Birthday Smut-a-Thon: Shot through the heart (Revenge)
Title: Shot through the heart
Fandom: Revenge
Pairing: Nolan/Emily
Rating: R
Word count: 3,800
Prompt: Nolan isn't that great with guns. He can't figure out whether it's terrifying or pure pornography that Emily is.
Notes: This is for my Birthday Smut-a-Thon. Thank you to my dear isagel for the fantastic prompt! Also available at AO3.
Shot through the heart
By Lenore
Nolan has done many things he never could have imagined in support of Emily's little revenge crusade, and just when he thinks she has no more power to surprise him, she hands him a gun.
"Um." He keeps his palm flat, trying not to touch the thing as he pushes it back at her. "I really think this is more your department than mine, Ems."
"I need you to hold onto it," Emily says, and when he still hesitates, she adds sharply, "Nolan."
"Yeah, yeah, okay." He fumbles the gun into his grip, the metal creepy-cool against his palm, the weight of it awkward to balance. "What do you want me to do with it?"
"You can start by pointing it away from me," she says dryly, nudging the barrel in the opposite direction.
He makes a face. "You know I'm not exactly a natural with firearms."
"I don't need you to use it. I just need you to have it. Here." She manhandles him, turning him so she can shove the gun into the waistband of his pants, smoothing his jacket back down to cover it. "Perfect. No one will ever know it's there."
"I'll know," Nolan grumbles under his breath.
"Come on. We're late for a meeting." Emily throws him his car keys. "You're driving."
"Do you want to tell me who we're meeting?" Nolan asks, as he hurries after her to the garage.
"I'm not sure you want to know."
"That's very comforting, Ems."
The location of this mysterious meeting does nothing to ease Nolan's concerns: a graveled area behind a warehouse, more refuse heap than parking lot. Emily directs him to a spot near the building, and they both get out.
Nolan looks around. "Now what?"
"We wait." Her expression is as inscrutable as ever.
Nolan slumps against the car. "Great."
They don't have much time to kill. A car soon comes rattling down the gravel drive, kicking up dust. When it stops and the driver gets out, Nolan hisses at Emily, "You've got to be kidding me."
"Miss Clarke, Mr. Ross," the white-haired man says, smiling a really fucking creepy-ass smile. "It's a pleasure to see you again."
"I can't say the same," Emily answers, with a flat smile.
"Yeah, that goes for me too," Nolan chimes in.
The white-haired man chuckles. "Fair enough. But since we're not all friends here, I'm sure you'll understand the need for caution. If you wouldn't mind?"
He gestures toward Emily, and apparently this is a familiar routine. She holds up her arms, and he makes quick work of frisking her. When he turns his attention to Nolan, Emily snaps impatiently, "Does he look like he knows what to do with a weapon?"
Nolan doesn't have to try to look hurt at her dismissive tone. "Thanks a lot, Ems." He's painfully conscious of the cold weight at the small of his back.
The white-haired man holds up his hands. "Fine. So let's get down to business. You said there's some way we can help each other. I'm listening."
"Now why would I want to help the man who murdered my father?" The white-haired man's creepy-ass smile has nothing on Emily's.
"Why, indeed," the man says dryly, and he pulls out a gun. "I had a feeling this little get-together might be a pretense. I'm afraid if we can't work together then I'll need to tie up the loose ends."
Nolan swallows hard. He really hates being a loose end.
"You should have killed me when you had the chance, Miss Clarke." The white-haired man slides his finger onto the trigger.
"It'll be so much more satisfying when I bury you," Emily tells him.
It all happens so fast: the white-haired man is firing, and Emily is pushing Nolan to the ground, the cold weight of the hidden gun is suddenly gone, and the white-haired man's gun goes arcing through the air. When Nolan's synapses have a few more microseconds to fire, he realizes that Emily just shot the gun out of the man's hand.
"So not worthy," he says under his breath.
Emily keeps her gun trained. "On your knees," she orders the white-haired man.
He drops, clutching his bleeding hand to his chest. "I see you've changed your mind about how to honor your father's memory." The look he gives her is smugly knowing: See? We're no so different, are we?
Nolan's not much on violence, but for just a moment, he wishes he had a weapon in his hand.
"Don't talk about my father," Emily snaps.
"Or you'll do what?"
Emily smiles sweetly. "This."
For just a moment, Nolan really thinks she's going to pull the trigger, and his stomach turns inside out, and his brain frantically scrambles to figure out what he'll do in the aftermath, how he'll get her through it. But there's no sharp crack of gunfire, just a squishy thud as Emily's boot connects with the white-haired man's face, knocking him out with a single kick.
