I decided to make a sequel to Not Really His. Firstly because I like them, secondly because there are not enough fics of these two.
Enjoy...
She's hesitant to let him stay when his face first comes across the security system she set up in the apartment. She watches curiously as he looks at the panel and the flashing numbers and doesn't budge. Typical Blomvkist.
He looks around the entryway of her hidden apartment and shrugs his shoulder in the universal motion of 'I give up'. He turns to exit and the alarm goes silent and the panel flashes from red to green indicating the code was correct.
He shakes his head and looks right into the camera she set up and gives it a sheepish half smile. She finds her mouth tilting up in response and angrily closes her phone to block out his hopeful face.
Lisbeth tells herself she didn't care. The apartment was bound to be found sooner rather than later and Mikael was a damm fine investigator, so she's not surprised it was him that located it. She tells herself that she doesn't care if he lies low there. It's not like it's her real house or anything and he was a sort of friend and she'd do the same for Mimi.
She occasionally opens her phone to keep track of him, not to see what he's doing per say but more to make sure that he's not snooping around. Her things are still there and she likes her privacy.
He doesn't do much. For being a journalist he has remarkable self control. He doesn't go through her closet unless he needs a blanket. He doesn't check her cupboards unless he's making coffee or snacking.
He steers clear of her bed only when the couch becomes too uncomfortable for his large frame and his back can't take it anymore and even then he only sleeps on top of the blankets and always makes it immediately after he gets up.
Maybe he thinks she'll get mad if he leaves it undone. Which she will, she likes things in a certain order and she's being generous enough by letting him stay there and he knows it.
Every morning he waves at the camera and most mornings she sees it and scowls at him for being so goddamm cheerful while abusing her hospitality. He falls into a routine of several cups of coffee and whatever junk take out he runs into on the way back to the apartment after working with Erika and several hours of typing that involve trying to find out where she is.
She destroys his research every night mostly to keep him away and sometimes in spite when he shows up in the same clothes because she's sure that he's been with that blond moron all night, even though he has a perfectly good place to come home to, and he curses her under his breath every morning when he sees he has to start again but still doggedly logs back on.
This is the only time she genuinely smiles.
It's been a few weeks of this and she's become used to sharing her space with him.
The feed of the camera shows he's sitting at her table typing away furiously and drinking what appears to be a third cup of coffee and his lips are firmly wrapped around a lit cigarette. She can't tell which number it is, since the ashtray is full.
She frowns momentarily at the screen because she's rubbing off on him and that makes her close the phone and go back to hunting for her father. She doesn't care what the stupid man is doing anymore.
Lisbeth allows two days to pass before she checks on him again. This time he's eating a cold slice of pizza with the third cup of coffee. He's not wearing a shirt and he looks like he hasn't been sleeping.
Dark circles haunt his eyes and his face looks haggard. His hair is disheveled and she can easily imagine him running his hand through it in exasperation. She doesn't dwell on why this picture is quickly replaced by her running her hands through his hair as he moves above her in a chilly cabin on the Vanger estate.
This time she throws the phone across the room and swears she will not check up on him again. That does not stop her from sending him an email that very curtly tells him to get sleep cause he looks like crap.
She gets no response, not that she looks for one and goes to sleep with visions of his too tired eyes and a mouth full of cigarettes that burn when he kisses her.
Getting Mikael out of her mind and strip him out of her life for good becomes a necessity when it dawns on her how much she likes watching him drink his coffee and how she has to imagine the clacking of keystrokes to fall asleep.
This realization comes on the day she's heading out to her father's farm. Lisbeth cannot be distracted on a day like this. This might be the only chance to kill the old man and she will not let some misguided man who thinks she needs saving to deviate it her from her goal.
As a parting gift she leaves some information about her father's connections in his server and send him another brusque email that reminds him that he'll never get sleep if he continues screwing everything that moves.
She shoves her clothes into a duffel bag and throws open drawers looking for the cigarette case Mimi gave her. She hears a clatter and watches it bounce under her bed with barely controlled annoyance.
Lisbeth drops to the ground and reaches for it but her fingers graze the edge of something else. She presses herself flatter against floor and sees the phone that connects her to Mikael.
