." Jake takes his hands back to count off the words on his fingers as he says, "'I am dating this guy and he is amazing.' Nine words, ten seconds, and Bradshaw's caught up during the Jeopardy commercial break."

"Jake, it's not that simple. You're not just some guy."

A stupider man with a less complicated history would have taken it as a compliment, but Jake knows better. His face falls as he mumbles, "Oh, right. That's…yeah. Of course. I wasn't thinking."

He has changed in a lot of ways, big and small, over the last five years, but Jake prefers forward momentum over dwelling on his past so it is difficult to put himself back in the headspace to think of how wildly different he was when guys like Rooster were last on the field. Jake's former life seems to keep popping up this week like a game of Whack-a-Mole that he doesn't want to play. For whatever reason, it hits differently coming from Natasha and suddenly it feels like there's not enough air in the living room for them both. Resting his chopsticks on top of the box, Jake pushes the takeout carton away and mumbles something about forgetting the dark soy sauce in the kitchen for the fried wontons. 

"Jake, come on!" Natasha calls out to his retreating back, but he has already leapt off the couch and disappeared through the kitchen door. He makes it as far as the refrigerator before the sensation that he can't get another breath in becomes overwhelming. Each attempt to take a small gasp of air feels like letting ice water rush in and freeze him from the inside. Jake presses his forehead against the cool metal of the fridge door and forces himself to push that feeling of drowning away. He taps on the side of his right thigh with the tips of his index and middle fingers, the same steady beat as his ideal heart rate when he is focused on a single task.

Even though Jake tries to quiet the white noise and slow his breathing by listening for the humming compressor of the fridge, it is like a lightbulb has exploded in front of his retinas when he closes his eyes. He feels acutely aware of his body in a finite space, but it's a different time on a nondescript roof in the rain and everything hurts. His calves burn from crouching down and his shoulders are tight and even the slightest twitch in his index finger could mean the difference between life and death. It's paralyzing, this wait for something unknown, and the small part of his brain that is prone to hysteria fears that it will never pass. But then he hears Natasha's distinctive voice muffled through layers of fog but still soft and soothing. Her hand rubs between his shoulder blades, the awareness of something real drawing him out of the rain, off that roof, and back to the present.

"Breathe. Come on, honey. Just breathe."

His fingers stop tapping out that rhythm and Jake takes a breath, and another, and another until his lungs have expanded and the blood flow to his body has been restored. He straightens up and releases his death grip on the refrigerator door handle before turning around to face Natasha.

"Sorry. I'm fine. Been a while since that happened." With an embarrassed chuckle, he adds, "I forgot how much it sucked."

"Forget what I said. You should just stay," Natasha backpedals. "Bradley will be totally fine with it."

Jake shakes his head. While he appreciates her concern that he'll have another panic attack if left on his own for a few days, the last thing he wants is a babysitter. He knows now what he needs to do and it doesn't involve going over the events of the past five years with his girlfriend's ex-partner.

"Bradshaw doesn't need a dude he barely knows and definitely doesn't trust hanging around while you try to explain to him why Game of Thrones ended so badly. Besides, I could use the space."

Natasha raises an eyebrow and leans back against the kitchen island.

"So now you want space? Didn't you just have an anxiety attack about all the space you were about to get?" After a beat, she asks with faux concern, "Too soon?"

"I'll let you know when I stop hyperventilating," he jokes with a smirk.

Natasha rolls her eyes but her face quickly turns serious again. She places her hand flat against his chest and asks softly, "Are you okay?"

"Very," he assures her before leaning down to kiss the back of her hand. "I'll just drop by tomorrow before I meet Javy for lunch to grab some stuff."

"Don't be dramatic." Nat frowns. "This is only going to last a couple of days tops."

"I don't know how quick Bradshaw is on the uptake," he snickers, "but the Rockets are picking up steam and I'd hate for them to lose their momentum because I didn't have my good luck gear."

"Are you talking about that ratty old Hakeem Olajuwon jersey?" She laughs like he's completely ridiculous. He might be. That thing is five laundry cycles away from disintegrating.

"It's vintage!" he insists to make her smile. "And lucky!"

Natasha takes a big hop-scotch step into his personal space and rests her hand against the back of his neck. Her thumb rubs against the hollow behind his ear as she asks, "Is that why Houston hasn't won an NBA championship since he was on the team?"

"Our twenty-eight-year dry spell is about to end, Nat. I can feel it."

"Far be it for me to stand in the way of progress," Natasha agrees gamely. Getting on her tiptoes, she whispers against his ear, "This shirt is also yours. Don't suppose you'll be wanting to take it with you as well?"

Grinning, Jake peers down at the sky-blue Rock 'n' Roll DC 5K t-shirt that Natasha is wearing. She stole it from his closet a week after he ran the race and never bothered giving it back to him so, obviously, he tells her that it has great sentimental value. He rests one hand on her hip for balance while the other slips under the cotton fabric to skate along her ribs. Jake leans down for a lazy kiss, mumbling against her lips that he "might, in fact, need it back, like, right now."

Her mouth curls into a grin. "Another lucky shirt, Seresin?"

"God, I hope so," he breathes as Jake holds up his crossed fingers. Naturally, she calls him an idiot. But he's an idiot that she's currently crowding back against the fridge door like a lioness about to devour her prey. Jake is locked in place, barely cognizant of the magnet digging into his back because he's so gone on how Natasha kisses him like she's drunk off him while her hands slide under his own shirt to trail her nails along the planes of his abdomen. For the first time since the baseball game with Javy, he can finally hear himself think above the noise and all he can think about is her.

"Maybe we should make a trade then," Natasha murmurs. He nods before she has even finished her thought, which makes her laugh against his shoulder and tell Jake that he's a terrible negotiator. 

"Ever consider that maybe I'm buttering you up to broker a better side deal?" Jake suggests with a smile before lifting Natasha up easily, her legs curling around his waist like this is a well-choreographed dance. He doesn't wait for her to call him clever, Nat's words lost to her delighted squeal when he kisses her again.

Jake wouldn't consider himself to be a particularly graceful person, but he could find the way to Natasha's bedroom from anywhere in this apartment blindfolded – and probably has, if memory serves – so he appears less distracted than he feels when she cards her fingers through his hair and whispers about needing to look over the terms and conditions of his offer. To be honest, she could be reading the user agreement of his Netflix subscription aloud and he'd still find himself going a little dumb from the way she stops every few words to pepper kisses along his jaw and down his neck. As he tries to capture her lips with his own, Jake feels lighter than he has in ages. The only time he gives himself permission to be sloppy and stupid is when he's with her, the pressure to act like a smooth-talking charmer who could sell heaters to nomads in the desert falling to the wayside because she doesn't care about how cool he can be.

After nearly tripping over a side table and killing them both because Nat's impatience has her shifting from repeating corporate jargon that she learned from marathoning four seasons of Succession to buzzing something a lot filthier in his ear, Jake finally reaches her bedroom a small eternity later. He's about to deposit them both onto her bed when she suddenly shouts to stop. "Wait! Red light, red light!"

"Oh God, what's wrong?" he asks with alarm, his eyes snapping open as his brain zooms through all the terrible possibilities: he misread the signs, he hurt her, she doesn't want this, she never wanted—

"I just finished folding my laundry," she says sheepishly, jerking her thumb behind them to the neatly folded stacks currently taking up a good portion of the bed.

"Jesus, Nat," he groans into her neck. "You almost gave me a heart attack."

"Sorry, babe," she says with a chuckle, kissing his temple tenderly before tapping him to put her down. "But you know how much I hate folding clothes. I can't let all this effort go to waste."

"Nat—"

"Before you ask why I didn't put them away sooner, Marie Kondo, I thought it would take you a lot longer to come back with the food."

"Can't you just," and here he makes a sweeping motion with his hands, "push them off to the side? It's a California king for a reason, Natasha."

"And risk letting you ruin my hard work?" Natasha rolls her eyes. "I swear that it's going to take like five minutes to put away."

"You're not factoring in the twenty minutes you'll take trying to decide if today is the day you finally organize your closet by color."

"Patience is a virtue, Jake."

Before she can reach for the first of many stacks of clothes, Jake winds his arm around her waist and kisses between her shoulder blades. "What if I promise to give you very favorable terms?"

He doesn't need to see her to know that she's rolling her eyes to the moon right now. A second later, a haphazardly squared off fitted sheet whacks him in the chest. "If you want to be helpful, go put fresh sheets on the bed in the guest room."

Jake usually embraces the unpredictable nature of life – in their line of business, he must in order to avoid getting killed when the plan goes to shit as it so often does – but in the grand scheme of things, making the bed for his girlfriend's ex ("Ew, don't call him that! Rooster is like my brother, you freak!") was not on Jake's bingo card for the night.

*

"This is so illegal," Bob groans as he finishes attaching the last mic to a lamp fixture in the living room. He taps on the tablet in his hand, lifts the headphones from around his neck, and asks for a sound check so Jake dangles his set of house keys in the general vicinity of the floor lamp. The scale on Bob's screen goes from red to green and then drops back down again.

"It's not illegal if we didn't break in," Jake insists. That's what he has been telling himself all morning while they plant recording devices all over Natasha's house. Bob said he could only get enough tech for three rooms, so they went with the guest bedroom, the living room, and the kitchen – hardly an invasion of privacy if you ask Jake, especially if this is where he himself lives like fifty percent of the time, right? It's certainly not wrong if he's doing it for a good cause! Out of principle, he has already decided that he won't accept any commendations after he proves that Bradshaw is a double agent.

