Let's Be Crazy
Lance was laid on his bed, staring at the ceiling, counting the rotations of the fan as it spun. The counting didn't stop the flashes of blue, the sounds of gasps, the feel of soft skin and wet lips. The spinning of the fan didn't ground him to London, didn't keep his mind in the right country, didn't make him focus on his job that he was meant to be prepping for. If he didn't focus it could mean someone getting hurt - or killed - but he just couldn't do it.
He knew it had been a mission, she'd admitted as much as she got dressed the morning after, and he was insane to still want her after she used him like that.
He never said he was sane.
Every kiss was part of her mission, every smile, every touch. It made him sick. (He didn't care.) The fan kept spinning, his mind kept flashing blue eyes, pink lips, soft skin. Her laugh, her smile, the way she could out snark him and bat her lashes so innocently. Another rotation of the fan blades, he could never forget the taste of her lips, the feel of her skin, her wet heat surrounding him.
The fan kept spinning, spinning, spinning.
Lance jumped up, already dialling his phone and grabbing a duffel bag from the corner of his closet as he demanded a ticket on the first plane to Washington D.C when the airline answered. He didn't pay attention to what he packed, he didn't really care, his body was just moving on autopilot as he argued his way onto a plane - like Hell he couldn't make it to the airport in time to board, they clearly didn't know how much he needed this. He needed it far too much for it to be healthy.
He didn't care.
The first time he met her it was a warm Summer night, Bobbi was on the pier, facing away from him. Even from the back he knew she was gorgeous; long blonde hair, curves in all the right place, tall. So tall it made him heady because it turned out he had a thing for taller women. Maybe it wasn't that she was taller, but it was because she was just her.
No-one had been more shocked than him when he asked her out and she said yes, her blue eyes dancing with amusement as he spluttered on his drink. Someone that beautiful was out of his league - not that he was a dog or anything, but a woman like that was out of everyone's league. The kind of woman that was built in fantasies and felt too good to be true.
He'd find out later that she really was too good to be true.
Their first date is low key and he hates that he can't take her somewhere worthy of her. Franny's Saloon is a little place in California that overlooks the beach and is designed for a country-western theme that baffles him - whose idea was it to put a country-western restaurant on the beach in California? But, Bobbi grins as she orders a beer and a burger and it kind of turns him on that she's not afraid to eat something of substance on the first date.
They eat burgers, drink beers - piss poor American beer that it is - and before they leave he can't help but buy a tacky little keyring from the front counter. Bobbi rolls her eyes as he takes her keys from her hand and attaches the new Franny's Saloon keyring to the bunch. He tells if she wants to get rid of it, she has to give it to him on their next date.
It's stupid and corny and he doesn't expect it to work, but she agrees to a second date.
She agreed to a second date, and a third date, and it's the fourth date when he discovers who she really is. The fourth date when someone tries to attack him for the information he's guarding and she starts to fight them off along side him.
It turns him on more than it should.
When the fight is over though, he demands answers. They fight and they're both yelling as she admits that he was a mission, but the lines got blurred for her. She admits she's S.H.I.E.L.D, she admits she just wants the information he was guarding.
Yelling and screaming and it all a lie? The dates and the kisses and the sex? The Franny's Saloon keyring being traded back and forth after each meeting as an assurance they'd see each other again. Was it all just the mission?
Did any part of her care about any part of him?
Yelling descended into kissing, kissing turned into shoving her against the nearest wall, kissing against the wall ended up back in his hotel room.
Lance knew three things when he woke up the next morning; Bobbi was gone - was that even her real name? - his information was gone - big surprise, she'd only been working him to get at it - he was an idiot. Because he wanted to see her again. He found out a fourth thing later; the Franny's Saloon keyring was gone from his keys.
She wanted to see him again too.
Sitting on the plane, on the excruciating flight from London to California, he knew he was insane. He had to be, he was going back to the woman who had lied to him, deceived him - and made him love her.
He'd tried dating since leaving the United States, tried casual sex, tried anything to take his mind off the duplicitous blonde. But, he didn't want them. They were good, they were fine, they were nameless, faceless women that he didn't care about. He didn't want good, he wanted insane and lies and fighting.
A week later after using up all his contacts and favours searching for the pretty, tall blonde who may or may not be named Bobbi, and who may or may not even be in the country still, Lance found his way back to Franny's and stopped short.
Sitting at a booth in the back with two beers in front of her, staring expectantly at the door was crazy, insane, lying, duplicitous.
Bobbi.
"Heard you've been looking for me." Her eyes were just as blue, her skin just as clear, her voice just as mesmerising.
"God knows why, but yeah." He sat across from her, she nudged one of the beers in his direction.
"I know why." Bobbi leaned across the table, blue eyes sparkling in the dim lighting.
"Yeah?" He took a long drink of his beer. Still cold. "Why's that?"
"Same reason I'm here." She took a sip of her own drink and his eyes tracked her every movement. "Good isn't good enough anymore." She slipped around to his side of the booth. "You can't eat, can't sleep, can't focus..." With every word she got closer until he could feel her warm breath on his face. "Can't-"
He kissed her. The scent of her perfume was intoxicating, her breath was warm, her lips taste liked beer. His mind was finally clear enough to focus, and he was focussing on the best thing in the world.
Now that the truth was out, they didn't do dates. Dates were too mainstream apparently; Bobbi prefered to disappear in the night - a note taped to his forehead saying she had a mission - and reappear a week late in his hotel room.
He demanded to know why she'd left, why she hadn't told him. He'd been worried sick, surely she could have at least told him she was leaving? He ranted and glared and Bobbi waited until he was nearly finished before taking her top off and he promptly shut up.
When she left again in the morning it was to him calling after her retreating back. "Don't die out there!" As if that alone would be enough to bring her back to him.
