I lied. Here's another oneshot.

Inspired by: another Tumblr thing. Can't even remember what it was.

"Uuuuuugh," Shane groans, flopping down onto the nearest seat upon walking to the cabin of the jet. "If you guys excuse me, I'm just going to sleep for about four days."

"Maybe you'll finally get a dream girl," Jack jokes, though what should have been a joking tone is ruined by exhaustion.

"Nah, probably not even then," Grey says, though her barb lacks conviction as well. Not that it really matters now, though, because Shane is passed out on a couch. Jack plops down next to him and is also asleep within seconds.

"Wow. That didn't take long at all," I comment. As tired as I am, I doubt that I could fall asleep that fast.

Grey scoffs. "Yeah. They're probably faking so we have to fill out the report." She sits down on a chair and sighs happily, completely relaxing against the cushions.

I muster the energy to chuckle at her trademark cynicism as I sit down next to her. She stiffens, but I hardly notice. "They did have to stake out that one hotel for over thirty-six hours though."

"Yeah, and? We're the ones who had to pose as employees."

"True."

She sighs again, leaning her head back against the headrest behind her. I take a moment to observe her as she lets down her walls for a just a few seconds, too tired to keep them up. "Grey… that guy—"

"No." Walls are back up and armed.

"But—"

"No. We are not going to talk about it. Got that?"

Her last sentence is accompanied by a glare, probably meant to intimidate me into silence. I don't know if it was the fact that her "evil eyes" (as Jack calls it) were less menacing than normal due to her exhaustion or if my filter was temporarily broken due to my own tiredness, but I say, "Grey, you know you can talk to me, right? This 'consulting detective,' he may be a tactless jerk, but he's good at what he does. His profiles of people are always spot on. As far as we know, you're a confident badass, but—"

"And has it ever occurred to you that that's what I want you to think?!"

…what?

This mission had been a particularly tiring one. It was supposed to be simple recon in London. Funderburk had a list of people he wanted to get more info on, so we were supposed to track them down and watch 'em for a week or so.

Grey always loves track-and-recon for some reason that we're not so sure. She alone had found three of the targets while Shane, Jack, and I were still working on our firsts. After finding her fourth, Funderburk told her to slow down and made me partner up with her.

When we found the fifth (my second) target, it turned out that he was a freak serial killer, and the police got involved. They'd apparently tracked down the guy's apartment, one that Grey and I just found earlier that day. The room was empty, and we saw it as the perfect opportunity to snoop around. That's when the police busted in, along with this weird guy who called himself a "consulting detective."

"It's strange. You're a petty thief, and yet nothing was stolen from his house."

I winced. Grey hated when people mentioned her past. This guy was about to get a "full body scan" (as the guys and I called it). "What are you talking about? I'm not a thief."

"The papers you stole from my pocket suggest otherwise. You're good, though, I didn't notice for quite some time."

She shrugged. "Okay, you got me. But you can't talk to me about stealing when you're the one who nabbed them from Langston's apartment in the first place." She crossed her arms and examined her nails disinterestedly, purposely not making eye contact. I frowned, opening my mouth to kindly tell her to shut up, but a man behind the 'conducting investigator' gave me a look that said 'keep your mouth shut' so I kept my mouth shut. "What do you, wanna conduct your own investigation? Wait, of course you do. You get a kick outta this kinda thing."

He raised an eyebrow. "What kinda thing?"

"This." She spread her arms out wide, as if to encompass the whole room. "Hunting people? Or hunting serial killers, more like it. That's what you do right? Heck, you probably don't even do it for the money. Normal people are addicted to things like crack or coffee, but you, sir." She nodded her head at him. "This is your addiction. In fact, you're just itching to get back out there and catch that guy aren't you? Why are you in here questioning a coupla dumb kids? Why don't you leave it to your sidekick?"

"…sidekick." Behind him (I suddenly remembered his name was 'Sherlock') was an olive-skinned woman who looked like she was trying very hard not to laugh. Meanwhile, his expression was dangerously blank, and I feared for what he'd say after her little tirade was done. I really hoped Grey would just leave it at that, but of course she isn't through.

"Yeah." She jerked her head in the blonde man's direction. "Sidekick. Lost puppy. Whatever you wanna call him." She cocked her head to the side, addressing the surprised-looking blonde man with a thoughtful expression on her face. "You can't have known each other long. You're still surprised at his so-called 'deduction prowess.' And yet, you're the only one who can stand him, unlike everyone else in the room."