Taking off his headphones, Bob gives Jake a look of disapproval and tells him that logic only applies to the Scooby-Doo School of Law Enforcement. "In general, the CIA frowns on misusing their tech for personal buffoonery. I have a very specific skill set that does me no good if I'm disavowed, Seresin."

Jake rolls his eyes. Leave it to Bob to act like they are doing this for cheap thrills. This isn't voyeurism cloaked under the guise of working towards a greater good. It's a fact-finding mission. "Bob, for all our sakes, I can't wait for the day when you grow some big ol' balls."

Bob ignores him. "You can only go back twenty-four hours in the recording."

Jake makes a face of disapproval. "You couldn't spring for the good stuff?"

"I get at least ten requests a week to run surveillance detail for far bigger fish than you, asshole. You're lucky I'm even willing to do this for you," Bob answers with the full strength of a death glare before he drops onto the couch to check levels again. The moment he walked into the house, the first thing he did was remind Jake that he was only doing this for Natasha and that they were not, under any circumstances, bros.

"I'll cross-knit the friends forever blanket for you later." Jake straightens the picture of Nat and Bradley on the mantle, the dot lens fitted behind the frame. Bob flashes a thumbs up, an immaculate professional when it comes to doing the job despite whatever personal misgivings that he might have about it. Jake stops fiddling with the camera to ask, "So you believe me?" 

Technically, he didn't break his Chinese Wall promise when he told Bob that he had it on good authority that there was a mole recently embedded into the CIA and he was concerned that it was Rooster.

"Not off the strength of your argument," Bob says with an unapologetic shrug. "It's third-hand information to create tenuous links based on circumstantial—"

"A simple no would suffice."

"I believe that you believe it's true," he says with more kindness than Bob usually offers Jake. "If you're desperate enough to ask me for help, there's a not-so-remote chance that you're worried that Nat might become collateral damage and that is simply unacceptable."

"Wow," Jake whistles, "are you saying that you believe in me, Bobby?"

Bob rolls his eyes before handing Jake the tablet. "Not so much that I don't have Halo on deck to be my alibi when this blows up in your face."

*

Even before the flight lands, the story around headquarters is that Agent Bradley Bradshaw beat remarkable odds to survive in a series of shifting Alliance facilities for five years. Everyone loves a feel-good headline so they are keen to applaud his unparalleled heroism and ignore how seemingly impossible the tale is. Maverick gives in and lets Natasha accompany him to welcome home Rooster. Jake would argue that it's a terrible idea, but he knows it wouldn't do any good. Lucky for him, Javy is owed favors from everyone in town so he gets them on the clearance list with a simple call. Moments after Mav and Nat drive off, Jake finds himself ducking into Javy's Denali and following right after them.

"What are we hoping to learn from this little adventure?" Javy asks once they park about two hundred feet away from where the plane has landed. There are a cluster of non-descript black SUVs around them so Jake doesn't expect anyone to notice him specifically, but they stay in the car nevertheless.

"Body language," Jake replies vaguely as Javy hands him a pair of binoculars that Jake is positive are only normally accessible to SEALs. 

Jake has seen that goofy picture at Natasha's house every week for at least three years to the point where he could sketch a portrait going off nothing but memory, yet when he trains the binoculars on the man at the exit door of the plane, he can barely recognize him. He's older, sure, but the carefree air from the picture is long gone and the person that is left looks like he has resigned himself to being tired for the rest of his life. There's an ever-present sliver of weariness on his face, the human component of an unlikely story. Zooming in, Jake can make out every line on Bradshaw's face, a constellation of well-healed scars running down his left cheek and neck like lines burned into a map of the interstate.

Before Jake can ask Javy for details from the NSA interrogation, Bradshaw is descending the stairs of the plane with a grimace, squinting up at the sky even though it's an overcast morning. Jake doesn't need a detailed dossier to recognize the tell-tale signs of a man who has not spent much time in natural light. Bradshaw winces as he looks back down at the steep staircase before him, but the moment he spots Maverick and Phoenix waiting at the bottom, something shifts in him. Suddenly, Bradshaw is holding himself a little straighter and quickening his pace. They already checked him before he got on the plane and again once they landed so the presence of armed agents is more about protocol than functionality. Rooster's foot barely hits the ground before Phoenix is running towards him, the force of her hug so strong that he takes a step back with her in his arms to keep from getting bowled over. Natasha's got one hand cupping the side of his face while she whispers something into his opposite ear that hits Bradley hard enough that he practically sinks into her. His forehead presses into her shoulder like he doesn't have the energy to put on a brave face anymore.

"Body language, huh?" Javy whistles as he watches the reunion unfold behind his own set of binoculars.

"Shut up, Coyote," Jake grumbles.

*

There is a part of him that wants to believe that discovering the video that led to Bradshaw's subsequent rescue was dumb luck. Marketing it as divine intervention and moving on would be easier; so much in their lives is not what it seems that it would be a nice change of pace to be able to take this one thing at face value, but Jake can't stop hearing a broken man's revelation ring in his ears. There is a part of him that asks how he can believe a man who needed to have the truth beaten out of him instead of a guy with a solid pedigree, but it's less about the NSA informant and more about knowing the enemy. The members of The Alliance have a clarity of purpose that would be inspiring if their purpose wasn't so misguided – they would never let anyone of interest go without a fight.

So Jake watches Bradley Bradshaw get interrogated for hours from behind a two-way mirror. It plays out like a conversation. Bradshaw even seems to be having fun at times. Jake would find his ease in the presence of intelligence bigwigs unnerving if they didn't all have the same training. Up until five years ago, Rooster lived in rooms like this. He wouldn't be good at his job if he broke now just because he was sitting on the other side of the steel table. 

After three hours of questions about the finer details, Warlock suggests a coffee break. It's a departure from standard operating procedure, a kindness not afforded to other persons of interest – certainly not one that was ever given to Jake – but the old guards like Agent Bates remember The Elder Bradshaw fondly; no one wants to make it harder on his son if they don't have to do it. Jake thinks, once again, about how the NSA was right. The CIA is not equipped to be objective about Rooster when everyone at HQ is dying to hail him as a shining example of perseverance and commitment to Truth, Justice, and The American Way. There's a sense that they're just going through the motions now that the NSA didn't perceive Rooster as enough of a threat to hold onto him once they were done questioning him.

"I am giving you five minutes with Bradshaw," Penny tells Jake once everyone else has shuffled out of the viewing room. "Off the record."

Jake raises his eyebrows. Nothing in this building has ever been off the record and he doubts that will suddenly change now. 

"Mav's okay with that?"

"Do you care?" After a beat, she sighs and tells him that she sold it based on Jake bringing a unique background to the situation.

"Ah yes," he says knowingly. "Similar shoes and what not."

Before he can get maudlin, Penny taps on her watch and warns, "Don't fuck it up, Seresin."

*

"I'm sorry we weren't able to find you sooner, Agent Bradshaw." Jake sincerely means it. Sooner might have meant the difference between patriot and enemy of the state.

"I'm glad I have this chance to thank you," Bradshaw says like they're on a coffee date. "I understand that you were instrumental in securing the intel that led to my rescue."

In another universe, they might have been friends, but in this one, Jake is pretty sure the man sitting opposite him was a theater kid with the way he is laying it on so thick. Barreling ahead, he continues, "It's standard practice to clarify some details about your capture."

"Certainly," Bradley says with a nod. He pauses from drumming his fingers on the table to shoot a small smile in the direction of the two-way mirror as if to remind anyone who could be watching that he's being such a swell guy by generously giving up his time and energy to grant Jake permission to poke holes in his story. It takes everything in Jake not to turn his head too, a small brush fire of annoyance starting up inside his belly at how easily charmed everyone is by this douche. 

Jake clears his throat. "After your capture, did The Alliance question you?"

"Of course," Bradshaw answers, his fingers tapping once more like he's bored. Rooster has been through this multiple times before already. None of NSA transcripts differ when it comes to his recollection of the events: there was a van and chloroform and then a completely unremarkable warehouse where they kept him for so long that he eventually lost track. He was beaten to within an inch of his life, waterboarded until he was sure he had died, kept awake for days at a time, and made to fall asleep whenever they changed locations. On and on it went for days, weeks, maybe even months, until time bled together and he could no longer tell if there was any progression to it at all – a certain comfort in the sameness of his terrible days. Looking up at Jake now, Rooster leans back in his chair and recites from training, "The first seventy-two hours after capture are the most important."

"Did you share any information?"

"No."

"Ever?" he asks without bothering to hide his incredulity.

"I sang a lot of rockabilly to pass the time," he grins.

"What about Agent Coleman?"

At the mention of his partner's name, Bradshaw looks down. For the first time since he stepped into this room, that cocksure attitude fades and he looks uncomfortable. Jake makes a note to explore that further as Bradley tells him that he and Hondo were never questioned at the same time. "As you very well know, Agent Seresin, we've all read the same interrogation handbooks."

It's Jake's turn to chuckle. So much for Rooster not knowing who he is. The implication is so obvious that Bradshaw might as well be taunting Jake about his past with a sign. Rather than take the bait, Jake pushes a manila folder containing surveillance photos of Tom Kazansky towards him and asks if he was ever at any of the interrogations. Rooster's eyes barely skim over the pictures of the former CIA poster child turned leader of the Alliance before he shakes her head.

"Are you sure? Take another look."

"He wasn't there." Jake gets as far as implying how preposterous the very notion is that a CIA agent would find himself in the Alliance's crutches for five years without ever encountering the man responsible for running the organization before Bradley leans back in his chair and quips, "Guess I was too small potatoes to get Iceman's attention."

