Chapter Text
She’s learnt a lot the moment she stepped in here, the little cliques people have, who they turn to the moment they notice something. What they eat, what they choose, little things that seemingly don’t matter but may mean a lot in the long run.
And still yet, she finds her eyes constantly drawing to where Ava is at, smiling, talking, cheery, but meeting her gaze when she feels it.
They always had that magnetic little connection after all.
Adriel is drunk on red wine next to her, babbling about some new project that she should be listening to, should be interested in considering how much more new information she can learn but she finds herself distracted when she sees Ava’s fingers tense on her knife.
It’s how he’s so touchy, leany, even more so than when he’s sober, how he pushes himself closer and closer still, words slurring and head bobbling, rubbing against her almost, if she doesn’t push him off respectfully.
The waiter comes by with more refills and she decides it’s a good time to leave, even if it jeopardises her information. Just a little while. In the restroom. Alone. To reset.
She enters, splashing her face with crisp water, gulping air like she’d been drowning earlier, and she might have been with how loud it was. Not like she should be surprised, they brought out the whole restaurant, and chased everyone out. She never did like big celebrations anyway, especially when she’s the main event.
The door opens with a swoosh and she turns her head, Ava entering and slamming the door behind her, locking it in the same breath.
“A-Ava?”
She stalks closer and Beatrice finds herself stumbling back, confused at the angry look on her face. She fears she’s done something to annoy her, and it crawls beneath her skin and in her throat, causing her eyes to bulge slightly and her oesophagus to close up.
“It’s not fair,” Ava starts, pushing Beatrice against the wall of the bathroom.
“How he gets to touch you and lean on you with no repercussions. While I can’t, because you’re not mine .” Ava laughs. “Not in that way at least.”
Ava’s fingers trail down Beatrice’s striped tie, bunching the bottom as she pulls her down, “Did you have fun? Letting him touch you?”
Jealousy, Beatrice realises.
Ava is jealous.
“N-No.”
“No? And yet you didn’t push him away,”
“I-I didn’t want to make him mad,”
“I’m sure Beatrice, I’m sure.” There’s a slight smirk on Ava’s face, but Beatrice knows better, with the undercurrent of incredulity beneath it.
“I’m sorry,” Beatrice tries, because she is. She doesn’t want to make Ava mad. She doesn’t want her jealous. Because she is hers in every sense of the way that matters. She wants to complain that this one? This one is insignificant and small in the greater scheme of things, but Ava wants her in all the ways that she can give, and Beatrice will give it all if it means to even have Ava’s approval, so she bites her tongue and just apologises instead.
Ava softens, just slightly, under the edges, but Beatrice sees it all, lights up on the inside and Ava connects lips, hard and fast and needy almost, but Beatrice doesn’t dare think that. Ava will kill her if she even whiffs of that thought. But she knows, they both know, as much as Beatrice is Ava’s, Ava is Beatrice’s.
“Oh how I fucking missed your lips,” Ava grunts against her, and Beatrice reciprocates harder, pushing Ava against the sink, hands trapping her between faux marble and a body she was once so intimately familiar with, and now relearning all the same.
Ava’s hands abandon her tie and go to her neck instead, pulling, closer, closer, and closer still, yet again, because what’s the point of air molecules between them if all they want to breathe in is the warm, woody, earthy notes of Beatrice’s cologne and Ava’s sweet raspberry chapstick?
Ava pulls her head back for a breath of air and Beatrice, oh so eager to please, always, now that she has a second chance to make things right, traces her lips down Ava’s neck, kissing softly in worship. Not leaving a mark, no, she doesn’t want Ava to get into trouble, but still, with devotion she hopes Ava can feel all the same.
Ava’s hands fly to her hair, hard just like earlier, guiding Beatrice to where she wants. Down - to her collarbones and then further still.
“May I?”
“Yeah,”
Then Beatrice’s hands are on buttons, shakily popping them open and kissing and biting and marking here, because she can, under shirts.
Then it all comes crumbling down with harsh knocks on the door.
Beatrice jumps back, and the annoyance is back on Ava’s face twofold.
“Rebecca, you in there?”
“Y-Yeah.” Beatrice replies, too breathy for her liking.
“We’re getting ready to bolt, apparently the restaurant has a closing time or whatever, you coming?”
Beatrice turns her head back, silently asking for approval.
“Go. Or they’ll suspect shit.”
Beatrice nods once, contemplates kissing Ava, then decides otherwise when the scowl on her face doesn’t dissipate.
Okay.
She unlocks the door and she leaves.
–
She somehow manages to wiggle her way out of going to a bar, fruitlessly trying to find Ava after the pit in her stomach had widened exponentially. It almost felt like she had abandoned her.
She fiddles with her keys, walking down the alleyway to the place she has called home for the past 2 years as an undercover. She hears the soft squelch of shoes before she turns, arms at the ready, yet she gets knocked into brick all the same.
