A/N- Another night another chapter. Fair warning, this is sort of a filler chapter, meant to kind of transition to towards the endgame. Let me know what you think... And thanks again for all the reviews.

Chapter 10- The Set Up

I woke up with a jolt at 9:30 from a dream that had started out as a continuation of last night's activities and had ended with Piper holding a gun on me and laughing as she ran out the door… I shook my head hard, cursing my subconscious for giving me a news reel of my worst case fucking scenario. Sighing, I got out of bed, took a shower and got dressed in yesterday's clothes. By that time it was a quarter to ten. I left the hotel room and walked down towards the auto shop, slipping into the same alley I'd hid in to watch the place yesterday.

The place was closed up tight, the open sign in the office door flipped to closed. I waited until ten AM exactly and then crossed the street as casually as possible. No one was in the office, so I walked around the shop to the house behind it. It was a quaint little two story house. I saw the curtain in the front window twitch back as I rounded the corner from the front of the shop and the door was yanked open just as I was arriving on the porch.

I walked in the door and she shut it behind me. She was wearing a pair of slacks and a sleeveless blouse today, her hair tied back loosely. As soon as the door was closed she wound her hands around my neck and pulled me down, her lips meeting mine, slipping her tongue into my mouth almost before I was aware of what was happening, pushing me up against the door. I felt her hands tugging my shirt up and I groaned. Using every ounce of fucking willpower I possessed I managed to pull away from the kiss, "Piper..." I rasped.

She moved to my neck, running her lips over it down to my pulse point, "Yes... Alex?" she breathed.

Fuck fuck fuck... I going to get distracted, at least not yet. The dream I'd had had bothered me more than I wanted to admit. My head fell back against the door... she was tugging at the collar of my fucking shirt, laying open mouthed kisses along my fucking collar bone. I sucked in a breath... Willpower, God damn it...

"We have to resolve some things before we get too distracted, Piper," I managed.

"Things?" she said against my neck, her voice dripping with desire. One of her hands was still on my collar, the other one had snaked under my shirt and had been moving inexorably down towards my belt buckle... She stilled her movements as she spoke and I felt a lurch in my stomach at the loss.

"Yeah..." I tried to gather myself, force my heart rate to still, force the fire in my blood to cool... "Yeah... things... like what the fuck the plan is..."

My arms were wrapped around her waist. Her hand moved off my belt buckle, but then settled on my midsection, tracing a light, lazy pattern there. Not. Helping. Me. Fucking. Concentrate... I knew if we went any further than we already were, if she actually moved her hand either up or down a few inches, I wouldn't be able to stop, and we'd end up christening every flat surface in this fucking house... and I didn't think we had as much time as we would need to do that properly.

After a long moment, she sighed, her warm breath coasting over my neck, causing me to shudder. I sensed rather than saw her smile at that, "I know…" She moved her hands, reaching up and linking them behind my neck instead. I opened my eyes and risked a look at her. She was giving me a wry, resigned smile. She kissed me again, briefer, "You and your willpower..." she said, kissing my cheek. Then she sighed heavily, removed her hands from around my neck and turned, heading towards the kitchen, "Come on. There's coffee in the kitchen, and I have eggs and bacon leftover from breakfast."

It took me another long moment to calm down completely, to be sure that I wouldn't just pin her up against the icebox when I got into the kitchen.

It helped that I was remembering that I hadn't really eaten since lunch the day before. My stomach made a decidedly unsexy sound as I walked into the kitchen and sat at the table. Companionable silence fell as she went about fixing up two plates of breakfast and two cups of coffee.

We sat and ate, and I marveled again at how comfortable this felt, how natural. I hadn't had anything even approaching domesticity in my entire life. I had a hard time even imagining such a thing, but sitting here, eating breakfast at with her, somehow I could see my whole fucking life being like this. I shook the thought off. I was getting dangerously content with this way too fast… When I was finished eating, I slid my plate away and said, "You're not bad at that."

"What? Eggs and bacon?" she arched an eyebrow, "I'm going to assume you don't have much experience with cooking if you're impressed by eggs and bacon…"

I shrugged, "It's not really my thing. I've got a hot plate and a coffee percolator at home. That's it. Mostly I let sweaty ex-con short order cooks and old Russian lady mobsters do my real cooking for me."

She laughed, a delighted unforced thing that seemed to radiate light, "It's a wonder you're still amongst the living."