"Oh, certainly not you, Rooster. I'd think Iceman would be curious to see how well you grew up," Jake scoffs. Bradshaw's face darkens and his forehead furrows at the mention of his childhood. Before he can insist that his father has nothing to do with any of this, Jake follows up by asking why they didn't kill Bradley when they realized he wouldn't break.

"You know how it goes, Agent Seresin."

"How does it go, Agent Bradshaw?"

Bradley leans his elbows onto the table and says in a voice so low that Jake has to strain to hear it, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer…"

Like a long-forgotten memory resurfacing, Jake finishes the thought under his breath: "Things fall apart. The center cannot hold."

Rooster's mouth quirks up with satisfaction as if an understanding between them has snapped into place, but Jake cannot hold onto it long enough to make sense of whatever fleeting clarity he thought he had. In its place, Jake is left with a feeling of irritation at Bradshaw's apparent shock that he can recite Yeats too.

"I didn't take you for the poetry type, Seresin."

"We can start a book club later," he counters dryly. "Why did they keep you around for so long if you didn't provide any useful intel?"

"You'd have to ask them." Bradley shrugs. As an afterthought, he suggests, "I'm sure you've still got some of your old pals on speed dial, right Hangman?"

Jake digs his fingers into the side of his thigh to keep from curling them into a fist that connects with Bradshaw's smug smirk. Before he can offer a comeback, Maverick barges into the room with his face beet red and the steam practically pouring out of his ears.

"Jesus, Seresin!" Maverick shouts. "He didn't have contact with Kazansky and he didn't read their minds. Does Bradshaw have to mime it for you?"

"Mav—"

"Time's up."

"I'm not—"

"Oh, you're done," Maverick says in that tone that makes it clear that he doesn't want to hear another word. Jake was hoping that Penny would show up by now to have his back, but the door remains closed.

Shaking his head, he pushes his chair back and starts to head toward the exit when Bradley calls out jovially, "See you around, Agent Seresin."

When Jake steps into the outer room, it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness. If Penny was watching this before, she is now long gone. The only person in there is Natasha and she is positively fuming as she stalks over to him and asks what the fuck that was supposed to be.

"Due diligence."

"That's not your job."

"Actually, due diligence is all of our jobs."

"You do not get to do this, Jake," Nat hisses as she drags him away from the door. Her eyes flash with anger as her fingernails dig into his forearm. "This is not a cross examination."

"We're supposed to sit on our hands and take his word?"

"The agency has people on it."

"That's a joke and you know it! Warlock is lobbing him soft balls as if it is vital to know whether the bad guys adhered to Taco Tuesday during Rooster's time with them."

"Why are you doing this?" Natasha asks. Everyone is so happy to have him back that no one questions who he had to give up to stay alive. "I believe him. Why isn't that enough for you?"

Before Jake can figure out how to answer that, Cyclone and Warlock walk back into the room with coffee and bear claws in hand.

*

Contrary to what people like Bob might think, Jake isn't dumb. He is not surprised that Natasha is, understandably, a little angry that he tried to catch her best friend in a treasonous lie. Perhaps she would have cut him some slack if she knew the backstory, but Natasha is so fiercely loyal when it comes to the people that she loves that there's no way her brain would accept the possibility of Bradley betraying her.

That said, Jake doesn't expect the silent treatment to go on for this long. The only reason he knows that she's okay is because of Bob's surveillance, which, yes, does make him feel like a creep, but in his defense, he mostly curbs himself when watching the footage. Once Natasha and Bradshaw's catch-up sessions land on her love life, Jake gets as far as Bradley guffawing that he can't believe that she's dating that tool before he turns off the tablet. If Nat wants him to know what she says to Rooster about their relationship, she can tell him herself. If there's a small part of Jake that is afraid that Natasha will play it off as a dumb thing she's trying out for kicks, he pushes it down with all the other things he's not brave enough to think about if he can help it.

Jake tells himself that he is using the surveillance as a way of keeping an eye on Bradley, but so far, the worst thing the man has done is cheat at Uno, have terrible taste in football teams, and tap his fingers along any flat surface like he's John Bonham whenever the conversation turns heavy. It would be disheartening if he didn't remember that Rooster isn't a run-of-the-mill defector; he knows the plays, knows that all eyes will be on him at the beginning and that the trick is to have enough patience to wait it out until the real game can begin. Just because Bradshaw hasn't proven Jake right doesn't mean that Jake is wrong.

*

Jake gives it three days before he gets desperate enough to time his trip to the break room to coincide with Natasha's. Leaning against the doorframe in his best attempt to mimic someone who is a lot smoother than he feels in that moment, he lets out a hey, complete with cavalier nod like he's The Fonz. It's mortifying, but thankfully Natasha has her back turned to him so he's able to straighten up and look halfway normal before she turns around.

"You look like crap," she says by way of greeting. There's a twinge of concern there, which is better than nothing. He can work with that.

"I haven't been sleeping very well," Jake explains. He'd kill for her to admit the same and let that be that, but she has already returned to trying to un-clump the mountain of creamer floating on top of her coffee. With a sigh, he decides to shoot for honesty and says, "Listen, I know things are weird between us right now and I'm sorry for that—"

"For that or for being a prick?"

Jake winces. "Which answer lets me come in from the cold sooner?"

Natasha rolls her eyes. "You could stand a time out, Seresin."

"I understand that I might not be your favorite person right now."

"You might be my least favorite person right now," she shoots back with so little venom that her tone might even be a little flirty.

"Really? Like out of everyone in the world? Even those people who put their phones on speaker while riding public transportation? Natasha, those people are demons!" Jake can tell that she's trying to stifle a smile so he presses on, "Maybe we could go to dinner tonight so I can move up in the rankings a bit?"

"That would have to be some dinner, Seresin."

"The best TaKorean Union Market has to offer."

"Oh brother." Natasha rolls her eyes, but she can't help the quirk of her lip when Jake gives her a sly grin. Is it cheating to remind her of the week they spent on a stakeout nearby as punishment for going off-book on yet another mission? It was before they had started dating and Jake remembers charting the progression of days based on the rotating extra veggies option that the fusion restaurant had to offer and the number of summer beach reads Natasha had finished, completely convinced that she didn't even like him. It was only years later that she admitted to him that she had spent that entire week waiting for him to ask her out, clearly playing it too casual for Jake to pick up on any of the signs before Maverick decided that he had made his point about following directions – he hadn't – and called them back to do actual work.

"What do you say?" he asks now. "You, me, and some Wild Kombucha?"

"I can't," Natasha says somewhat apologetically. "I have plans with Bradley tonight."

If he wasn't in the middle of groveling, Jake would ask when she doesn't have plans with Bradshaw. Ever since they released him from CIA custody, it's like Natasha has decided to cram five years of lost opportunities to hang out into one prolonged slumber party. Jake is really trying not to sound bitter, but the words come out of their own accord when he asks, "Forgot about We Didn't Start the Fire: Last Five Years Edition. How's that going?"

"We're up to Harry Styles, Olivia Wilde, Beyoncé's Homecoming, Destiny's Child."

Jake chuckles. "All right, well played."

"Thank you," she preens.

And this time she does flash a smug smile at him. Fuck, he misses her. So much that he's willing to suggest something so shameless that if there was another version of him watching their interactions, he'd slap him before Jake could open his mouth to say, "I could bring over the famous salad dressing."

"Jake…"

He rubs the back of his neck and looks away quickly. "I know. Bad idea. That dressing isn't even any good."

"You should hang out with Javy," she suggests helpfully. It hurts more than getting stabbed. "You can belch the alphabet and call each other Broseph while watching Vince Vaughn movies."

"I'd like to think we're a little more complicated than that, Nat."

Natasha looks skeptical. With a groan, Jake cracks his neck and tells her that he should get back to cataloging large scale fertilizer purchases. Never let it be said that Maverick does not have a petty streak in him. But even that mind numbing task will be less painful than this rejection. Quickly mumbling that he hopes she and Rooster have fun reliving why Ellen got cancelled, Jake is halfway down the hall when Nat calls out that there's a box of chamomile tea in the kitchen cupboard he never uses at home. "It might help you get some sleep."

*

"I can't believe I'm blowing off Holly in Applied Sciences to go on a work date with you," Javy whines as he waves his badge over the sensor in the elevator before pushing the button for the fifteenth floor.

"Dude, Holly in Applied Sciences is too smart for you. You'd never be able to carry on a conversation."

"I wasn't looking to start a TED Talk."

"What happened to Tracy in Analytics?"

Javy makes a face and says that he had to break it off with her after she casually mentioned for the third time that they needed to book tickets for her sister's destination wedding soon if they didn't want to get stuck on standby. Jake rolls his eyes, not even the least bit surprised. He finds it best not to keep up with his friend's love life – there isn't enough room in his brain to track which part of Mambo No. 5 Javy is up to at any given time – but even Jake knows that the fastest way to get Javy to base jump right out of a relationship is to imply that he is in one. It turns out that the only lesson Coyote took away from those 007 marathons they used to watch on Spike TV back in the day was that Bond's love interest always changed from one film to the next.

"Remind me again why we're here? Is it because you Biffed the interrogation?"

The elevator dings to let them off on an empty floor. There's a light on in the tech lab at the end of the hall, the fluorescent glow shining like a beacon of hope from some higher power. The motion-triggered hallway lights turn on with their footsteps.

