She doesn't hide the fact that she resents him, or the implication that she needs him, or probably all of the above. It has always been an icy give-and-take exchange between the two of them, since his discharge and reassignment—which, if he is being entirely fair, he was never exactly jumping in joy about, either.
("Wait, you're taking me off Special Forces and reassigning me as a babysitter?"
"Babysitter and body guard are two very different things."
"You are assigning me to a 19 year old girl's protective service, 24/7. That is babysitting."
"You've been through a lot, Campbell. Just take the downtime, yeah? We'll consider reassignment again after you've had some time to cool off.")
Some time, so far, has proven to be three years. He thinks it is goddamn hard to cool off when his job is trailing a moody as hell princess who mainly spends her time trying to shake him (and is damn good at it, too.)
So day in, day out, the game goes something like this; he switches with the night-guard, who without fail breathes heavily his or her relief that if the princess's royal pain of an ass isn't actually in her apartment, it is officially on him (Frequently. It happens frequently, and she makes sure she is always found out on his goddamn watch.)
He leans against the wall between their rooms, crosses his arms, and scowls at the sickly-sweet flowered wallpaper across the hall. There are 121 daisies, 97 roses, 70 tulips and 53 weird hybrid things he is pretty sure whoever created the wallpaper completely made up. He has counted no less than 900 times.
After an exaggerated 35 minutes or longer, the princess emerges from her apartment. Her dark eyes scan him and she crosses her arms, expression sinking into a flawless glower of disappointment.
(He swears she looks hopeful every damn morning that he won't be there, until he is, and he is also almost certain it is entirely an act so that she can fully demonstrate how much she resents him, to consistently make his job shitty.)
"You're still here."
"Every day."
He smiles sarcastically, like he is happy to be there, because it is his only defense to her favorite line and because it annoys her more than her feigned disappointment annoys him. She rolls her eyes and scoffs and turns to take off down the hallway without another word to him. He lets the smile return to a scowl and follows begrudgingly behind her, taking the quiet moment to daydream about reconnaissance and being undercover, both flattering alternatives to his current situation.
Sometimes he gets to the elevator in time to go down with her, and sometimes he doesn't. She makes no particular effort to hold it for him. It is better that way. He meets her at the front door to their complex, and continues to scowl as he trails her across the street to campus, where he follows her to her classes and continues to sulk as he sits through all her terrible political courses.
For the first year, the story for people who questioned their glue-like attachment was, courtesy of her, of course, that he was a broke exchange student who she took in out of the goodness of her heart. Thanks in no little part to google and the growing discourse towards her mother's radical agenda, Daisy's little secret didn't stay secret for very long, and Lincoln's job of keeping her safe grew more and more tedious as people realized his actual purpose.
She doesn't like people knowing what he is, likes it even less than she likes people knowing what she is. If people knowing didn't make his job harder, he would use the hell out of it to make her miserable. At least he tells himself he would.
(He sees how the friendliness in their eyes becomes guarded once they know. He understands the isolation. He tells himself he doesn't dare feel sorry for her, too.
He tells himself a lot.)
He stays on the clock until midnight, usually, and follows her everywhere, lest he risk daring to let her out of his sight for more than 24 seconds. And it's an exact measurement, too—25 seconds and she is gone. Unlike whatever night-guard takes over for him, he doesn't take her bullshit about not being allowed into her apartment—he has trailed her to sketchy parties in the dangerous parts of town too many times to not have his eyes on the windows and the door and her all simultaneously.
("You are ruining my social life, you know that right?"
"You can go wherever the hell you want—I just have to be with you."
"Because having a brooding asshole glowering over my shoulder actually increases my chances of making friends! How thoughtful of you to remind me! Let's hit every bar and see how many people we can scare away!"
"I don't like this setup any more than you do, princess.")
Some days the banter is good-natured, and has a teasing edge to it—but neither of them are shy and neither of them have thin skin, and their words have a way of growing thorns. She hates when he calls her princess. He hates that she hates to be seen in public with him. He apologizes dryly for using the name. She shrugs and he catches her watching him softly later on, when she shouldn't be. He tells himself he doesn't.
It is a shitty setup, but they are in it together.
She does her classwork, usually tricking him into doing at least half of her math problems for her, courtesy of the skills accrued from the aforementioned terrible political courses, and she usually goes to bed without saying another word to him.
Tonight she closes her books and sits quietly, staring at the pile in front of her.
"Do you need something?" He asks, voice edgier than he intends. She doesn't answer, not at first.
When she looks at him, it is with the same softness as before.
It doesn't make his pulse find an uneasy tempo.
"What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Coming back to the Afterlife with me?"
There is an odd tone to the way she asks it, and he is a trained agent, he knows she isn't concerned with whether or not he will be with her. She wonders where he'll be.
