Rock wanted to let go of the wheel and sit back while the Dodge drove itself right into the harbor with his body still strapped inside.

He was brilliant, bloody brilliant. A real fucking genius. He had suffered almost a month of missing Revy so much that he hadn't slept until Dutch let him move into her apartment. He had spent all day, every day, thinking about her, until he finally figured out that he was totally and incurably in love with her. He had dreamed of the moment when he would see her again, and when that moment finally came, what did he do? He let her rattle his cage until he spat out his love confession like a wad of chewing gum on the street corner. He had just blurted it out. No preamble. No romance. Nothing that would make her do anything but glare at him like he'd just insulted her guns.

That glare of hers ripped him up inside. He could see a flash of it, vicious and hard, every time he blinked, like it had been burned into his retinas.

Had he really thought that she would soften at those hasty words? That she would reach her arms out to him like a child waiting to be held?

Well, yes.

God, he was so stupid. Rock felt like beating his head into the steering column.

And, to top it off, he had run away. When she stared him down like she wanted to rip out his throat, he panicked and fled like a coward in Benny's car. He loved her, and he left her. He had screwed it up. He blew his chance.

A watery death in the harbor sounded really tempting.

Rock took a breath, put both hands on the wheel, and made the last tricky turn onto his street.

He needed to stop being melodramatic. He had to calm down and stay on top of his game. Sure, he was upset that Revy's response hadn't been what he wanted, but he should have seen it coming. You couldn't come at Revy with a word like 'love' and expect her to know what to do with it. Hell, he should be counting himself lucky that she hadn't plugged him in the back.

Rock parked the car at the curb and reaffirmed his commitment to the plan. He would get Revy out of this pointless war, not because he wanted to have her but because he loved her.

With the car engine off, Rock could hear the static of gunfire from several streets down drift over the rooftops. He took a breath. Roanapur smelled like wet cigarettes and diesel exhaust, but beyond that, Rock could taste the clean notes of ocean brine and hibiscus blossoms. Like Revy, Roanapur had her own hard beauty if you cared to look for it. Rock adored the city because, for the only time in his life, he felt like he had found his place. Roanapur was the place where he and Revy belonged, so Rock planned to save it, too.

The whirl of scanners and hum of CPU fans greeted him at the office door. Rock tried not to trip on the cords the snaked across the living room's scuffed linoleum. The inside of the Lagoon's office had turned into a computer lab since Revy had left.

The light from an array of three LCD screens illuminated Benny's wild mop of blonde hair like a fuzzy halo. The frenetic movement of his fingers on the typing keyboard continued unabated while Rock lugged in the groceries.

"I'm back," Rock called out as he shoved the last case of beer into the fridge.

The stack of frozen pizzas found a place in the freezer, and one of Revy's disgusting protein shakes tumbled out when he tried to wedge the new tin of coffee into the cabinet. It bounced off the counter and rolled across the floor. Rock chased down the can before it disappeared under the couch, never to be seen again. The shake's can had a picture of a strawberry being electrocuted with lightning and "Rawberry!" written in jagged letters across the front label. It looked terrible. Rock popped the top, took a gulp, and made a face.

"How can she drink this stuff?" he complained.

Benny swiveled around him his chair. "Oh. Hey, Rock. Didn't hear you come in."

Rock shrugged. "Don't worry about it. How's the work?"

"Slow," Benny sighed. His neck made a disconcerting series of pops when he stretched. "Really slow. Janet's VPN is about as stable as quicksand, and there's a wicked solar flare that keeps messing up my satellite link. How did it go with Chang?"

"Not great. He offered to shoot me in the face if I ever came back," Rock admitted. The second sip of the warmish protein shake was just as vile as the first.

"Nice," Benny whistled. "You must be onto something with this scheme of yours if both the head honcho for the Triads and Miss Balalaika threatened you with death in the same day."

"Thanks. It's a real honor, let me tell you," Rock said. "Where are the others?"