"I did not Biff anything." That's a lie. He totally did. "Javy, did you even look at Rooster's reports from medical?"

"I'm not as obsessed with Tom Selleck as you are," Javy quips before tapping his ring on the sliding glass door. Inside, Mickey Garcia's neck practically snaps from how quickly he turns towards the sound. He squints at them like he has been staring at a computer screen for so long that his brain can no longer comprehend anything that doesn't make itself known in ones and zeroes. Impatiently, Javy taps again and motions for him to open the door.

"There's an inexplicable flash on the CT scans."

Coyote groans. "Is that why you ruined my Friday night, House?" Fanboy strolls towards them, types a code into the panel, and the door slides to open. Gesturing towards Mickey, Javy continues, "It's probably interference from one of these dweebs scrolling through Twitter at the same time."

Even without context, Mickey immediately gives him the middle finger before asking, "Was there a poker game I forgot to pencil into my calendar, boys?" as they walk in.

*

"Coyote is a dipshit" is the first thing Fanboy says when he hears the iPhone theory. The nanosecond it would take to refresh Twitter would hardly cause enough interference to show up on a CT scan even if it were possible for the signal to go through quarter inch thick leaded glass, "which it is fucking not."

"Hey, I'm not a radiology tech!"

"Neither am I," Mickey shoots back humorlessly. "I don't have time to deal with your stupidity. I have forty-eight hours left to figure out how to hack into a gait recognition system otherwise Payback is dead."

Javy stops spinning in the office chair long enough to groan, "Stop busting our balls, Garcia. We all know that you think you're the smartest person in every room."

"And in this case," Mickey says as he looks around, "I would be right." He slaps Coyote's hand before he can touch the fifteen-hundred-piece Lego Millennium Falcon that is under construction on Fanboy's desk. On the screen behind them, the CT images from when Rooster was pan-scanned scroll through on a loop. "Why don't we think this is an artifact again?"

"It's only in one frame," Jake says just as Javy snickers, "Because that would fly in the face of Hangman's mission to find a non-existent needle in a very imposing haystack."

"Didn't you say this guy has a plate in his head? It's probably interference from that."

It's awfully convenient that when Rooster was placed in an Alliance safe house in Russia, it happened to come under attack and the ensuing explosion left him in such a state that he needed to be rushed to the operating room for an emergent craniotomy. Whereas the rest of the world was shying away from metal implants, the backwoods hospital practicing Cold War medicine turned him into Robocop so the CIA couldn't do any MRIs for fear of killing him in the process. 

"Maybe it's shrapnel," Javy proposes.

"That's…not the dumbest thing you've ever said," Mickey asserts. "Maybe they didn't get all of it out. When Iron Man—"

"Seriously?" Jake groans. "This is not a fucking comic book."

Fanboy freezes the images at the frame with the flash at Rooster's jaw, a perfect starburst pattern that is there one second and gone the next. "Dude, this could be anything. Artifact, an old filling, uncalibrated equipment…"

"So what you're saying is that Roo's probably not using it to get free cable." Coyote snaps his fingers. "Shoot, I really thought we had him for piracy, Seresin."

"Hilarious," Jake deadpans.

"You got scanned when they first brought you in, right?" Fanboy asks him. "If the same thing pops up on yours, we'll know it was the machine."

"That was years ago."

Fanboy rolls his eyes, tapping away at the keyboard as he tells them that the guys on the fourth floor are all about things being good enough for government work. "You can bet those assholes aren't doing maintenance on anything that isn't about to shut down without it."

"Some people have no work ethic," Coyote tsks as he unwraps a lollipop and pops it into his mouth.

"Oh hey! Happy birthday, man!" Mickey announces when he pulls up Jake's file and sees his date of birth.

"It's your birthday?" Javy asks, leaping out of the chair to shove him. "Dude, why the hell are we doing overtime instead of celebrating? If Nat planned a birthday party and didn't invite me—"

Jake shakes his head. "Nat is hanging out with her other boyfriend." Fanboy and Coyote both wince at that, but before they can even think about looking at him like he's the saddest dog at the pound, Jake reassures them that it's fine because he's not turning twelve. "Can we get back to this please?"

Mickey puts the scans up on the big monitor. Sure enough, the same flash of light flickers in and out at roughly the same location on Jake's scans. He feels something deflate inside him, another dead end in a series of dead ends. Even though he's running out of straws to grasp onto, Jake's gut feeling that Rooster isn't as legit as he claims to be is stronger than ever.

"It was a good thought," Fanboy lies sympathetically.

"Fortunately, we can salvage this night by getting very, very inebriated," Coyote cackles before slapping Jake on the back excitedly.

"First round is on me!" Mickey exclaims.

"What about all that crap about making Payback walk pretty?" Javy asks.

"Oh right," he says, the living embodiment of the sad face emoji. Fanboy is still grumbling about being overworked and underpaid as they're leaving when Jake turns to him at the last minute with a thought: "Only the Kremlin has a true gait recognition system and since no one is assigning Payback to a mission there, whatever Juarez drug kingpin he's trying to impersonate is probably just using pressure recognition. Hack the sensors and he'll be fine."

"And if not, Reuben's a stick in the mud anyway," Javy offers with an unhelpful shrug.

*

Thank God Jake is not still drunk, but he's not quite hungover either. He is hovering somewhere in between where his mind is foggy but everything doesn't completely hurt yet. It's like his brain hasn't quite decided how best to punish him for drinking like he's still in his twenties, but negotiations are open for a lighter sentence if he can drift back to sleep in the next few seconds. Unfortunately for him, whoever decided to pound incessantly on his front door at the ungodly hour of two in the morning doesn't care about his bargaining chip and has no intention of letting up. No one who hasn't been trained for it has the type of patience required for this kind of measured but unrelenting urgency, the knocking so steady and consistent that he could set his watch to the rhythm.

"You have a key," Jake shouts irritably as he rolls off his couch and tries not to bump into everything in the living room on his way to make the noise stop. 

"For emergencies," Natasha bites back when he finally gets the door unlocked and lets her in.

"If this is not an emergency, why are you trying to break down my door?"

Natasha is normally excellent at reading a room except, of course, when she doesn't want to and willfully ignores the signs because she's too annoyed – usually at him – to care. A headache is already spooling out from Jake's temples when she flips the light switch and enters his apartment. Abandoning her inside voice, she snaps, "So it's your goddamn birthday?" while shoving her phone screen in his face.

Naturally, Javy has sent her a picture of Jake wearing the decorative sombrero that normally hangs on the back wall at Guapo's. In the image, Jake is holding up his third Sangarita of the night while trying to blow out a candle that one of the kitchen staff stuck in a plate of flan upon Javy's insistence that they needed something celebratory. It's mortifying and Jake is absolutely going to kill his best friend, have Fanboy figure out a way to bring him back to life, and then kill him again. Javy will of course claim that he just wanted to make sure Nat appreciated Jake, but the wish you were here text followed by half a dozen party emojis is the equivalent of throwing water on a grease fire.

"Was," Jake finally says when it becomes clear that Natasha is waiting for an answer. "It was my birthday, but now it's after midnight so technically…"

"Always with the technicalities, Seresin."

Natasha's glare is enough to strike fear into the hearts of grizzled prisoners of war, but Jake has been on the receiving end of that look so many times this week alone that he's developed an immunity to that specific brand of terror. If anything, he wonders if there's something even more frightening in her arsenal that she is saving for a special occasion.

"If you came over to wish me a happy birthday—"

"I did not," Natasha interjects with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Then if you came over to argue, I'm going to need a drink first," Jake calls out over his shoulder, already crossing into the kitchen to grab a bottle of Wild Turkey from the cupboard. It's a small favor that she doesn't follow him. Jake pours himself two fingers of whiskey and knocks it back in one shot, relishing the burn down his throat because it dulls the ache across his forehead. Feeling calmer, he pours himself some more before walking back to the living room to find her pacing in front of his coffee table like a caged tiger. Leaning against the door frame, he announces, "Your mom texted me a birthday gif earlier."

That seems to catch Natasha off guard as she whips around so fast to gawk at him that he's worried about whiplash. She squints at him like she's trying to figure out if he's lying to diffuse the situation before offering, "My mom doesn't know what a gif is."

"Or she saves them for the ones she loves the most," Jake says cheekily before opening the messages app and tossing his phone to her. A crazed kid who looks like tiny OJ Simpson holding a plastic knife is speechless as he nearly topples over with openmouthed excitement in front of an ice cream cake while his fellow first graders lose their minds on a loop. "All parents have favorites—"

It is obvious that Natasha's trying not to laugh when she asks him if he thought it was at all strange that her mom followed it up with a poop emoji. "Obviously, Mom was babysitting Rebecca, dumbass."

"That makes more sense! Becks definitely loves me the most," he concedes with a Cheshire cat smile as he drops onto the couch. If there is a Jake Seresin fan club, Natasha's three-year-old niece is the founder and CEO. "Remember when I rode the blue line loop on the L for hours with that kid strapped to me in a Baby Björn?"

"Only because everyone else got food poisoning from my idiot brother's warm potato salad," Natasha cackles. "I thought you were going to pass out when they started vomiting."

"The sound of people throwing up is extremely gross!" he insists with a shudder. "Although Trent's tenuous understanding of what causes food-borne illnesses was a blessing in disguise that weekend."

"You mean because my dad caught us making out in my childhood bedroom within an hour of meeting you?" Natasha laughs as she sits down next to him. "I thought he was going to stab you with a steak knife."

"That wasn't even my fault!" Jake maintains. "You're the one who asked if I wanted to fool around like we were homecoming royalty."