It worked so he kept saying it. Mostly for his own peace of mind.
The wedding had been the two of them in a court house with a couple of S.H.I.E.L.D agents and a couple of his fellow mercs as witnesses. They didn't have a wedding night in a fancy hotel, no honeymoon on an exotic island - he was thinking Tahiti - instead they had a gunfight with a group of rebels who were trying to steal something S.H.I.E.L.D said was dangerous.
He didn't get to know what it was, what it did, who wanted it, or why. Bobbi just said she had something to do real quick after getting a call on her work phone. They were married now though - for all of two hours - and he refused to let her go off without him.
He ended up with a concussion and seven stitches above his left eye.
They were still bloody and bruised and covered in sweat when they made it to a hotel, checked in under fake names - Mr. and Mrs Taylor - and tumbled into bed. The sheets stained red with blood, the sweat sticking to his skin uncomfortably, he didn't even get to have sex on his own wedding night!
If he'd thought anything would be different when they were married, he was wrong. Bobbi still left in the middle of the night half the time - he'd wake to a cold bed and call to tell her not to die out there - he still crashed her top-secret missions.
They fought; they yelled, they hurled insults - he ducked when she aimed a gun at him just as a bullet hissed by where his head had just been.
They kissed, they laughed, they had lazy Sunday mornings - the sex was amazing, but then, that had never been a problem with them.
"You married to me, Love, not SHIELD-" They were fighting again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
"Well, maybe I shouldn't be!" Bobbi yelled back.
Lance froze, he felt sick, like his whole world had just tilted drastically and he couldn't get his footing. It all took less than a second; one second they were yelling and fighting and he could swear he was going insane because it was the highlight of his week - because it was the only time he'd seen her in a week.
The next second there's a sharp pain in his forehead that barely registers once he notices that its her wedding ring that had hit him.
Bobbi is gone by the time Lance bends down to pick up the ring and the apartment is suddenly too cold, too empty, too big and too small at the same time.
Because he's afraid that this time might really be the last time. It might really be the end.
When the divorce papers appear in his mailbox he gets drunk; he goes to the nearest pub and drinks his weight in beer before tossing his ring into the river Thames and going back to his cold, empty, messy flat and signing the papers.
They're never far from each others lives. His jobs intertwine with S.H.I.E.L.D more than he'd like. His friends have become friends with her friends. He still keeps in touch with Izzy and Mack and Idaho and Izzy's sister Jane - they all say Bobbi is doing fine and he knows they tell her the same if (when) she asks about him.
Six months after their divorce is finalised she's in his apartment and he knows it's not the end. Because he's crazy - crazy about her - and insane, and he's been having trouble eating and sleeping and focussing.
It's been six months, three weeks, four days, seventeen hours and thirty four minutes since he last saw her. Since she threw her wedding ring at his head. Since their last fight. Since he'd been able to function as a human being.
Six months, three weeks, four days, eighteen hours and two minutes since he'd last held her.
Six months, three weeks, four days, eighteen hours and three minutes since she'd said she loved him.
Lance could finally breathe again - it was such a foreign experience to feel his chest un-constricting after so long - when Bobbi pushed him against the wall and kissed him.
Something bad must have happened for her to be there, but Lance doesn't know what so instead he kisses her back.
Bobbi is gone in the morning with a note taped to his forehead. The neat little block letters on the note tell him not to die.
Lance gets a call an hour after he wakes up telling him to switch on the news and his chest resumes the constriction he'd been feel for the last six months. S.H.I.E.L.D was destroyed, buildings were blown up, news anchors were condemning any and every S.H.I.E.L.D agent in the world.
Bobbi.
But, no-he'd seen her only last night, she was okay. Okay was a relative term, but she was alive at least.
"Where's Bob?" Is the first thing Lance when he manages to get hold of Izzy two weeks later. Izzy doesn't answer immediately and it twists his gut uncomfortably. "Just-is she okay?"
"She's okay." Izzy confirms and he lets out a breath. "They're hunting us, Lance." And he knows it's serious because she never uses his first name. "So we're hunting them first."
"We could use a hand." Mack is there too, a shotgun laying across his lap.
"What about B-"
"Bobbi is doing something else." It's not the first time he's heard that. A weak excuse that always left him uneasy when they were married. But, they're not married now and he shouldn't care. Except he does. "You in?" Izzy asks and he lets out a sigh.
They're his friends, they're Bobbi's friends. Izzy tosses him something and his hand automatically catches it before he looks at it. Franny's Saloon. "I'm in." Lance agrees, running his thumb over the tarnished metal of the keyring.
Seven months, four days, eleven hours and forty-eight minutes after Lance last saw Bobbi - in his apartment before he fell asleep with her in his arms - he sees her again.
She's wearing a horrible black and red outfit, her hair is brown - brown! - and he knows he's gone crazy.
Because it's been seven months, four days, eleven hours and forty-eight minutes since he last saw her. It's been one year, one month, one week, six days, sixteen hours and twenty-six minutes since he signed the divorce papers. He still has the ring she threw at his head so very long ago and she's never looked more beautiful - even with brown hair.
"I know what it is." Lance brings Bobbi a beer.
"What is it?" She regards him with an amused stare and a smirk on her lips.
"There might be good or good enough." He takes a drink of his beer - proper beer, not American stuff - before continuing. "But, good and good enough are easy and safe. We're crazy, Love, only thing to explain it." Bobbi keeps her eyes on him as she sips her own beer, letting him talk. "And maybe I should get Doctor Garner to look at me 'cause I want crazy, Bob. I want crazy with you, so what do you say?" He slips over to her side of the table. "Want to be crazy with me?"
"We've always been crazy, Lance." Bobbi grinned before kissing him.