Benny went back to typing as he talked. "Dutch is doing the nightly pick-ups. Eda came snooping around again. You would think that Yolanda would keep her locked in the Church with all the bullets buzzing around the city these days. But not Eda. She's convinced we're up to something, and she wants a cut. I gave Rotton fifty bucks and told him to keep her occupied down at the Yellow Flag. I'm hoping that she gets so blitzed that her hangover keeps her out of our hair all day tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath."

Rock nodded and choked down another sip of the shake.

Rotton's quirks took some getting used to, but even Dutch admitted that the pretty-boy bounty hunter had come in handy. Shenhua deposited him on Dutch's doorstep not long after the gun running incident. From what Rock could gather from her shrill and unceasing litany of insults, Rotton had finally worn out his welcome at her apartment, but for some reason, Shenhua felt badly about kicking his ass to the curb. She came by to find him work at about the same time that Benny had delivered a convincing speech on the need for more help. The timing matched up, so Rock agreed to take on the Wizard. The task was simple and direct: run the scanners, create the labels according to the guidelines, and file the hard copies. Once he got past the showy monologue, which Rotton launched into at the beginning of every day without fail, the Wizard kept a decent pace with a low error rate, which left Benny free to handle the back-end and databases. Best of all, Rotton worked for room and board (in this case, a make-shift bed on the office couch and all-you-can-drink milk), and he had shown up just in time to help the remaining members of the Lagoon Company cope with the new deadline. When Dutch had come back with his rounds to report that the Triads had offed Boris, Rock's master plan had suffered a severe scheduling re-write, which was why Benny was coding like a mad man instead of enjoying his nightly chat with Janet.

"You need any help?" Rock offered half-heartedly.

"Yeah, but not from you," Benny returned. "You're so tired that you can barely walk, and I don't have time to data-cleanse the system after you enter everything wrong." Benny paused and looked over his shoulder sheepishly. "Sorry. That sounded a lot meaner than I meant it. I must be tired, too."

"It's okay. I'm going to bed then," Rock replied.

Benny didn't answer, but Rock barely noticed. He dragged himself back to Revy's dingy apartment, dutifully brushed his teeth, shrugged off most of his clothes, and sank into bed.

Some hours later, he woke up to a familiar sound and an unfamiliar weight on the edge of his mattress.

Click, click. Click, click.

Rock sat up and blinked.

There she was, practically vibrating the mattress with all those uppers in her system. She didn't look at him. Her hands turned over the guns in her lap as she popped the clips, traded them, and shoved them back in place. A keychain dangled from her left thumb. Of course, she would have a key to her own apartment.

Click, click. Click, click.

"Revy?" Rock asked, suddenly wide awake.

Her guns winked wickedly at him in the pale streetlight leaking in through the bullet-hole-ridden blinds.

Rock remembered his nasty confrontation with Chang and felt panic well up inside his chest. Oh god. Had she come to kill him?

"I got a story for you," Revy said without a shred of inflection in her voice. "Once upon a time, there was a girl. She was unlucky as shit. Like she was cursed. Because everything and everyone bad in this world found her out, no matter where she tried to hide, and everything good took one look at her and ran off in the other direction.

"But the girl had a gift. She could make them all fall down. It was easy, so she did it all the time.

"One day, a bad guy turned out to be pretty okay to the girl. He took her in and made her strong. He taught her things, and he was nice to her. So what does the girl do?"

Click, click. Click, click.

"What does the girl do then, Rock?" Revy growled.

"I-I don't know," Rock stuttered. "Did Chang send you here?"

"The girl tried to fuck him, that's what," Revy continued in that dreadful monotone. "She thought that what's he wanted, and if she gave him everything that he wanted, he would keep her. But she was dead wrong. Because he didn't want her, not even a little. She had to pack up and get out the very next day."

"Revy," he began, but she silenced him with that infernal glare of hers.

"Right before he dumped her like a bag of fuckin' trash on someone else's doorstep, he told the girl something. She never forgot it. He said, 'Anyone who tries to fuck you will try to fuck you over, and falling in love is the fastest way to get yourself killed.'"

"That's not true," Rock protested weakly from under the suffocating weight of her cold stare.

"So in the end, Rock," Revy continued as if she couldn't hear him, "you can say anything that you want, but to me, love's just another four-letter word. You got that?"