"That really doesn't sound like me…"

"Oh please, you couldn't keep your hands off me back then," he shoots back, shifting so that he can get a better look at her side profile.

"And you still can't now," Natasha challenges with a raised eyebrow, mirroring his movements.

The air between them crackles with that same energy from years ago and it takes everything in Jake not to bridge that last bit of space between them. There's a fifty-fifty chance of her either kissing him back or cold cocking him and it has already been too long a night to go up against those odds. Still, his lips curl up in a wolfish grin as he says, "I like to be consistent."

For a moment, he thinks that she's going to give in to the walk down memory lane as she inches fractionally closer before Natasha takes a sudden detour and admits that her sister Liz thought he was a saint for taking over colicky baby duty while they were all puking their guts out. "My mother called you The Baby Whisperer for months afterwards."

"I like to think Becks and I really bonded on the train that day."

"Not sure a two-month-old has the capacity to make those meaningful connections, Jake." Natasha snickers at his affronted expression. "Just admit that you buy her affection whenever we visit Chicago by offering to pick her up from school so the two of you can go to Scooter's for those ridiculous Banana Splice sundaes."

"As Cool Uncle Jake, it is my prerogative to provide one hundred percent fun times and then call it a night before the inevitable sugar crash."

"And you wonder why Lizzy won't let you take Becks to Hawktober Halloween Night."

"You challenge a few kids to an innocent Cotton Candy Showdown on a class trip and suddenly the entire PTA is using your picture for target practice."

Natasha rolls her eyes as she peers down at his phone again before handing it back to him. "Did you leave my mom on read?"

"I didn't know if I was supposed to send a gif back."

"Should've just asked Coyote to text her a picture of the festivities too," Natasha bristles. Jake should have quit while he was ahead, but at least she seems calmer now than she did when she barged into his apartment looking like someone who should not have access to weapons.

"Just to get it right," Jake starts cautiously, "you blew me off to hang out with a guy who needs you to walk him through Stranger Things, then suggested that I hang out with Javy instead, and are now mad at me because we didn't have an awful time?"

It figures that the one time he wouldn't mind talking about Bradshaw is when Natasha chooses to ignore that part of the sentence completely. She grabs the tumbler out of his hand and takes a long sip of his drink like she needs the time to choose her words carefully before finally saying, "I'm glad you had fun, Jake."

"Yeah, really seems like it."

Setting the glass down on his coffee table, she angles her body so that she is fully facing him and says, "I'm also not mad at you."

"That's a first," he chuckles. "Are you feeling okay?"

Jake presses the back of his right hand against her forehead, fully expecting Natasha to slap it away. Instead, she grabs his wrist and pulls his hand down until she can interlace her fingers with his. Normally, Jake would have filled this silence with a stupid joke about playing Battleship, but he knows how Natasha works – sometimes she needs a moment to figure out exactly how she wants to phrase whatever is on her mind and pressing her to take even a second less will do neither of them any good.

Their arguments have always operated on the law of conservation of energy. Early on when they were still trying to figure each other out, stupid fights would escalate quickly because neither of them knew how to back down, volleying their fury at each other and pulling in unrelated slights to prove a point that had long been lost until the rage consumed all the oxygen in the room and the only options were to call it a draw or resign themselves to suffocating. Even though the make up sex was great, the battles made their relationship feel untenable, which wasn't great when he already felt like he didn't deserve her. Eventually, they both learned not to go for the kill shot right away, to give themselves a few extra seconds to breathe until the anger settled into something more manageable. 

"I'm mad at myself for forgetting it was your birthday, okay?" she finally admits, the words jumbling together like they are eager kindergarteners lining up badly for recess.

"That's why you're mad?" Jake asks incredulously. "I didn't even remember until Javy mentioned it."

It's not completely the truth, but it's not a total lie either. Of course, he remembered his birthday, but after a certain age, birthdays become nothing more than a celebration of making it another year without getting killed on the field. Jake is not exactly an existential guy, but even he understands that, in their line of work, birthdays are reminders of how much closer they are to the end than they are to the beginning.

"I can't believe Javy Machado is a better girlfriend than I am," Natasha groans like that's the biggest indignity of the night.

"He's also very good at being The Big Spoon," Jake gushes. This time he is brave enough to tug her closer until Natasha lets him pull her into his personal space, her leg swinging over him until she's in his lap. Her palms smooth down the sides of his face as Natasha trails her thumbs along his clavicles like she's looking for fractures to crack open and spill all his secrets.

"Do you feel neglected in this relationship?" It's meant to be light, but her brows furrow and her breath is shaky when she inhales deeply and waits for the answer.

"Because you forgot my birthday? Nat, it's not like it was my Quinceañera. It's just another day ending in y."

Natasha raises an eyebrow. "Says the man who rented out an entire ice-skating rink for my birthday."

"That's because I know you're more likely to put out when you find me charming."

She smacks his arm and asks, "When have I ever found you charming?"

"Hence the need for such extravagant gestures, Natasha." Her smile is so contagious that Jake finds himself grinning up at her like a complete idiot when he confesses, "But I have missed you."

Jake never realizes how much it bothers him when they're not on the same page until they're back in sync. As Natasha runs her fingers through his hair, he feels drunk off their proximity. There is a carefree haziness that only settles over his brain in her company. The first time it happened, Jake was terrified that another person had that much control over him without even knowing it, but now he feels the loss acutely when it's not there.

"Yeah," Nat says, as close to a mea culpa as he's going to get. Always a woman of action, her lips seek out his like their bodies are magnetized.

"Did you miss me too?" he drawls as he reels her, his hands framing her hips automatically to balance her.

Natasha pretends to consider it for a second before saying, "You're always here," and tapping two fingers against her chest, the shorthand for I love you that they had used on missions before they finally told the agency that they were dating and subsequently spent the rest of the morning signing disclosures in HR. Natasha presses forward now to whisper in his ear, "Do you realize that it's technically still your birthday on the West Coast?"

"Now who is obsessed with technicalities?" He is delighted when he turns his face into hers to ask, "Are you going to make me a cake?"

"I left my Easy Bake Oven at home," Natasha smirks against his mouth, "but I'm sure we can figure out some other way to celebrate you."

Jake's laugh is muffled as Natasha finally leans in to kiss him.

*

Penny telling him that Rooster's story checks out means nothing when the people vetting it are members of his fan club. Everyone is dying to put Bradshaw back out on the field; he could have told them that he survived the last five years in The Alliance's custody by becoming a Tibetan monk and they would have believed him. The gossip around the water cooler is that Warlock is close to clearing Rooster for active duty again. It surprises no one, least of all Jake.

"So everyone's wrong and you're right?" Penny scoffs at him over her kale salad.

"If the shoe fits..."

"The shoe doesn't fit, Jacob. I've entertained this madness long enough, but now you need to drop it and pull the plug on that thing you're doing with Floyd." When Jake nearly chokes on his iced tea, Penny rolls her eyes. "Don't look so shocked, Seresin. We're all spies here."

"You told me to get creative!"

Penny sighs as she massages the space between her eyes with the tip of her thumb. "I don't expect you to comprehend this because you do not have children, but sometimes when they are perseverating over something stupid, you give in because it means that the sitter will know peace, which in turn means that you will know peace while you're at the annual Hamptons white party."

"Wait, you have children?"

Jake realizes that he knows nothing about Penny outside of a work context.

Ignoring him, she continues, "But eventually the night ends and you have to go home to relieve the sitter. And your kids – your sweet, idiot children who have eaten entirely too much ice cream and watched too many slasher movies – beg you to let them finish watching one more film. High off their previous victory, they start perseverating over this too, but what they don't realize is that the party is over, and they no longer have any bargaining chips. They can throw all the tantrums they want while you take off the heels that are killing your feet, pour yourself a glass of wine, and start docking their allowance for every outburst. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Have you had kids this whole time?" Jake asks, still stuck on this bizarre reality where Penny spends her days playing four-dimensional chess with arms dealers and nihilists and then goes home to enforce chore wheels and negotiate bedtimes. How many hits has she put out while spending the weekend at the family home on Martha's Vineyard? How many times has she made the decision on whether to burn an agent while out sailing with her WASP-y husband and their two point five children?

"I think you're missing the point, Jacob."

"Why didn't I know anything about this?"

Penny snickers. "Because, unlike you, I don't let my personal life bleed into work."

If the rumors about her and Maverick are to be believed, that is not exactly true, but the last thing Jake needs is to go barking up that tree. Instead, he exclaims, "I didn't even know you had a personal life!"

Penny slowly exhales like that will bring her more patience. Maybe she learned all those breathing exercises at a mommy-and-me class. Maybe every time she told them that she was going away for a meeting of the minds, she was really at her kid's ballet recital.

"Focus, Jacob."

They must circle back to this later. Shaking his head of her betrayal, Jake reminds Penny that he had her implicit approval. "You asked me to find intel!"

"And your obvious failure to do so proves that there was nothing to sniff out," Penny reminds him. "I am too busy—"

"I'm happy to babysit if you need some me time."

Penny glowers.

"Agent Seresin, I am too busy to deal with the justice department breathing down my neck after they cart you off to jail."

"Penny, come on! The moment that we cut Bradshaw loose—"

"This is not up for negotiation. Pack it up by next week or I'll have you explain it to Trace."

Penny aggressively stabs a grape tomato with her fork to show that she is serious, the juicy insides bursting onto the tines. When she glares at him, Jake understands too clearly how her kids must feel when she grounds them.