"My diet is the least of my worries in that area," I took a sip of the coffee, "No offense, but generally girls like you don't do a whole lot of cooking anyway. Didn't Bill have a cook while you were growing up?"

"Yes. He still does," she frowned thinking of her father, and I was suddenly sorry I brought him up, but she pushed past it quickly, "I learned to cook in college. My roommate was the daughter of a gourmet chef. She lived in Boston, and I'd go home with her some weekends. My mother was appalled that I had learned something so bourgeois as cooking my own food. It simply isn't done," she finished in an exaggerated mockery of an upper crust society woman's voice.

I barked a laugh at that, and her grin brightened, seemingly pleased with having caused me to do so. I sipped my coffee, glancing around, "So this is his brother's house?"

"Yes."

I sighed and got down to business, "And he'll be back when?"

"No earlier than two," she got up and poured the last of the coffee in to my mug, then began gathering up the dishes, taking to the sink where she washed them as we spoke.

"So what's the plan here, Piper? Now that I'm here, you run away with me instead of him?"

Her hands stilled on the plate she was washing and she looked over her shoulder at me, "Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"Sounding like I'm just… swapping the two of you out. I told you. You aren't him."

"No I'm not. I'm taller and I smell probably smell better. But that doesn't mean that it all won't come down to the same thing in the end."

"I wouldn't abandon you. I wouldn't leave you."

"You've known me for less than a day, Piper…" I said softly.

She finished washing the plates and put them on the drying rack next to the sink. Then she wiped her hands off on the dish towel and approached me slowly, her face serious. "It doesn't matter. I know how I feel about you," she said quietly. She slid on to my lap before I could register what she was doing and kissed me again, hard. My hands automatically went to her hips, but I could tell she wasn't trying to start anything (I'd known her for less than a day and I could already read her better than anyone I'd ever met… what the fuck…), this was a kiss meant to reassure me, to prove something. She parted after a moment and rested her forehead on mine, "And I can tell you feel the same way, Alex," her voice was barely a whisper, "just trust your gut…"

We sat there like that for a long moment… I sighed. She was right. I felt exactly the way she said she did. But my mind wasn't built to just accept things. I trusted my gut… to a point, but when it came to something like this. I had no experience with it. I couldn't trust any fucking thing. I had to think it over, turn it around in my head. She was asking me to go against my instincts and just accept something as insane as some crazy, powerful connection between us… Finally, I said, "Okay…"

I would fucking accept this for what it was, because who the fuck knew how long this would last. Even if she was going to screw me over, I could at least enjoy this feeling for the moment. It's not like I had a whole lot of choices. What else was I going to do? Leave her to Eddie? Call Polly?

She moved so that her head was in the crook of my neck, and wound her arms around me, and we just held one another. I closed my eyes and just let the unfamiliar feeling of contentment wash over me.

God I was turning into such a fucking sap...

After a couple of minutes she pulled back, kissed me again softly, habitually, and then stood up. "Let's go upstairs. I don't want to risk some delivery boy or nosy neighbor walking by and seeing us through the front window," she gestured to the window looking out over the porch.

We went up to the second floor, which was a short landing with three doors off of it, two bedrooms and a bathroom. She led me into the larger of the two bedrooms, which was actually quite sizable. It had a queen sized bed in it, and a couch. There was a bathroom on the far side of the bed. She sat down on the couch and reached over into a box on the side table for a cigarette. I produced my lighter and lit hers, then took out one of my own. I sat down on the couch and she stretched her long legs out so they were resting on my lap.

Now it was her turn to ask questions, "How did you get here?"

"My friend loaned me her car. It's not exactly inconspicuous but it goes fast."

"That's all I'm looking for right now," she was staring at me intently, "As for the money… My half is easy. I can have it in no time. As we discussed last night, it's Eddie's that's the problem."

"And you need it?"

"If I didn't need it, I would've left long ago. I was going to leave him a little for his trouble but…" her hand went to her bruised cheek and she set her jaw, "…fuck him."

"So vindictive…"

"He's lucky I'm leaving him with all his limbs…" she said quietly.

"Didn't realize you had such a temper…"

"I don't have a temper…" she said, indignant, "I have a passion for justice..."

I chuckled slightly at the expression on her face, then said, "And how exactly do you plan on getting his half?"

"I've got some ideas about that…" she said quietly, sliding her eyes to me and then away towards the door, "If things work out the way I want them to, I can have the money by tonight."

"And then?"

"Once we have it, we can go."