Click, click. Click, click.

Rock took a fortifying breath and pushed forward on the bed until he could touch her shoulder. She didn't shove him away, but her body stayed as taunt as a line on a sail. Touching Revy felt like putting a hand on a wall- no warmth, no give, nothing. But Rock didn't expect her to bend to him, not yet.

"You're wrong," he said in a low voice near her ear. "I do love you."

The muzzles of her guns pressed into his chest as she turned on him with the speed of a viper.

"I dare you to say it again," she hissed.

"Just listen to me for a minute. You say that love is just a joke, and I don't blame you for thinking like that, but when I say that I love you, what I mean is that I am going to do anything that I have to do to keep you safe. I don't care what happens to me or the Triads or Hotel Moscow. I don't care about any of them right now. All I want is to get you out of this, alive."

Revy shook her head. The guns dug in deeper between his ribs. "That's real sweet and all, Romeo, but you're forgetting that I don't give a fuck. We're already dead, baby. Whether I finally stop breathing today or twenty years from now makes no difference to me."

"That's not true and you know it. You may not be afraid to die, but it doesn't mean that you want to give up. Listen to me. I've seen you happy. You were happy with Black Lagoon because you had the freedom to do whatever you wanted. You had people who cared about you and watched out for you, and you watched out from them, too. We stuck it out because we wanted to, and I will do anything to give that back to you. Why do you think that you're here? Maybe you wanted to Chang's on-call killer once, but you've changed."

"You don't know shit about me, never have. Think fast, asshole. Give me one reason why I shouldn't put a couple of bullets in ya?" Revy threatened, but her eyes stayed locked on the guns leveled at his chest. Revy almost always avoided eye contact away when she was lying. Almost always, but not always always. Rock decided to take the chance.

"Look at me," he pleaded.

"Fuck you," she ground out, but she refused to lift her gaze to his.

"Revy," Rock tried again.

The guns slipped into her lap, and then she was turning from him. Her eyes zeroed in on the door, and Rock had no choice. She would leave him at any second, so he seized her chin in both of his hands and jerked it up. Her eyes narrowed as she glowered at him, but Rock wasn't afraid of her temper anymore. He took his time when he spoke.

"I was asleep for my whole life, and you woke me up. You made me see things the way they really are, and now it's my turn to do the same for you. Wake up, Revy. You've had your eyes closed to the good things in this world for so long that you think they can't exist. It's not all horror, not even for you."

Revy smacked his hands away and snorted. "You think you're gonna be my good time, Rock baby? You been hanging around all this time because you wanna fuck me?"

Rock had meant to hold onto her, but he found himself pulling away. He knew to expect this- her anger manifest in words so sharp that they sliced - but it hurt so much to listen to her tear him down when he loved her so much. It was so hard to stretch out his hands to reach her when he knew that she would bite.

"I don't want anything like that," he tried to tell her. "I love you. It's different."

"No, it's the fuckin' same!" she spat.

Rock set his jaw. "Fine, don't believe me. You can pretend that I'm pathetic and stupid for feeling like this, but I'm calling your bluff. Tell me this, Revy: why did you come here tonight?"

She was so close, but he couldn't hold onto her. She bucked out of his grasp and scrambled to her feet. She took three certain steps to the door before her body listed to the side and she had to catch the door of his wardrobe to steady herself.

"Christ, I need a dose," Revy muttered to herself as she stumbled towards the door.

Rock knew that she was on pills again. She had probably slept less in the past few weeks than even him. Rock harbored no illusions about what dark cravings had kept her occupied since Chang had come for her. The Revy propped against the closet door was running on gun smoke, burnt coffee, and yellow pills. He knew how far out she was in those dark waters. She couldn't be reached with words, not just now, but that was okay. Rock was tired of talking and holding back and doing everything just so.

At long last, he found the courage to go across the room and collect her in his arms.

"Get off me," she menaced.

"No," he said.

She twisted in his grip, so Rock kissed Revy with what he prayed was the right amount of tenderness and confidence. When he moved to pull away, the whine of a complaint kicked up in the back of her throat, so he ducked in and kissed her again, harder this time, to make her understand.