She frowned. "And you can't wait to get outta here… why?" She paused, glancing between the blonde man and the 'consulting detective,' then understanding dawned on her face. "You know something, don't you? You want this to be over so you can tell tall dark and brooding over here something important. You should probably get to that."

"Valerie," I interrupted softly, using her pseudonym for this mission while glancing at the expressionless detective. He reminds me of Snape in the Harry Potter movies. In a bad way. "That's enough."

There's a couple of moments of silence. Then, the woman who'd been struggling not to laugh earlier suddenly broke out in uncontrolled guffaws. "Oh— my— gawd! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" She calmed down for a couple seconds. "Sorry… sorry… I'll leave." She left the room. Seconds later, her laughter can be heard again, though it's muffled by the door.

Sherlock sat down in the chair opposite us, clasping his hands together and placing them on the table. "Great job, Valerie." He paused. "If that's even your real name." He adopted a thoughtful expression, mockingly similar to the one Grey had on minutes before. "Though, I suppose you're accustomed to using fake names, hmm? From whatever reason you and your friend were snooping about in Mr. Langston's apartment, and from your childhood."

'OH, SNAP,' I thought.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Holmes," she lied smoothly, using his name for the first time. "We're here on a field trip from America." She shrugged. "We were specially invited by a reclusive author named Paul Wetters—" a.k.a. Funderburk "—who wanted to talk to us about our futures as young writers. He's told us to go to room 248, Mr. P's room, and meet him there. When he wasn't there, this idiot—" She nodded in my direction, and I refrained from protesting indignantly. "—got the bright idea that maybe it was a mystery or something that we were supposed to solve."

Her ability to come up with lies on the spot is absolutely flawless.

"That's a magnificent lie."

"I'm not lying."

"Then how did you get in?"

"…What?"

"Robert Langston knew the police were onto him, and so he packed up his stuff and left. I doubt he would leave door to his apartment unlocked, even if this 'Wetters' fellow invited you to go up there, because Wetters wouldn't have an apartment key."

'OH SNAP TIMES TWO.'

"Maybe he gave him a copy."

"Those apartment doors are card activated. There aren't copies of them." We came in through the window, so we didn't know that.

"Well, then he hacked the scanner and set it up to read our card."

"Where's your card?"

"Paul told us to destroy it and dispose of it after using it."

"How did you destroy it?"

"Cut it up and ate it."

He raised an eyebrow. "You ate it?"

"I eat a lot of things."

He paused. "Here's what I think. I think everything you just told me was bollocks. I think you and your friend here are doing something dangerous and probably illegal. I think you're better at whatever it is you two are doing because of your background in crime."

"I think you're wrong," Grey said, her voice icy.

"Ah, but I don't." He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. "I think you had a very rough childhood. I think you had an abusive parental figure, likely your father, and were put into an adoption home at a young age.

"Sherlock," said the blonde man from earlier, a frown on his face. His warning was ignored.

"I think that none of the homes you were sent to were great, at all, and I think you had many bad experiences with men that left you with a permanent aversion to males in general. I think you ran away and lived a life of petty crime and theft until someone took you in. Perhaps your friend here, though I seriously doubt it."

"Sherlock!" the blonde man says again.

I stared at her. This was news to me.

"Oh, you didn't know any of this, did you?" he said, though the look on his face was far from surprised. His gaze went back to Grey, whose eyes were narrowed dangerously. "So don't trust your friend enough to let him know about any of this, hmm?"

He shrugged, leaning back in his chair. His elbows are no longer on the table, but his clasped hands still are. "Then again, I'm not surprised. You put on this cool, tough girl attitude and repel everyone away from you for fear that you may get hurt, because on the inside you're an insecure, scared, and unwanted."

"SHERLOCK."

"Are you done?" Grey asked. I tensed, knowing something violent was probably about to happen.

"Mmm, pretty much."

"Good." I'm already halfway out of my chair, so I was able to quickly grab Grey by the waist when she tried to leap over the table, her jacket falling off in the process. He didn't even flinch, as if expecting her to do so, but everyone else in the room (besides me) jumped a little.

"Don't try to pretend that you know anything about me," Grey growled. Sherlock simply smiled a weird little smile and stood up and starts moving towards the door.

"'Don't pretend you ever forgot about me,'" he responded with his back turned to us, sounding suspiciously like he was quoting something.