All air gets stolen from her lungs and she doesn’t fight back when her body instinctively knows who it is, even if her brain is slow to catch up.
“Nice place, bet it’s rigged though,” Ava scrunches up her nose at that thought. “Did you rig the alleyway too?”
“We’re supposed to,”
Ava hums, uninterested, hands already going to Beatrice’s belt and unbuckling it, the sounds of metal against metal and the subsequent whip of the leather against air loud in an otherwise still place, echoing.
“Ava,” Beatrice whines, holding the younger’s wrist, “What if someone sees?”
Ava shoots her a glare and Beatrice lets out a whimper.
Okay.
Her hand slides to the hold against brick instead.
“I would really like to hear your little moans when you cum but you’re right, I don’t want anyone to hear. Or see. I don’t share what belongs to me .”
Beatrice chokes back a sob.
“Hands out Bea,”
Beatrice obeys, hands in front of her as Ava wraps the belt around her wrists, binding them together. It’s unnecessary when Beatrice would rather make her fingers bleed on the coarse brick than dare touch Ava without permission, but Ava gets what Ava wants.
“Bite on the excess.”
Beatrice does.
It’s not the most comfortable, but Beatrice all but forgets that the moment Ava’s fingers unbuttons her chinos and goes on the attack - relentless, fast, bruising, and Beatrice feels her knees buckle.
She bites.
And she clasps her hands together.
“Fucking hell Bea,” Ava whispers, reverence in her tone as her finger meets wetness. “Really? All it took was me shoving you against the wall for you to get wet? Maybe being an officer was a masochistic power trip for you or whatever,”
Beatrice thinks it’s just Ava, like Palovian conditioning, her body knows what it’s going to get when Ava’s around.
Ava's palm hits her clit and Beatrice reels, stuttering as her body lurches from the wall. Ava pushes Beatrice's abdomen to stabilise her.
“You can rest your head on my shoulder baby,” Ava allows, and the effect is immediate, Beatrice's forehead moving downwards, resting against solid muscle she knows Ava worked hard for, her teeth clamping down doubly hard on the leather.
The new position allows for Ava's finger to hit deeper and harder, and Beatrice thinks her legs might give out. For an undercover police officer who graduated top in her class, it should be comical how easily her legs start quivering the moment Ava’s fingers enter her.
She feels her jaw start to ache from how hard she’s biting her belt, and she wonders if it’s humanly possible to bite through. The acrid taste of the leather enters her mouth and she cringes, but she’s not going to stop Ava, not when it feels so good after being denied for so long.
Of course, it’s not as if she hasn’t used her own fingers when they were apart but it’s different when all she wanted was Ava - Ava’s hands in hers, Ava’s mouth on hers, Ava’s body against hers - but she has to settle for this dingy alleyway, against a brick wall digging into her back as she squirms. And it’s okay, because it’s Ava. As long as it’s Ava.
“Shhh, Bea, you’re holding back, let go,”
Beatrice cants her hip with a groan, and her body obeys even if her mind is yet to catch up. Her eyes squeeze shut and her knuckles turn white as she tightens her hold of her hands.
Ha, call her Miley Cyrus cause she can really hold her own hand.
When she calms, she feels Ava’s hand on her hip and her back pushed more against the wall. Her forehead is drenched, still against Ava’s shoulder and Beatrice thinks it must be uncomfortable and wet for the younger one. She distinctively recognises that the pulsing in her core is still ever so present, but Ava’s hands are gone, and she doesn’t dare ask for another.
“Sorry,” She mutters, standing up straighter, leaning her head against brick instead.
Ava hums, “It’s alright, I can’t imagine the brick feels too good on your back,”
It’s fine.
As long as it’s you.
Wherever you want.
Whenever you want.
As long as it’s you.
“It wasn’t too bad.”
Ava chuckles softly and shakes her head, “Even now you try to play this big girl game,” Ava steps closer, her hand pressing on Beatrice’s back softly, tracing her suit jacket, “At least it didn’t impale you, but I feel a bit of a dent, you okay?”
Can we be okay instead?
“I will be,”
Ava nods, pulling away and stepping back, retrieving a small envelope from her pocket, and shoving it into Beatrice’s still-bound hands.
“Here, do the best you can with this information. Preliminary and all that, I’ll get a more detailed one for you,”
“Adriel?”
“Yup,”
Then Ava is moving away, her hands waving in the air, “I expect results within the next 72 hours, I know you can do it, Beatrice,”
Beatrice watches her leave, step by step, slow and relaxed, then she feels her throat clog.
Fuck it.
“I love you.”
Ava halts in her tracks, the chilling wind the only sound between them for a solid second.
“I never did stop loving you.”
And when she’s met with prolonged silence, Beatrice worries she’s pushed too far too early.
An apology is on her lips when Ava turns, trudging back to her. Ava’s hand comes to her face, soft and encapsulating.
“Goodnight Bea.” Ava whispers.
Then she’s gone again.
It feels like an ‘I love you’ all the same.