Once he started, Rock didn't want to stop. Kissing Revy felt like slipping inch by inch into an almost unbearably hot bath. She tasted better than cold beer at the end of miserable day's commute in August. Kissing Revy was like...

She bit down on his lip, and it hurt so perfectly that Rock lost himself.

He kissed her until her mouth warmed and started to work against his and he felt her body relax. He kissed her while her protests turned into something more demanding and her hands tore into his clothes. He kissed her as she shoved him towards the bed, and when they missed it, he kissed her all the way down the long tumble to the floor. He kissed her until she broke free, breathless and gasping, and then he kissed every part of her that offered itself to his eager lips. He stopped her mouth with a kiss when she came under him, and moments later, her mouth pulled on his earlobe as he shuddered to an exquisite halt over her.

Then he couldn't kiss her anymore because his breath was coming in short, sharp pulls as his brain tried to process through the disbelief and the delight. He couldn't quite get over how, even now, his dark goddess was naked against his skin and tangled up in his arms.

"What now?" she said.

He responded by tugging her up and into the bed with him, where he wrapped her in the sheets and his body and kissed her to sleep.


Somewhere in the darkness, her pager chimed and shook. Revy tumbled out of Rock's bed and shuffled through the pile of clothing until she found it stashed in one of her pockets.

She pressed buttons until it stopped making so much noise.

"Damn," she breathed.

The numbers on the little machine weren't a phone number, but Revy knew it was from Chang, no questions asked. Instead of listing a callback number, the string of digits spelled out a simple message in code. "Report back. Now."

For a minute, she indulged her imagination and thought about ignoring the summons to stay right there with Rock until the morning. They could roll around in bed all day, maybe order in some pizza, and mess around until they were too sore to move. Rock would let her do and say anything that she wanted, and he would keep looking at her like she was something worth having. It would be the perfect day.

Right. Like that would happen.

Revy gave it two, three, hours tops before some Triad guys broke down the door and dragged her back to be the goddamn cavalry in the war against Balalaika. She had kicked in a few doors herself under Chang's command. She knew how it worked.

If the 14K didn't show up to wreck the party, Revy could bet all her ammo money that common sense would. She lived in a blood-soaked world, and Rock still turned green at the sight of a dead body. He believed in happy endings, and she believed that the end happened a long time ago and some sicko deity had forgotten to tell the rest of the world that it was over.

She and Rock were nothing alike, at all.

So they had fucked. Big deal. People did it all the time. She had done plenty of guys, and couple of them even said that they loved her too. It didn't change anything. It didn't mean anything.

Revy kept an eye on the sleeping Rock while she scrambled to get dressed in the dark. She carefully pulled the door shut without a sound when she left.

She told herself that she couldn't wake him up because she needed to hurry. Chang didn't like to be kept waiting. It was easier to just go without listening to some stupid speech about how he didn't want her to leave.

Because he would. If she woke him up to say good-bye, he would pitch a hissy fit. He would talk her ear off about how they could make it work and how love heals all wounds and blah blah blah. He wouldn't just let her walk away or make up some lame excuse about making mistakes and wanting to stay friends. Rock would beg for her to stay.

He would.


Rock heard the door close as he lay there faking sleep on his own bed with his heart hammering away inside him like a piston.

It felt like she took all of the air with her when she left. Rock would never get used to her leaving.

He stared at the ceiling and willed himself not to cry.

He was being selfish. Whatever happened to him didn't matter. As much as he loved her, Revy wasn't his to keep. He had no right to make her stay, but Chang sure as fuck had no right to make her go.

Rock thought about the way she smiled against his shoulder when she thought he was asleep. That smile was the real Revy. He just knew it.

Knowing the taste of Revy's kiss changed nothing. If anything, it strengthened Rock's fidelity to his plan. He would put her beyond this bloody business, even if he had to take her place in Roanapur's deadly masquerade.

He would give her a chance to figure out the mysteries of that smile.

He would.


A/N: For the record, this story would suck, yea verily, were it not for Amigodude.

For more of my endless prattling about this chapter, go to: unkeptsecret(dot)insanejournal(dot)com(slash)7734