This statement only served to enrage Grey even further as she tried to leap forward again with renewed vigor, and I struggle to hold her. "Oh, you did NOT just use them against me."

"Oh, Lestraude," he said, pausing in front of the doorway. One of the other men in the room looked at him. "Please release these two children."

"Come back here and lemme punch you in the face!"

"'This doesn't mean a thing anymore.'"

"STOP IT!"

"Grey…"

"Shut up. Just… don't." She grabs a couple papers, a book and a pen off the table and storms over to the back of the plane to a small couch directly next to and parallel to the walls and windows. She sits one the little mini-couch, stretching her legs out on the couch in front of her.

From here, I can see that the back of her black shirt reads "Fall Out Boy: The Take Over, The Breaks Over," and the white letters scream at me accusingly. It's her favorite band. Well, she's never outright said it, but Jack, Shane, and I thought as much since it's the only band she ever listens to. And half her wardrobe is t-shirts that involve them somehow. And any "jewelry" that she cares to wear is Fall Out Boy merchandise.

I got the bright idea one day to learn as much as possible about Fall Out Boy in order to have a common topic to talk about with her. So, I found a playlist of almost all their songs on Youtube, and listened to it over, and over, and over again, until I felt confident enough to talk to her about some of their songs.

But then she asked me who my favorite member was.

I, only having listened to their music, had no idea who was who. When I couldn't answer, she scoffed and went back to… whatever it was she was doing.

I still have chunks of phrases from their songs memorized, and a line from The Take Over, The Breaks Over plays in my head: "We did it in the dark, with smiles on our faces…"

Wait a minute.

The line before that is "don't pretend you'll ever forget about me."

And later in the song, it says, "this doesn't mean anything anymore."

The front of her shirt has the lyrics to the song.

Okay, so I guess it kinda makes sense now. Her jacket fell off when she got up to attack the jerk, and the lyrics were in full view. When she said, "don't use them against me," she was referring to Fall Out Boy. But did him quoting the song really make her that mad?

I'm one of those guys that loves reading comments on videos. On my little "FOB Song Spree," I'd often see things like "this song saved my life" and "Fall Out Boy got me through a really rough time." Apparently this band's touched and saved the lives of many people through their lyrics. The band was all the more inspiring since one of the members tried to commit suicide a while back, but failed and spent a week in the hospital. A lot of fans felt a connection with him through that…

…could Grey be one of those people?

I sigh. She'd never want to talk to me about anything personal. Heck, I doubt that even Funderburk really knows that much about her, and he's the one who found her!

I allow her a couple of minutes to cool down, not knowing what to expect. I've never seen her as mad as she was today, and I don't know what to think. Did that guy get a kick out of seeing her all emotional? Something tells me that he didn't. Not that he hated what he was doing or anything, but he wasn't enjoying it either. Someone more sadistic would have kept going, to produce various reactions, and yet he was just really aloof about the whole thing. Like he was just stating facts.

The Fall Out Boy lyrics, though, were definitely added to grate on her nerves.

I walk to the back of the plane where she's sitting. The couch is made for two people, but she has one of her legs stretched out legs stretched out, and I don't want to sit on her. Instead, I sorta half sit/half perch on the edge of the couch.

"Look, Grey," I say, my back to her. "I just… We've been working together for seven, going on eight months. Shane, Jack, you and I… we're pretty much family now, aren't we? Like, you can talk to us about this stuff. Well, I'm not sure about Shane. But I know Jack would be willing to. And I definitely am. You don't have to keep stuff all bottled up. Okay?"

She doesn't answer. I turn to her, a little frustrated. "Are you still—"

She's asleep. My words die in my throat as I kinda just… watch her. (That's not creepy at all, I swear.) The leg that isn't extended is drawn up to her, and resting against it is the book and paper she grabbed earlier. The pen she was using now dangles from her limp fingers. Her head is resting against the window next to her, mouth slightly parted, and…

…are those tear tracks?!

Sure enough, there are two glistening tracks making their way down her cheeks. She was freaking crying. I've never seen her cry before. I kinda didn't think she was capable of crying, due to an accident during a mission that resulted in her being shot. Twice. But she didn't cry. She cussed a lot, sure, but she didn't cry.

I have no idea what to do. I feel like I should comfort her, but she's asleep. Should I wipe the tears off her face? Would that be weird?