He shrugs. He doesn't think she needs to know that he doesn't have anywhere else to go.
"I didn't ask off," he says, "if you remind me, I'll take off Christmas. All you want for Christmas is not me, right? It'll be my gift to you."
He is relieved when her odd soft expression hardens into a far more comfortable glare.
"Forget I asked."
"Already forgotten."
He goes to his apartment next-door as soon as the night guard arrives, writes a report to be read by the Queen's security detail, and goes to bed himself. He hates that all he can think about is the fact that she is the closest thing he has to a friend.
The next morning, it all starts over again with 341 flowers, a scowling princess and a fleeing night guard.
Her eyes are duller than usual as she scans him and her expression appears more tired than resentful.
"You're here."
His bones ache—he woke up early to get in a workout. He tells himself he has to stay in shape, show his higher-ups that he wants the reassignment, that he is putting up with this but keeping himself up, staying together for whenever they are ready for him—except with every passing day the workouts feel longer and his muscles feel wearier and he thinks more and more that he is racing towards a non-existent end-goal.
"Every day."
He wonders if his voice sounds as dry as hers. He thinks it probably does because she doesn't skimp on rolling her eyes as she turns away from him, striding down the hall towards the elevator.
Except as he watches, she turns into the stairwell.
His legs complain as he picks up the pace a bit, confused by the change of their schedule—pulling the door open after her just as it is falling closed to catch a glimpse of her dark hair bobbing down out of view. He hurries after her, heart rate speeding slightly in annoyance—till he reaches the bottom to find her waiting in her usual spot beside the front door, arms crossed.
"Bored of the usual?" He observes somewhat icily, and she shrugs, disinterest apparent in the slouch of her shoulders.
She begins to turn for the door—but then his work phone is vibrating in his back pocket. He grabs for it.
"Wait a second," he mutters in her general direction, watching just long enough to see her roll her eyes and let the door fall shut before glancing at the screen.
It's the main security detail, and he puzzles over it a moment—wondering what possibly could have prompted a call before even nine in the morning. It is about to ring out when he finally rushes to answer, pulling the device to his ear.
"Campbell."
He waits for a response, looking up to see how much the new disruption in their schedule has pissed off Daisy.
Only, Daisy isn't there.
"Shit."
"Sorry agent—still there?"
He moves quickly, pushing through the front door and scanning side to side down the empty street.
"I'm here," he responds, frustrated, momentarily happy to blame the princess's window of opportunity on the entirely inopportune call. He considers crossing the street, checking around campus—but intuition and three years of spending 18 hours a day with her tell him that class is the last place she will be. "Have you got something to say or were you hoping I'd make the conversation?" he snaps, growing more and impatient with the call.
"You've got the princess with you?"
He glares at nothing in particular, making a decision and hurrying to the left—attention in full detail mode for anything out of the ordinary, any hints of the princess. It is cold out and he was still warm from his workout when he got dressed, so he had skipped the jacket and he is now fully regretting the decision and even more fully resenting Daisy and her tendency to bolt. He never feels more like a babysitter than when he is racing down the streets trying to find where she has run off to.
"Sure," he lies, breathe puffing frozen in front of his face and separating as he continues through it.
"We've got a code red here. Keep her close and await further detail."
The caller hangs up and Lincoln shoves his phone unceremoniously into his back pocket, letting out a curse that Daisy would snarkily inform him is inappropriate language to use around a princess, before proceeding to very pointedly use the same word at least eleven times before sunset.
Code Red means a direct threat to the crown—to Daisy's mother the Queen Jiaying. It means it isn't safe for her to be off—who the hell knows where—without his protection. If she isn't dead, he thinks he is going to personally kill her and gladly accept the punishment—he is pretty certain there is nothing they can do to him that would be worse than this assignment.
The coffeeshop he has set his sights on is at the end of the block, and he already is preparing a second option in his head, a second common hideout she thinks he doesn't know about. He passes the corner table he usually sits quietly at when she comes here, abandoning all pretense as he pushes through the door, scanning the busy shop for her short, dark hair.
He finds her, sitting at a table near the back—and momentarily he is filled with relief, letting his guard go down just slightly, seeing her alright.
Except then he realizes she isn't alone.
That is when the anger hits him, and he momentarily considers interrupting whatever little date she is on with the man in front of her, chiding her loudly about racing off when he was taking a call from the main security detail—but it is just a flash, that melts quickly into something else, something still angry but softer, more desperate.
Anything could have happened to her without him knowing. Anything.
He swallows hard, fighting the growing feeling that can only be described as concern—finding a table near the window where he can keep an eye on her, trying to calm his speeding heart with a slow scan of the little shop. The front door seems to be the only public entrance and exit, and he has set it in his line of sight to her. Slowly, he feels his senses begin to settle, feels his own guard slightly give way.