*

"All I'm saying is that it's silly to drive five hours to Mav's cabin and then never do anything wilderness-related," Jake calls out as he finishes heaving the last of the grocery bags onto the kitchen counter and putting away the perishables.

"You weren't even the one driving, Mister I'm-Just-Resting-My-Eyes!" Natasha laughs from the bedroom. The tradeoff they agreed upon – or rather, the tradeoff that Natasha decided was fair and informed him of once they arrived – was that he got the privilege of unloading the car while she took a shower and changed into her "vacation threads."

"If you wanted something quaint, we could've just gone to a bed-and-breakfast and driven for half the time," he's saying as he walks into the bedroom.

"I always feel like I have to be on my best behavior at those places. Like my grandparents are listening through the walls or something," Natasha says, swiftly putting her hair up in a bun before turning back to find him standing in the middle of the room slack-jawed and staring at her with a sweating bottle of beer in each hand. "Why do you look like you're having an aneurysm?"

Jake's eyes unabashedly roam down her body. He knows that it shouldn't take his breath away to see her basically wearing summer pajamas, but he still can't believe how good she looks in a silk shirt and matching burgundy shorts.

"I'm jealous. The last time I tried to wear a bowling shirt, Javy said that I looked like I sold door-to-door magazine subscriptions," he blurts out stupidly.

"That sounds like a you problem, Seresin," Natasha says as she plucks one of the bottles from his hand with a grin.

Jake waits for her to finish taking a swig and places his own beer bottle on the top of the dresser before he grabs her by the waist and pulls her closer. He buries his face in the crook of her neck and inhales the familiar scent of her strawberry body wash with a sigh. "You smell good, Nat."

"You could've also smelled this good if you hadn't fallen asleep in the car," she teases.

Jake groans. If only he hadn't stayed late at work last night to finish up a report on the threat level of half a dozen suspicious sales over the last month from various suppliers of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to the same commune in North Dakota. He had to show fifteen pages of corroborating analysis just to conclude that the only thing the commune was planning was a bountiful cauliflower harvest this year.

"What's this about you thinking that people don't get freaky at B&Bs? Who knew you were such a Puritan, Trace?"

"Hey, Pop Pop has a heart condition!" she counters as she pokes him squarely in the chest. "Anyway, I thought you liked it here."

"I do," he insists. "I just don't get why you do. You barely leave the cabin."

"Shitty cell service, spotty wi-fi, how the only television choices are the local weather channel or a collection of DVDs of questionable quality from the early 2000s? Baby, that's the romantic ideal." Jake doesn't bother telling her that they could experience similar relaxation at home if they turn off the wireless router and put their phones in airplane mode. Natasha puts her drink down next to his and hooks her arms around his neck before continuing, "As for taking in the great outdoors, I've always been a fan of alternative methods of exertion…"

"Me too."

"Since this is your weekend," Natasha stresses, the picture of innocence as if she doesn't know what it does to him when she leans in close to whisper against his ear, "you get to call the shots, baby."

"When have I ever called the shots?"

She lets out a scandalized gasp like it isn't all true. As carefree as she pretends to be, they both know that Natasha Trace is nothing if not a control freak. Jake suspects there was a fair bit of guilt at play about the whole birthday thing when she came up with the idea to go away for the weekend, a soft reset after the messiness of the past week. Natasha is the one who negotiated a few days off and finagled the keys to the cabin from Maverick by reminding him that he still owed them for the London trip they cut short. Jake had been extremely tempted to ask how Bradley would spend an entire weekend without his cultural sherpa's guidance, but frankly he didn't care if the guy had to resort to going down a wiki spiral if it meant that Jake could finally have his girlfriend to himself.

"Honey, if you want us to go hiking, we can go hiking." Natasha's smile makes his stomach do a little flip like they're in some stupid Hallmark movie.

"Nope," Jake replies quickly as he pulls her even closer. "Hate hikes. Hate the wild. The cedar of this log cabin is enough nature for me."

Jake punctuates each sentence with a featherlight kiss – against her temple, the tip of her nose, the sharp lines of her cheekbones, the jut of her chin – until Natasha hums, "Well, as long as it's your decision."

She pushes him back so that he lands softly on the mattress, her own body crashing into his a second later with far less grace. Jake groans when Natasha's lips finally find his. He can feel her grinning at his reaction, but he's powerless to do anything about it. Knowing that he's going to chase after her instinctively, Natasha pushes herself up so that she can hover above him and run her fingers along his cheek like she's reading a lost language in the sharp cut of his bones. Jake tries to commit this to memory, but it feels like his brain is short circuiting when she presses her palms against his wrists to keep them on either side of his head. This time when she leans down, it is in slow motion and Natasha stops inches away from his ear to whisper, "I missed you like crazy, Seresin," with so much tenderness that his heart feels like it is seizing up. Jake turns his head to press a kiss against the base of her carotid, her pulse hammering against his lips. He traces up with his tongue until he's nipping at the hinge of her jaw with his teeth, the joy bubbling up from his chest when Natasha can't bite back her whine.

It is distracting enough that she releases one of his wrists so that he can curl his hand into her hair, the bun falling loose around her. This time when he kisses her, she opens immediately to him, but before his brain can register what is happening, Natasha licks into his mouth. His moan is enough for Natasha to release his other hand so her fingers can reach for the buttons of his shirt instead. She has them undone in record time, her mouth leaving his to bite at the flesh near his ribs. When Jake ruts against her, Natasha laughs against his chest that's he's so damn easy.

"Is that so?" he asks with a devilish twinkle in his eyes while his hand moves down her side to press against the jut of her hip. Breaking up his words to nip at her jaw, he murmurs, "And you're just completely unaffected, huh?"

Without warning, he rolls them so that he's on top and silently thanks whoever designed her shirt for using snap buttons. His fingers dance featherlight against her heated skin as he reveals more of it.

"Not my fault that I have a better poker face, Jake."

Natasha's attempt at a casual shrug is derailed by Jake tugging down on her shorts. Her hurry to kick them off her ankles belies her otherwise laissez-faire attitude. He trails his index finger under the waistband of her underwear, nowhere near where she wants him, but Nat is not one to beg this early so she pulls him down for a bruising kiss, her teeth sinking into his bottom lip the more he teases her. She's about to draw blood when his hand finally dips lower to find her just as eager as he is. Humming knowingly, he asks, "Now who's the easy one?"

"I could make it harder for you," she counters, valiantly attempting to keep her voice mostly even as his hand works between her legs, "but—"

"To hell with that," Jake growls, straightening up long enough to move down to the edge of the bed. She lets out a whine of disapproval at the loss of contact until he's sliding her underwear off and curling his hands under her thighs to yank her closer. Dropping to his knees with a groan – goddamn hardwood floors – Jake presses a kiss to her knee before trailing a series of kisses along the inside of her thigh.

He moves slowly, smiling against her skin when Natasha groans like she wants to drag him straight to the finish line. Jake rests his palm against the flat of her stomach to keep her in place while he laps at her like a cat with a bowl of cream. Natasha's eyes practically roll to the back of her head when he quickens his pace and she scrambles to grab onto his hair while her hips cant up to meet him halfway. Jake knows that the consistent pressure gets her right to the edge, but it's not enough to push her over it. When she moans his name like she's going to break, he curls his index and middle fingers inside her and strokes until she's clenching around his digits and exploding on his tongue. His fingers keep moving through the aftershocks until she pushes his hand away with the rattling laughter of someone who can't believe how good that was.

Her voice is shaky and out of breath when she confesses, "This sadness beard is really working for me. Now take off those damn pants and get up here, Jake."

"I thought you were supposed to become less bossy the more relaxed you got," Jake muses with a smirk but he doesn't have to be asked twice. His belt clangs to the floor as he drops his jeans and half trips out of the puddle of denim at his feet in his rush to comply. Her hand drifts down his happy trail until she's pushing his boxers down, the offending item tangled up somewhere around his knees. Natasha's fingers glide over his abs appreciatively before she traces that deep V with an impressed whistle. It happens so quickly that Jake doesn't expect it when her hand wraps around his dick and her mouth presses against his throat, but the threat of Natasha baring teeth as her hand strokes him is almost too much.

"Nat, fuck, warn a guy," he babbles against the column of her neck as it rumbles with her laughter.

"Sue me if I'm feeling a little impatient right now."

He's inside her a second later, Nat letting out a pleased sigh before drawing his face to her so she can pepper kisses all over it. Normally, Jake would take his time and draw this out until she's pleading, but he wants her too much to delay the gratification. Natasha's nails dig half-moons into his back while she presses her lips to his ear and urges Jake to keep going. He times the rhythm of his snapping hips to the rise and fall of her voice as she keeps up a running commentary of all the ways that she has wanted him during their time apart. It's maddening and she knows it, but Natasha doesn't let up until Jake picks up the pace, his thumb drawing circles above where they are joined until he can hear the hitch in her throat that betrays the control she pretends to have. Natasha arches up into him, fuck, just like that, baby spilling from her lips right before the levee breaks and the world shatters around them.

*

Jake blames his burst of sentimentality on good sex when he blurts out, "I felt pretty lonely without you," and then regrets it immediately when the mood shifts from lighthearted to something with more weight than either one of them had planned for. Natasha's index finger freezes in the middle of drawing patterns against his chest to remind him that they were only four miles away from each other. In a single breath, he babbles, "I've been thinking that maybe we should, uh, reconsider that."