"And what about Eddie?" I frowned, "I can't see him being real happy about having to part with 'his' money..."

"He won't be," she confirmed.

"So?"

"He trusts me. He'll let his guard down at some point. This house is full of blunt, heavy objects," her voice was flat and calm.

I raised an eyebrow, "And he won't come after us?"

"If I hit him hard enough we'll be so far away by the time he wakes up he won't be able to."

"And his brother?"

"There are two of us, Alex," she said quietly, her eyes on mine, "And a lot of blunt, heavy objects..."

"You want me to brain some innocent guy?"

"He's not Eddie, but that doesn't make him innocent," she said darkly, "Neither one of them is an angel. And it's not like you're murdering him."

I ran a hand over my face. This was just getting better and better. "Okay, so the Mars brothers are knocked out, we take the money, get in my friend's car and drive?"

"Yes."

Well, that sounded way too fucking easy... "Where to?"

"For now? Mexico, as originally planned. My father doesn't have any influence there, neither does Kubra. Larry told me he and the Mexican cartels never did get along," she had a contemplative look in her eye, "Once we're there, we'll have enough to go wherever we want."

"A place where we can actually be together? Cause pretending fuckin' wears on me, you know? I wasted a lot of my time when I was younger trying to do it, and all it did was make me angry all the time, so these days I don't do it if I don't have to. And it's fine when I'm just," I waved my hand, "… having fun with people who don't matter… they're in and out of my life, not worth risking anything for… I don't have relationships is that it would all be… concealing things… hiding all the time. I've seen people do that. It's so fuckin' exhausting, and it almost always fucks the whole thing up. If I was with you, I'd want to be with you…"

She leaned forward and took my hand from where it was resting lightly on her leg, just above the knee, "I know."

"What's the end game here, Piper? When we get out of here, where do you see us going? What do you see us doing? You're escaping something you don't want. But me… I can't say that my life is sunshine and daisies all the time, but I have people I care about. If I was going to leave them forever, I would have to know it was worth it…"

She smiled at me, her thumb was tracing soft circles on the palm of my hand, "Paris… I was there a few summers ago with Cal and my mother. My mother was sober for once, and it was actually… it was actually a lovely trip. People there… people there can be who they are..."

I almost felt like laughing out loud, trying to picture myself in Paris. I was so unrelentingly fucking American it wasn't even funny. Joe had served in the war, and he'd told me stories about the French. All stuck up pretentious assholes according to him. But I thought that maybe I could handle that. Maybe as long as I was with Piper… Jesus, I really was turning into a fucking sap…

I felt Piper's eyes on me and I looked over at her. She was doing that thing again, the thing she'd done in the bar, examining me with soft, fascinated eyes like I was the most intriguing thing she'd ever seen, like she was trying to memorize everything about me. No one had ever looked at me like that before and it stirred up an entire storm of emotions in my chest that I wasn't even a tiny bit prepared to deal with…

Before I could go any further down that particular rabbit hole, Piper moved suddenly. Shifting her legs and leaning forward, she grabbed my face in her hands and kissed me again, letting go a low, breathy laugh that disappeared into my mouth as I opened it to allow her full access. This wasn't like the one in the kitchen, this one was soft, sensual… this one was trying to start trouble, and I couldn't think of any reason not to go with it. We'd made a plan. Maybe it was a half-assed plan, but it wasn't like we could get anything more solid right this every second…

And at this particular moment, running was the last thing I wanted to do. Piper's kisses were leisurely, she was taking her time like we had forever, like she was getting to know everything about me. There was heat building in my core, but I didn't want to rush this, not like all those other girls. Piper was different… even after last night I felt like there was more to know. I wanted to explore all of her, to learn everything about her… I grasped her hips and shifted her so she was straddling me and I marveled at how perfect it felt. My left hand moved up to tangle in the blonde curls at the nape of her neck, angling the kiss even deeper, while my right slowly untucked her shirt and made its way underneath… she sucked in a breath as my fingers skimmed along the skin of her midsection and I grinned against her mouth as I started moving up and up until I hit the underside of her bra and…

Suddenly, the door to the bedroom crashed open… "PIPER?" yelled an angry male voice, "What the fuck is going on Piper?!"

We both froze. Piper met my eyes. She grimaced and breathed, "Eddie..."

My eyes widened as I looked over her shoulder at the angry asshole in the doorway... Oh shit...

A/N- There you go. I'm not personally sure exactly how happy I am with this one, but it's definitely getting us through to the next one... Thoughts?