He wishes she would have just told him she wanted to skip her awful classes.
She is smiling–cheeks still rosy from the cool air—at the dark-haired man in front of her. She looks happy, laughing here and there, eyes gleaming—it is a rare form to see the princess in. She is caged and acts accordingly—guarded, snappy, cold. It isn't common, to see her acting like the young woman she is—not unless they are entirely alone and he lets his guard down, lets them forget for a moment he is only there to take a shot for her. She has walls miles high, walls that rival his own.
It makes him smile, just a bit, to see her like this.
His anger fades, too—and for just a moment, he forgets the warning call that had enabled this escape in the first place.
Her date shifts in his seat, and warning bells go off in Lincoln's head. The movement is familiar, dangerous—hand angled oddly at his side. He is saying something and Daisy is laughing and Lincoln shifts uncomfortably for a better view. He doesn't want to interrupt this, doesn't want her to resent him for it. But uneasiness tingles in his stomach and he shifts to his feet, moving casually nearer to them, hoping to avoid any unwanted attention.
Only, he can't find a better angle and he is becoming more and more nervous, and he phone is vibrating again in his pocket but he doesn't dare answer—eyes on the man's hand, still cradled at his hip.
Daisy sees him and opens her mouth to say something, but he catches the flash of silver and is moving immediately, years of training taking over his muscle memory as he grabs the man's wrist and twists, lightning fast—before he even seems to realize he is there. The weapon clatters to the floor, loaded, but Lincoln's attentions are still on the man, shoving him back before he bends and grasps the weapon, pointing it at the man. The café has gone silent around them and he holds the gun steady as he glances at Daisy, wide-eyed and on her feet, chair on the ground behind her, as if she'd rushed to her feet.
"Take my phone and get out," he tells her under his breath, "use the employee entrance. Go somewhere you have never gone before and make sure you aren't followed. Call 1 on the phone when you're safe and tell them what happened."
He expects her to argue with him, to put up some sort of fight—but she just nods, eyes still wide, taking the space between them and reaching shaking into his back pocket to draw out the phone. He scans the room slowly as she moves; a barista is on the phone, hopefully with the cops. The people who aren't gawking at them are rushing for the door, wisely away from the discourse.
The man is smiling an eerie, knowing smile that puts Lincoln's senses back in overdrive.
He hears the click over the quiet uneasiness in the café, and there isn't time to find the source.
"Get down," he orders, moving his body instinctively around hers.
The bang and the searing pain in his shoulder seem to happen simultaneously, and his vision blurs white around the edges—all he sees is the gun clattering to the floor, and a smaller hand reaching quickly to scoop it up. Two more shots go off, loud in his ear, and he feels Daisy take his good arm as sirens begin to grow loud in the distance.
"Hurry," she urges, and his vision pulses slightly, just enough to see the smoking silver gun is in her hand. "Lincoln, come on."
He clutches blindly at his shoulder, pressing against the warm flow of blood and lets her hold onto him, guiding him towards the exit he'd told her to use—not entirely sure why he is going with her and not waiting with the assassins, except that assassins is apparently plural and that he is pretty sure at this point, she might be saving him.
The pain in his shoulder is white-hot, and feels like it is pulsing through his veins. The bullet is still lodged into place and suddenly, he realizes that they could be following them.
He remembers the smoking gun in Daisy's hand.
Thoughts are swirling groggily in his mind and he struggles to keep up with Daisy's swift movements as she pushes through the back door and he stumbles out behind her, still clutching his shoulder. She pauses when she sees him struggling, backtracking to steady him by his good shoulder, fingers digging softly into his skin as she stares up at him in concern.
"What do we do?"
It takes him a long moment and Daisy snapping in his face for him to remember that he is supposed to have an answer to that.
"Phone," he mumbles weakly, praying she still has it and leaning on the nearest wall, wincing in pain as he attempts to catch his breath. "Call 1."
"No offense to 1, but shouldn't we attempt to save our asses first?"
"1 isn't a person, it's an emergency number," he says through his teeth, somehow finding correcting her extremely important. She finds it less important, and glares at him. "Look, I'm slowing you down. Get somewhere safe then dial 1. I'll try to take care of whatever is happening here."
She stares at him dubiously.
"You need medical attention. I'm pretty sure a hospital is as safe as it gets—we are going there, together, now."
He shakes his head, growing impatient.
"Whoever is after you knows I'm shot—the hospitals are the first places they'll look. You need to get off the grid."
"We need to get off the grid," she corrects, crossing her arms with a stubborn retaliation he has yet to best even in the most ideal conditions.
He groans, but peels himself dizzily from the wall, allowing her to reach and steady him. Blood is still oozing from his numb wound, but slower now beneath the pressure of his hand.
"Where are we going?" He asks.
"Just follow me."