She's about to leave it there but a flash of Mikael's tired face prompts her to reach for it against her will. She sits against the bed and opens it roughly, daring it to work. The screen is cracked but she can still see the apartment. She huffs but still searches for Mikael.
He's sitting in front of his laptop and staring at his computer in deep concentration as usual but something about his posture is very off and its clear that whatever he's watching bothers him.
Intrigued by this new side of him, Lisbeth lights a cigarette and continues to observe him. She notices that his body is tense and his hands are locked into fists that turn his knuckles white.
His head turns away from the screen and she thinks that she'll send him an email telling him to stop viewing whatever he is viewing but before she can pull herself up and get her laptop, he turns back to screen and she drops her cigarette on the rug in surprise at the twin trail of tears sliding down his face.
Its only when it registers how wrong it is that he is crying in her kitchen that she looks about the rest of the room. The cup he normally drinks from is on the floor turned on its side with coffee leaking out of it and the ashtray is smashed to pieces on the opposite wall.
Which explains the stub of a cigarette clenched in his teeth burning closer and closer to his mouth. He spits it out and practically leaps out of his chair knocking it backwards onto the floor violently.
She tries not to jump at the uncharacteristic outburst but she can't help being caught off guard by his behavior. For a moment she watches as he grabs his laptop and picks it up and it occurs to her that he's about to throw it but at the last moment he puts it down, rushes to the sink and vomits.
She raises the audio on the phone and hears herself screaming.
Shock courses through her for two seconds then it's quickly overcome by rage. Rage at him for finding her hidden disc and its contents, rage that he watched her be defiled without her permission and leaving her no way to prepare for the horror of someone else seeing what that bastard, Bjurman had done to her.
But if she's honest most of the rage is directed at herself. Because underneath the anger she is worried he'll judge her. That she'll have changed in his eyes, become somehow tainted by that pig of a guardian and she hates that she cares how Mikael will act around her if he ever lays eyes on her again.
Mikael wipes his eyes harshly, stalks to the computer and yanks out the disc. His hands begin to bend it and she yells out, "don't destroy it!"
She thinks he might have heard her even with the distance between them because he immediately stops bending it and instead holds it away from him in disgust. She's about to close the phone again not being able to bare what he really thinks of her but she is halted by the breaking of his voice.
Mikael Blomvkist, hardened and formally disgraced journalist, is sobbing openly. It's not loud or noisy but she knows the sound of trying to hold yourself together. She knows that sound better than most.
She dares a look at the screen and he is no longer crying though the angry light has not left him. He's leaning on the counter with his head buried in his hands and his body is hunched over in defeat.
He stays like this briefly then pulls himself together and becomes the strong man she knows. Mikael carefully puts the disc back in its hidey-hole and she is grateful that he is attempting to make it look like he never saw it.
He cleans up the coffee and serves himself more. He rinses the sink several times and washes out his mouth a half dozen times.
He downs the now cold coffee and goes to lie down on her bed. He undoes it completely and unknowingly curls up with her favorite pillow and whispers her name before falling into exhausted sleep.
She closes the phone for the last time and drops it on the floor and smashes it with her boot. She gets on her motorcycle and takes off but the memory of his helpless tears stay with her long after she is shot and buried in a shallow grave.
They come back and haunt her as she lays against the barn door slowly bleeding to death. She looses consciousness with his face as her only comfort and wakes slowly to find that same face looking down at her.
The tears are making slow paths down his cheeks again and she thinks they make his eyes shine brighter. He doesn't bother to hide them this time but she's concentrating on his lips, which are saying something that she can't process.
He gives up and instead presses kisses to the side of her face before cradling her against him. She sighs and all she can feel is his warm leather jacket pressed against her and his hands caressing her hair soothingly.
The paramedics come and he reluctantly gives her up but she sees that her blood is tattooed all over his clothes and face. He belongs to her.
Mikael Blomvkist became property of Lisbeth Salander the first time he brought her breakfast and she didn't tase him. She let him in because deep down where there is still some hope that she's not as broken as she thinks, Lisbeth would like very much to belong to him.
Not that she'd tell him that. He doesn't need to know anymore of her secrets than he already does. She's not his partner. She is something more special than that and she wouldn't have it any other way.