Natasha lifts an eyebrow and tells him that she needs to be wearing considerably more clothing than a bra and her underwear if they're about to have this conversation. If she thinks that's a deterrent, she is severely underestimating him because, a second later, Jake reaches for her discarded shirt on the floor next to his side of the bed and gives it to her. Clearly, Nat didn't expect him to follow through because she stares at the article of clothing like Jake just handed her a bomb before finally pulling it on. Natasha jokes that Jake can feel free to skip out on the t-shirt as he goes searching in his weekender bag. With his hands on his hips, Jake frowns at her reflection in the mirror.

"Yikes, that is your serious face." Natasha pushes herself up to sit cross-legged on her side of the bed. When she pats the spot across from her, Jake makes no indication of moving. Sighing, she says, "All right, you have my undivided attention."

"Okay." He starts marching in a tight line that is the length of the bed. Jake kind of wishes he hadn't blurted it out because now he's not entirely sure what he was thinking or where he was going with this. Sometimes he chooses to die on his sword just to prove a point to Natasha and this might be one of those times. But then he looks at her amused expression and the words tumble from his lips like he can't get them out fast enough. "It wouldn't have to change anything. We basically live together anyway and you have already screwed up all of my notifications on every streaming service—"

"Made better," she corrects with a grin. "You're crazy if that you thought that I wasn't going to watch Vanderpump Rules after—"

"Nat…"

"Sorry." Narrowing her eyes, Natasha asks, "What happened to needing space after missions?"

He shrugs and finally sits down before admitting that he doesn't need that much space. "If a job goes bad, I want to come home to you, not some stupid empty apartment where I'm going to go over all the things that went wrong."

Natasha gives him a small smile as she bumps her knee against his. "Me too," she admits. She considers it for a long minute before finally asking, "And, honestly, does David Zaslav really need any more of our money?"

"Baby, you have got to let that Westworld thing go."

He's about to lean closer when she plants her palm against the middle of his chest.

"If we do this, I'm going to need something from you."

Jake rolls his eyes. "I'm not throwing away my recliner."

"Not that, although we will need to discuss your taste in décor," Natasha threatens. With a sigh, she puts on her serious face and tells him that they need to talk about the other elephant in the room. Jake knows what's coming even before she says the name. "Bradley's my best friend and I don't want to feel like I'm choosing him over you whenever I spend time with him."

"Technically…"

Her eyes flash a warning to tread carefully. "Seresin, I'm not asking you two to become best friends, but I need you to at least make an effort here."

Jake petulantly tells her that there's something off about Rooster without getting into any further details. The opening he leaves Natasha is so wide that she could float an ocean liner through it when she reminds him that he hasn't spent any time with Rooster to make such an assessment.

"I just don't trust him, Nat."

"You only have to trust me, Jake."

"I do, but—"

"But nothing. That's how a relationship works: I put up with your annoying best friend and you put up with mine."

"It's not the same thing. Javy never—"

"Never what?" she asks, folding her arms across her chest.

Never traded his loyalty like a baseball card, Jake wants to say. Instead, he says, "Javy has never given you a reason not to trust him."

"Bradley hasn't given you one either, right? Unless there's something you're not telling me."

He could do it. He could tell her right now what he knows, which is admittedly nothing concrete and a whole lot of conjecture, but instead he replies with "I'm trusting my gut."

"Oh, because that has never steered you wrong in the past."

They are getting into dangerous territory now and Jake knows he should call a timeout before one of them says something they can't take back, but that old devil on his shoulder goads him into finding out how much he can push before something cracks. Against his better judgment, he squares up and pokes at the bear. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"You don't think you're projecting just a little bit?"

"Projecting what exactly?"

Clearly, Natasha is better at drowning out the devil on her shoulder because she says, "Maybe we shouldn't do this."

"Don't pull punches now, Nat," he provokes, standing up and spreading his arms like she has the floor.

"If we're putting all our cards on the table, then I don't think this is about Bradley at all. I think he reminded you of who you were five years ago and how much you didn't like that guy."

Jake feels her words like a jab to the solar plexus.

"You think I need a reminder of that?" He's teetering in the middle of a boxing ring waiting for the ref to call it because his pride won't let him cede the win for anything less than a knockout punch. "This isn't about me. Maybe you should think about why you're so keen on believing that nothing has changed? Do you honestly think Bradshaw didn't have to give up something to survive for that long?"

"It doesn't matter!" she shouts. "I don't care what he had to do to make it back home!"

"He could give you all the reasons not to trust him," Jake scoffs, "and you'd still keep those blinders on."

It feels like she's looking right through him when she says, "I've had lots of practice in that department."

Jake's face falls. He can tell that she doesn't mean to say it by the way Natasha winces immediately, but doesn't that mean she was still thinking it? Isn't that a marker of something that's true? Jake is not naïve enough to believe that Natasha never had her doubts about him, but to hear her vocalize it makes him feel like his heart has stopped and everyone around him is charting the different shades of blue across his face as he tries to extend his last breath.

"I'm sorry you have to do such mental gymnastics to be with me," Jake says. The anger has evaporated to leave behind something far more devastating in his voice. He wants to resent her for telling him the truth now, but it's not new information – he has thought about how much he doesn't deserve her every day of their relationship, from the little things like her unfailing ability to put up with his bullshit to the bigger things like how she's fundamentally a good person and he's not.

"Come on, I don't. Being with you is the easiest thing in the world," she insists, softer now. Natasha tries to reach out for his hand, but Jake takes a step back. "Baby, I didn't mean it."

There's a sardonic tilt to his mouth when he says, "It's okay, Nat. We both know you're right."

"No, I'm not."

"It's fine." This is his fault for pushing, pushing, pushing until the hairline fractures became gaping chasms so wide that there was no bridging them. Jake can't be here right now and pretend like there's not an ocean between them. Frankly, he is not a good enough actor to sell it so he quickly mumbles something about forgetting to buy the rum for the boozy French toast they were planning to have for dinner.

"Don't do that," she says. "Don't deflect right now."

"Let's just forget it," he says, already putting his legs through his jeans and slipping his feet into his sneakers. They should give him an Oscar for the smile he manages to flash. "I think we passed a gas station on the way up."

"Look, I shouldn't have said that," Natasha says desperately.

"I really should go buy that rum before it gets too late," Jake says, shoving his wallet and phone into his pockets. She killed him. She doesn't get to ask his ghost for absolution.

"Forget about the rum," she pleads as she follows him out of the bedroom and through the living room towards the front door. "Just stop and talk to me for a second."

But he can't stop or stand still or do anything other than create a distance that is so expansive that talking is no longer an option.

*

The gas station is about a mile away from the cabin and it would have taken him less than five minutes to get there if he had bothered to grab the car keys during his hasty exit. But Jake remembered Natasha telling him once during a slasher movie marathon on Halloween that the stupidest people in those cheesy 80s movies were the ones who let their idiot friends leave them alone with a deadly killer while they took the only working car into town for help. The possibility of a psychopath wearing a sack over his head showing up to Mav's cabin is low – and the chances of Natasha not stabbing him in the face are even lower – but Jake is not going to play into her worst B-movie fears by stranding her without transportation. No, the far stupider decision was to go through the woods instead of the access road because not only does it take him twice as long, but by the time he reaches the gas station, the sky has turned an ugly shade of gray.

Ducking into the convenience store, Jake fishes out his cell phone and calls Javy before he can change his mind. He had roped Coyote into taking over Rooster Watch this weekend because it was his best chance of catching Bradshaw doing something suspicious without the added pressure of hiding it from Natasha, but now all he can think about is how many of his problems would be solved if something did pan out from the long shot.

Javy picks up after the third ring with a "Yo, what's up?"

"How's my bird?" Jake asks before Javy can ask him why he's calling during a romantic getaway.

"He learned some new tricks while you've been away."

"Yeah?" Jake doesn't like where this conversation is headed.

"He turned off the radio."

"Oh?" So Rooster found the mics. Jake's head pounds with the weight of this new information.

"And changed tv channels."

Fuck. So much for video. Jake wonders if Bradshaw has known they've been there this whole time and that's why surveillance has been a dud. Trying not to panic, he keeps his voice even as he asks, "Hope he didn't break my television?"

"It's stuck on CNN in black and white so you really owe me."

At least the camera in the picture frame is still functional. Jake wouldn't consider it a win by any means, but it's better than nothing.

"Good thing you like to stay abreast of breaking news." Why would Rooster be looking for surveillance equipment if he didn't want to make sure the coast was clear before doing something shady? After much consideration, Jake asks Javy, "Think we should try to get the bird on America's Got Talent?"

Javy pauses for a bit before replying, "That might be a reach. I'd be more surprised if a magician's bird didn't pick up a party trick or two along the way."

He has a point. How many times has Jake walked into a new place and immediately clocked potential exit strategies? That doesn't automatically make him a criminal either.

"God, this blows."

"We might need to cancel the variety show, J," Javy says.

Jake isn't an idiot. He is self-aware enough to realize that this has become an obsession, but like all addicts who tell themselves that they can stop at any time, he maintains that he is only doing this because he knows he is right. But maybe the informant is wrong. Maybe it is another intelligence officer altogether. Maybe Natasha is right that he needed to find the weakness in Bradley's character to justify the frailty of his own. He went to all this trouble and the only thing he has to show for it are the shards of his own life littering the ground after he imploded it spectacularly. With a sigh, Jake runs a hand through his hair and starts putting snacks into his basket on autopilot just to have something to do with himself.

"The writing was on the wall anyway," he says miserably.

"Hey man, what's up? How's it going up there?"

"Very not great. And please don't tell me that there are plenty of fish in the sea."

