A-Train was scheduled to meet with us on the same day as the dinner with my parents. Not only that, but we had a meeting with MM, Frenchie, and Kimiko that morning. All in all, nerve wracking.

I can't say that getting ready in the morning was all that worrisome. First of all, I woke up wrapped in Billy's arms. That made the day better from the get go. Then the shared shower, the slow steady wake up routine that we'd made our new normal. I grabbed a change of clothes for dinner, shaking my head when Billy tried to talk me into wearing the same dress from the auction with an exaggerated eye roll he reminded me that he wanted to touch me in that damn dress.

"And you will," I offered, grabbing a pair of heels to hook over the hanger of my more casual outfit. "Just not during a forced meal with my parents inside the stuffiest fucking place you'll ever have the trauma of sharing a meal within."

"Veronica," damn him and that voice of his. "You love me, so you'll wear it to make this evening more bearable, isn't that right, love?" I snorted.

"We're going to this meal because of you, Mr. Butcher," I grinned up at him as he pulled on his coat, over his ever present Hawaiian shirt. "I think a healthy dose of payback for your impulsive and impish decision in agreeing to this little endeavor is appropriate." Handing him the hanger holding my dinner outfit, I pulled on my own suit jacket. "Think of this as your punishment."

It was his turn to snort. "Turnabout, Ronnie," I grabbed my keys and tossed him the extra house key that I'd insisted my mother leave behind the last time we were in the same room. "What's this?" He held it up, dangling from one finger, but grinning like the cat that ate the canary.

"Your key?" I shrugged and took the hanger from him. "Come on, we're going to be late and the others are going to make me do the walk of shame."

"Shame?" His eyebrow arched as he locked up behind us with his new key. "Come now, Doc, being with me ain't shameful."

I was laughing at him as he held open the passenger's door to his car. "You know precisely what I mean, Billy." I was buckling in when he joined me in the car, carefully hanging my spare clothes in the window behind his seat. "They don't know, they might suspect, but they don't KNOW."

"'Bout time the cat's out of the bag then," he was grinning, and I felt my pulse kick up a notch. Dear God, how did he manage that with a simple smile? "'Sides, Mallory is gonna be there too, might as well get everyone on the same page, right?"

Shit, Mallory. Technically NOT my superior, but still over me in all the ways that mattered. "Yeah, same page," I agreed, thinking that the worse that could happen would be losing my job. I'd still have my other credentials to fall back on, I tried to convince myself that it would be survivable, regardless of the outcome. And then I remembered the planned dinner date with my parents. Fuck the look on my mom's face if I lost my position at the CIA. Damn it.

We beat the team and Mallory to the office. As soon as we were inside the room, with the door shut behind us, Billy pressed me into the back of it and kissed me until I was panting. If I could have crawled up his body, I think I would have, but just as soon as I was trying to pull his head back down to mine, there was a knock on the door that I could feel against my back. Shit. His eyes were dark, his lips were wearing more of my lipstick than I must have been, and his hair was even spikier than usual from my fingers pulling on it.

"Better answer the door," his voice was husky, and I was tempted to ignore the world, until another knock came, along with a heavily accented voice asking for entrance. Shit.

"Fix your mouth," swallowing hard, I smiled as he used the pad of his thumb to fix mine first. Watching as he tried, without success to get the dark lipstick off his mouth, I reached up and he bent down so I could help. "There," he leaned down further and kissed me again, "they're gonna break the door down if we don't open it soon." I was smiling against his lips, loving that he found it as hard to break apart as I did.

Another knock, then MM's voice was calling out. Damn it. "Hang on to your tits," Billy offered, hand on the knob as I moved out of the way. He yanked the door open and glared at three members of his team. "What's the fucking hurry?"

MM just stared at him and I had to look away to keep from laughing. Billy's hair, his mouth, hell, even his fucking coat was out of sorts. Who knew kissing could do all that? Frenchie's smirk grew as he too took in their fearless leader and Kimiko didn't hold back her quiet giggle. Fuck a duck.

"Did we interrupt something?" Frenchie's eyebrow quirked and that did it, I huffed out a laugh of my own. "We could always take a tour of the building and come back. You would have to be quick, but we could-"

"Shut it," Billy barked, and then he was beside me. "Get it all out of your system, for fuck's sake, we're human." His hand took mine and I watched MM's eyes almost glow from how right he'd been. Damn it. "Well? Anyone?"