I lean sideways, my elbow resting on the back of the couch. We're now face to face. She looks so peaceful. No scowl or smirk or glare or anything, just… peace. My mom says people look younger when they're asleep, but I've never actually seen the truth behind her words until now. Grey seems free of any worries or scars. It occurs to me that this is the most vulnerable I've ever seen her.

I reach a hand forward, gently using the back of my knuckles to brush away the tears on one side of her face, then cupping the other with the same hand and using my thumb to wipe away the sorrow.

The movement rouses her for a few seconds. I freeze as she shifts on the couch and moves so that her legs are curled up close to her body, and she leans into the couch. It's like she's still trying to pull away, even in her sleep. The book, pen, and papers fall to the ground in protest of her new position.

'Or she might be cold,' I think. The AC always maintains a cool, constant temperature, and she's the only one of us wearing a short sleeved shirt. I walk away to go find a blanket, then I drape it over her body.

"God, Grey," I whisper, "You don't even realize how amazing you are. You're smart, funny, crafty, reliable, beautiful…" I shrug. "I could go on and on. And you're definitely wanted," I say, thinking back to what that freaking jerk Sherlock said.

"And you're lonely. But if you'd just let me in then you wouldn't have to be, 'cause I…"

"I care about you. Like, I don't even know if it's love or not. It's this weird feeling in my chest whenever I think about you…" I trail off, not knowing how to put my emotions into words. This is so weird. I'm basically talking to no one here, since nobody else in the room is conscious. Strangely, though, that kinda makes me feel… better? Like, they're all asleep, so I can say whatever I want.

With that realization comes another. Sherlock mentioned that Grey had an aversion to males. I'd never really seen her directly interact with any girls; I just assumed that she maintained a large personal space bubble around everybody. But…

"Wait, are you uncomfortable around me because I'm a guy?" I pause at the implications of my question, and then anger sets in. Some douche tried to freaking… gah.

"I swear, I would never do anything to hurt you on purpose. I will hunt down every last bastard that ever laid a hand on you," I promise vehemently. It immediately goes to the top of my to-do list. I relax my fists, realizing I had clenched them in my anger, and rest them on my lap, willing myself to calm down.

I look up at her face again, talking directly to her (as if she was hearing me). "More than anything, I just want you to be safe and happy even though there's no guaranteeing the first one because we're spies, so we're never really safe. The happy part though… well, will being a shoulder to cry on work? Or maybe a 24-hour hug service? 'Milton Krupnick, firm-shouldered, reliable, and huggable. Come cry all you want!'" I chuckle, shaking my head. I reach up and absently brush her hair out of her face. "Now if only I could say all that to your… woah."

My pinkie touches the jugular vein on her neck, and her pulse is really fast. That shouldn't happen when someone is sleeping, even if they're having a nightmare or something. "Your pulse is really fast…" I put a hand on her forehead, concerned. It's not warm, but I should probably wake her up.

I move my hand from her forehead, meaning to gently shake her awake by the shoulders...

…and her eyes are open.

My heart leapfrogs into my throat. 'She was awake? Oh, god, oh, god, please tell me she didn't hear that, frick frack DIDDLY WACK SHE TOTALLY HEARD IT OH MY GOD.'

"Did you…"

She nods.

"Okay. Um…" Well, crap. "I'm just gonna go… over there." I start to stand up, but she grabs my hand to keep me from walking away. 'I'm dead. This is for sure the end of Milton Krupnick.'

She stands up, saying nothing, her face also revealing nothing. I brace myself for a punch or something, so I'm sufficiently surprised when I feel her hands my biceps. I'm confused as to what she's doing, before she grabs two fistfuls of my sleeves and buries her face in my neck.

I slowly bring up my arms to hug her as my shoulder and shirt get damp, holding her as her breathing gets more ragged and her shoulders shudder with silent sobs.

"It's okay, Grey," I say softly. I press a kiss to the top of her head and stroke her hair. "I've got you."

You guys. Help. I'm supposed to be studying. God, procrastination sucks. Whelp, I'm failing that quiz tomorrow. PLEASE review. The happiness that results from getting one will help to ease the crushing blow that a failing grade causes.

I was gonna include a scene where Milton gets revenge, but I liked the idea of ending it here. So. Bye.

Oh, and please forgive me Sherlock fans. I really didn't intend for him to be such a jerk, honest. It just... happened.

Until next time,

~BH