"I wasn't going to! Jeez, how big of a jerk do you think I am?" There's a long pause on the line before Javy says, "Okay, fuck off, but then get back on the phone and tell me what happened."

Jake has moved on from the sugary snacks aisle and gotten to the salty ones. There's a girl behind the register at the front of the store pouring over a book, paying him no mind. The only indication that she's even there is the rapid succession of pen clicks under her thumb every few seconds. Jake hadn't noticed it before but now that he has, he can't stop hearing it. Pause. Click click click. Pause. Click. Pause. Click click. It's going to drive him insane. He clears his throat loudly. The girl looks up at him like she is utterly annoyed, but for a minute the clicking stops and he can think again.

"We got into a fight, largely my fault, and now it's all fucked."

Javy snorts. "Grovel a little and you'll be fine."

"Not this time."

Click click. Outside, the thunder rumbles followed by a flash of lightning so close that it lights up the entire store for a second before the sky cracks open and rain starts to fall. The water taps unrelentingly on the roof while inside the clicking continues. Jake's brain feels like it is in a sound technician's studio and he hates it.

"Shit," Javy gasps from three hundred miles away, "you did the thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you push people away to figure out how far they'll go before you can't spot them anymore."

"I don't do that."

"You totally do. We all do. Why do you think none of my relationships have a shelf life longer than two months?"

"This isn't the same thing. Nat's not a flavor of the month."

"Rude! I love in my own way, Jacob. No need to judge," Javy deadpans. "Anyway, I wouldn't worry about it."

Jake rolls his eyes. "Because you hate Natasha?"

"I don't hate Natasha," Javy claims. This is how Jake knows the clicking has gotten to him. Something has broken in his brain and now it's just making up things he wants to hear as a way of coping. "She'll come back. All the ones who matter come back. Just look at me."

"You?"

"Yes, me," Javy snaps, slightly insulted. "After that whole thing went down with…our rival corporation, you were a massive dillhole, remember? But I stuck around like Laffy Taffy because that's what a ride or die does, bro. So let me worry about Burt Reynolds, stop being a little bitch, and throw up a flare so she can find her way back."

*

Strangely enough, Javy's pep talk does make him feel somewhat better. He doesn't quite think it's as easy as dropping a pin, but he can absolutely do the apologizing part. Looking down at the basket in his hand, Jake realizes that he wouldn't eat half of the things in it and quickly starts to put them back. By the time he gets to the checkout counter, his haul is a quarter the size it used to be.

"Can I get a Captain Morgan too?" Jake asks, nodding at the wall of booze behind the checkout girl before he starts unloading items onto the counter.

"I wasn't being a bitch, you know? It's a memory aid," the girl behind the counter – Harper, according to the badge she's wearing – tells him. Off his confused look, she clicks the BIC in her hand. "The clicking activates muscle memory or something."

Jake is skeptical of that. "And how's that working out for you?"

"Early decision to Brown," she says smugly, looking very much like the only reason she didn't tack on a bitch is because she doesn't want to get fired.

"Impressive!" Then, as an afterthought, Jake asks, "So during tests you…?"

"Tap." Harper demonstrates by closing her eyes and bringing her index finger and thumb together silently. Before he can ask clarifying details, Harper has already gotten bored with the conversation and moved on to judging his purchases. Picking them up one by one with disdain, she finally suggests buying a stick umbrella instead. "The foldable one is not going to last you the minute it takes to get to your car."

"I walked."

"Because you got dumped?" Harper asks offhandedly, but it's obvious that she doesn't care. She puts the umbrella back on the wire spinner rack next to her and plucks off her recommended kind instead. "Trust me, you'll thank me later."

*

It is only after he steps out with his bag of miscellaneous crap and moderately shitty bottle of rum that Jake realizes how much he is never going to thank Harper for her recommendation. He's already across the street when he finally gets the umbrella to open just to find out that not only does it offer child-sized protection against the elements, but it's got a huge picture of Hello Kitty plastered over the top of it like Sanrio threw up on a piece of bright pink tarp and super-glued it to a few steel rods. Jake is positive that Harper just wanted to fuck with him because not only is it embarrassing to walk down the side of the road holding this thing, but it lasts all of three minutes before the umbrella flips and breaks in quick succession.

Jake is in the middle of trying to figure out the odds of attracting lightning if he holds the mangled thing over his head and makes a run for it when the first pair of headlights that he has spotted all evening zooms past him on the other side of the road. Twenty feet away, the car stops and floods Jake in red from the backlights before making an illegal U-turn and speeding back in the opposite direction to stop right next to him. Jake can barely make out anything in this rain, but he hopes this person isn't about to ask him for directions when the passenger window goes down. He tries to peer in at the driver, but it takes the light going on inside the SUV for him to realize that Natasha is behind the wheel and she's shouting at him to "get in the goddamn car before you drown, Bagman."

It's a balancing act to get the door open while trying to keep the metal spokes from stabbing him and the paper bag from tearing at the bottom, but he manages somehow. Jake barely catches a glimpse of the side of her face before she hits the switch above their heads and the inside of the car goes dark save for the neon blue dashboard lights.

"Did you steal a kid's umbrella?" Nat asks once he closes the door.

"Actually, it's mine," he huffs before tossing it onto the floor in front of him. "It came highly recommended."

If she has questions, she doesn't ask. Instead, Natasha opts to blast the heat inside the car and tosses him a sweater from the backseat.

"Remember how the whole reason we left DC early was to avoid this storm?" No, he does not. "Why didn't you just take the car?"

"Didn't want to leave you stranded in case a masked killer showed up." Jake makes a stabbing motion in the air.

Natasha snickers as she keeps driving past the turn onto the access road leading to Mav's cabin. "Of course, you remember that."

"You'd be surprised at how much I remember." He cranes his neck to glance at where they should have made a right. "This is not the way back."

"I know."

He waits for an explanation that doesn't arrive. "So generally, they recommend finding shelter in situations like this instead of, you know, going for a joy ride."

"Right."

"Our exit was two miles—" Jake adjusts for Natasha pressing her foot down even more on the gas. "Three miles away."

"You don't say."

"Are you driving us to a lake to dispose of my body?"

"Don't tempt me." They sit in silence for a long beat before Natasha finally explains, "You have an annoying habit of leaving in the middle of important conversations so I've decided to make that an impossibility."

Chuckling, he reminds her that he's a field agent. "I could just jump out of the car, you know."

"Go for it."

Jake looks at the trees zooming past them and then mumbles about how he'd hate to ruin a new sweater. "I'm not sure that distracted driving is the best way to prove a point about my less-than-stellar communication skills, Natasha."

"Have you forgotten that I'm in the CIA too, Seresin? I could drift in this weather blindfolded."

Jake smiles. He has seen her emerge victorious in a car chase while driving a Ford Aspire so he has no doubt that this is true, but he'd rather not test it if given the option. "If I promise to keep all of my limbs inside the vehicle at all times, will you at least slow down?"

Rolling her eyes like he is being the unreasonable one, Natasha eases up on the gas ever so slightly. He looks up at the rearview mirror for any other cars behind them, but the reflection is a black hole with the occasional lightning flash to break up the monotony. Even the cops are waiting out the storm at the station with bad coffee and stale donuts while the two of them are driving to God knows where because Jake can't seem to stop blowing up his life.

After taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out, Jake admits with great effort that he might have been projecting. Even without looking, he knows that Natasha has raised a surprised eyebrow at the confession. "Maybe I needed to believe that someone else could be taken in by The Alliance's bullshit."

"To be fair, you didn't really know who you were working for back then," Natasha reminds him diplomatically.

"Guess we both have a penchant for blinders."

Natasha sighs and suddenly jerks the wheel to the right like a maniac while the car skids briefly until she pulls over on the side of the road. After hitting the button for the hazard lights, she unclicks her seatbelt so that she can fully turn to face the passenger seat.

"You're an idiot."

"You're the one who stopped in the middle of a dark road in poor visibility conditions—"

"I said something shitty that I don't even believe because I knew it would hurt you."

"Shitty, but true. You have plenty of valid reasons to cut me loose. I did bad things and hurt innocent people in the service of a man who made me think that I was doing it for the greater good. Even after it became painfully obvious that I was on the wrong side, I held on for far longer than I should have because it was easier to lie to myself than admit that the only version of me that felt right was the one they molded me into."

"Until you remade yourself into someone who is trying to be better. People aren't the sum of their worst mistakes, you know?"

He chooses to ignore the pointed commentary with her use of people. "There's always going to be a part of me that is that guy no matter how hard I try to brush off the ugly bits. The present doesn't erase your past."

"I know who you were then and I like who are you now." Natasha sighs. "The past doesn't dictate your future, okay? You know that I love you."

"I love you too," he replies instinctively.

"Then quit being a moron and trying to give me reasons for why we shouldn't be together."

Jake laughs at that. "So…just stop being an idiot?"

"Pretty much."

"Just like that, huh?"

"Just like that."

Holding out his pinky only, Jake extends his hand towards her and tells Natasha that she has a deal. She looks down from his face to his outreached hand and then back up to his face, rolling her eyes as she slaps his hand away, grabs the front of his cable-knit sweater, and pulls him to meet her across the divider so she can seal it with a kiss instead.

"Still such an idiot," Natasha laughs against Jake's mouth.

*

Jake is too busy trying to convince Natasha that making out like horny teenagers in the back of her car is the most responsible thing to do during a storm of this caliber when he misses the 911 text from Javy telling him that he left the cage door open and the bird has flown away.