"What'd I miss?" A new head popped in the doorway and I smiled. Hughie Campbell, as he lives and breathes. "Are you holding-"

I could almost FEEL Billy's eyes roll. "Yeah, I am, is that a problem?" It came out gruff and annoyed, but I knew that for Billy, Hughie was almost like a surrogate little brother. "The fuck are you doin' here? Thought you'd wait and come with your-"

"I wanted to see everything on my own first," Hughie, who had walked in the office through the propped open doorway. "Do a little recon-"

The term, sounding off and awkward out of the lanky young man's mouth set off the others. And I smiled as I watched the three older men, and even the young silent woman riff on Hughie. Pulling my hand from Billy's I moved to sit in my chair, thinking that they all needed this reunion and since Mallory hadn't arrived yet, they had the time to spare.

I watched how Billy and his group interacted. The teasing, but also the seriousness that they took their roles in this new goal. Mallory came soon after I'd sat down and took time to watch the group, helping herself to Billy's chair, and waiting for the updates that we had, along with the reports that Frenchie and MM could give us about the MIA Supes.

I greeted the older woman and gave control of the room over to her, after she shut the door behind her. Mallory gave us a non-update about Alistair's death, that the church was reporting simply that he had gone dark and his whereabouts were unknown.

"It would appear that they'll eventually say he was killed in a unforeseen accident, and then name a new head for their organization." I started to ask if we had any idea who was in place to take over, but she shook her head and told us they were keeping that information locked down. "It's a miracle that I even found out about his murder," she sighed. "That 'church' is far harder to crack than Vought."

Which brought us to the updates from our crew that were basically going state by state to double check the last known whereabouts. Frenchie, Kimiko, and MM had made some progress, finding out that some of the supes were confirmed dead, and finding new leads for others.

Hughie mostly stayed quiet, but he looked surprised to learn that Vought had LOST supes. "Wait, there are more out there that haven't been named?"

"Not named, not tagged." Billy confirmed from where he'd perched on my desk, close enough to tempt me to touch him. "And don't get Ronnie started on the dead babies."

I was focused on Hughie's face, turning slightly green, so I missed how the others seemed to shift slightly when Billy called me Ronnie.

"Ronnie?" It was Mallory, and it wasn't directed at me, but I still turned to see her studying Billy. "Dr. Taylor, I presume?" I glanced at Billy to see him biting his lip to keep his smirk at bay. "I didn't realize we were at the nickname stage," her voice was teasing, or seemed to be. She nodded and moved on, releasing the two of us from her scrutiny.

Hughie's eyes had widened and I shook my head. Even as the meeting continued, with Billy taking over for me with our plan to have known supes to come for a sit down in our office, another term that had the poor boy looking shocked. "Our" office, and with a look at Mallory's face, I realized she was smirking herself. Dear God, these people were going to kill me.

"Wait," Hughie held up a hand, his gaze going back and forth between me and Billy. If seeing Billy holding my hands confused him when he first arrived, he was truly stumped by this new development. "Are you two-" his fingers followed where his eyes started. "I mean, are the two of you-"

"Together?" Frenchie offered, smiling widely. "Oui, they have been together for sometime now." He offered this as lightly as someone else might offer that it was raining outside during a downpour.

"What about-" Hughie stopped, seeming to realize that asking about Becca in front of me to Billy might not be worth it. "I mean, you work together." He offered lamely.

"Yeah, and you're fucking a supe that could crush you with her pinky finger," Billy rolled his eyes. "Don't matter whose with who, it matters that we have a goal."

"That's correct," I finally spoke, hoping to get back to the point of the entire fucking situation. "First we sit down with each of the still functioning seven, then we move on to the other supes we know of, then," I smiled at MM, Frenchie, and Kimiko, "with some luck we find the lost and work through those."

"Yeah," Billy agreed, reaching out to touch my face, forcing my smile to grow. "And with a little luck, maybe we'll find the cunt that can pop heads from a distance."

The meeting broke up soon after that, with Mallory hanging back as Billy and his team walked out together, finalizing more plans to keep up the search for the lost supes. Hughie shot me one last confused look, before joining a team he still seemed awkward around.

"I told you that you were perfectly suited for this position," I'd forgotten she was beside me in Billy's chair so I had to work hard not to jump at the sound of her voice. Looking over, I saw her smirk had grown into an indulgent smile. "I didn't quite expect it to go in this direction, but the two of you seem well suited."

"It took me by surprise," I admitted, but thinking about Billy and how easily he fit into my life my own smile returned. "I can't say I'm not happy about it though."

"Good," she offered, standing up and getting ready to take her leave. "I don't normally condone fraternization between coworkers, but Billy Butcher defies most cases." She smiled down at me. "You're both good for one another, Dr. Tay- Ronnie," she corrected herself, using one of Billy's names for me. "And to be honest, I envy you that."

"Thank you," I returned, standing to see her out. "For being so-" she held up a hand to stop me.

"There's nothing to understand," she reached for the doorknob, "love isn't logical, Ronnie, and being in love with a man like Billy, well that truly defies logic." With that, she parted, and left me with a grin and shaking my head.