"Get the ropes," Emily tersely orders.
Nolan stares in confusion. "Ropes?"
She directs an impatient glare at the car's trunk, as if he should have telepathically gleaned that she'd hidden revenge-y supplies there when he wasn't looking.
"Oh, those ropes," he says in a deadpan.
He leaves the tying up to her, because she's scarily good at it, and he watches as she retrieves a familiar-looking folder out from under the car seat. Familiar because Nolan compiled it himself. She drops the folder onto the silver-haired man as if she's building a bonfire.
Nolan really hopes she's not building a bonfire.
Sirens blare in the distance, putting an end to Nolan's firestarter worries, but-fuck-the cops are a whole other problem.
Although not to Emily, apparently. "Right on time."
"What-when-"
She raises an eyebrow at him. "Do you want to hang around asking me questions? Or do you want to get out of here?"
"Good point."
They jump into the car, and the tires squeal as Nolan takes the turn out of the parking lot too sharply. They just miss being spotted by the barrage of cop cars that go squealing down the road to the warehouse.
"Slow down," Emily orders. "We don't want to draw attention to ourselves. Head into the city. We should put some distance between us and Long Island for a few days." She tucks the gun into her purse to get it out of sight.
The purse is a dainty thing, creamy white leather with a thin strap. And the gun is inside it, the gun that Emily could whip out in an eye-blink and wield like an expert marksman. Nolan doesn't like guns, doesn't like weapons of any kind actually, never has, but now he's hyper-aware of it, its shiny, deadly presence, dangling by a strap from Emily's delicately made wrist.
It's something about the contrast. He can't stop thinking about it.
They get caught in traffic on the LIE, even though they're going the reverse of rush hour. Emily stares absently out the window, as if she's never seen this particular stretch of concrete and urban blight before, as if she doesn't see it now. It occurs to Nolan that this may be their last adventure together in the name of vengeance. He pushes away the flutter of anxiety about what this means for their friendship. She needs to be finished with this. If that means she's also finished with him, then that's just the way it has to be.
He drops her at her apartment. "I'll call you later," she says as she slides out of the car.
The purse swings from her arm as she heads into the lobby. Nolan feels strangely sorry to see the gun go. Or to see Emily go. Something. It's confusing.
This odd sense of absence follows him home; his apartment is quiet and empty, dull after the afternoon's excitement. He walks straight over to the bar and pours himself a finger of scotch, reconsiders and pours a second. Nolan's drink of choice is champagne; spirits are more like medicine. The whiskey burns on the way down, just the way it should, just the way he wants it to, but it does nothing to dispel his restlessness, the itchy feeling building under his skin.
He slumps onto the sofa and leans his head back against the cushions, letting out a long sigh. It hits him then, a flashback, if flashbacks come in jigsaw pieces: the smooth curve of Emily's cheek and the hard, determined press of her mouth, her slender fingers wrapped around the gun's grip, not tensely, certainly not casually, but with lethal efficiency. Some unruly part of Nolan's brain takes a detour and starts to wonder how it would feel if Emily touched him like that, with a bossy sense of mastery.
It takes all of an instant for him to get hard.
"Oh fuck," he says out loud.
Nolan doesn't think about Emily like that, doesn't let himself, ever. Because David was his only real friend, and Emily is David's only daughter, and that doesn't make them family, but close enough. For Nolan, anyway.
Not to mention that when dealing with the queen of compartmentalization, you have to learn to draw a few lines yourself. There's only so much of Emily she'll allow any one person to see. Nolan has always been profoundly aware of this. And the kind of nakedness he wants from her is the urgent phone call at two a.m. when she needs his help, the rare bit of truth she occasionally shares with him, the even rarer moment of vulnerability she allows him to see. If the cost of that is never having any other kind of closeness with her, he's happy to pay it.
Except now-he can't stop thinking about-
Nolan knows what people see when they look at him, gangling limbs and social awkwardness and a fashion sense that makes him seem out of touch. Nolan knows, because that's exactly what he wants them to see. He has secrets of his own, the fact that he is capable of truly terrifying depths of self-discipline is one of the most closely guarded. Not just a secret, but his secret weapon.
After his second year of college, he spent the summer on Nantucket, one of the hired help, sharing a falling-down cabin with three other students trying to make enough money to go back to school in the fall. On off days, everyone else lazed around on the beach or got falling-down drunk at the dive bar with the fifty-cent Pabsts. Nolan spent every free moment holed up in his little closet of a room, ignoring the sounds of fun he wasn't having. By the end of the summer, he'd nearly finished the coding for what would become the world's smartest smartphone.
When Nolan tells himself, "Just this once and never again," he means it.
There's no point in getting up and going to his bedroom, he decides. After all, he really shouldn't be completely comfortable while he's doing this. He chucks his clothes right there and lays back on the sofa and strokes a hand idly along his side, hoping maybe the urgency will go away.
It doesn't.
When he closes his eyes, he pictures Emily, dressed in one of her ninja outfits, crouching over him, the thick soles of her boots pressed against his thighs, leaving marks.
"So," she says, her expression so carefully controlled it's both terrifying and unbearably hot. "This is what you want, huh, Nolan?" She pulls the gun from her waistband in one fluid motion.
"Yeah," he admits, letting his fingers wander down the length of his cock. "Sorry."
Pathetic, he thinks. Even in his fantasies, he's groveling and apologetic.
Fantasy Emily just smiles. "You like it when I'm in charge, so let's go with that."
She lays the gun flat against his chest, and he sucks in a startled breath. Heavy, cold weight on his skin-a heavy, cold weight that could put a hole in him-and he can't help moaning.
"I thought you'd like that," Emily says knowingly.
She drags the gun down his chest, over his belly, rubbing it in circles.
"I'm going to tell you what to do, and you're going to follow my instructions precisely. Clear?" She stares down at him, her eyes hard and bright.
He nods eagerly. "Clear."
"That's very good, Nolan. You're very obedient." The gun dips down over his hip, and she drags it along his thigh. "Now put your hand on your cock." He does, and she tilts her head, assessing. "Tighter. A little more. More."
It's almost painful. Almost.
"Stroke," she orders.
He bites his lip and does it, and she watches, directing his movements, using him as her instrument. It's not that much different from the way things usually are between them, only naked, and with an imaginary firearm, and for his pleasure. Okay. So that's actually kind of different.
"Play with your balls with your other hand. Harder. Come on, Nolan. I know you like it when it hurts a little."
He does, but he's never much good at doing that to himself, not as hard as he'd like it anyway. He tends to flinch away before he can quite reach the magic line where pain starts to blur into pleasure.
Emily regards him with a critical eye. "Are you going to disappoint me, Nolan? Is that what you're doing?"
He shakes his head desperately and pulls harder, and he can see red behind his eyes, the deep, saturated color of too-much-so-good.
"Much better," Emily says silkily. "You listen so well, don't you, Nolan?" She draws the barrel of the gun across his knuckles, so close to where he's-
His balls draw up, and he feels the lightning flash in his blood, the telltale tingling at the base of his spine.
"Did I say you could come?" Emily barks, pulling the gun away.
He shakes his head helplessly, grits his teeth, and just barely manages to stave off orgasm. He lets out a shaky breath. Sweat drips into his eyes. He's so painfully hard that every stroke of his hand is the best kind of torture.
"That's it. Just a little more, Nolan. A little more."
His stomach twists, aching and too hot, the way he feels when it's too much, when he really just needs to come, but he keeps going. Just a little more. Just like Emily wants.
This earns him a wide smile and her breath warm and humid against his ear. "I could make you do anything, and you'd like it, wouldn't you, Nolan?"
That sounds like permission, or close enough anyway, and Nolan screws his eyes tightly shut and bucks up into his own grip and comes all over himself. He likes to think that his fantasy Emily would approve, but the picture of her fades away before the last of his orgasm. He stares up at the ceiling, catching his breath.
"Get a grip," he finally tells himself and goes to have a shower.
Emily doesn't call later as promised. She shows up at his door with Chinese takeout-from his favorite place, he notices. "It's all over the news. I thought we could watch it together."
For a moment, fantasy and reality collide, and Nolan can't move. He's pretty sure he's blushing. Fuck.
"Nolan?" Emily frowns at him. "Are you okay?"
He nods and clears his throat and manages to say, "Come in. You want a beer?"
They settle on the sofa, takeout containers spread out on the coffee table. Emily wields the remote control, flipping through the news channels. Nolan quickly looks away when his traitorous imagination tries to picture a gun in her hand instead.
On CNN, Anderson Cooper addresses the camera with blue-eyed gravity. "We're following an unfolding story so fantastic it's as if it were invented by Hollywood. Documents delivered to the police by an anonymous source reveal a far-reaching conspiracy behind the downing of Flight 197 more than a decade ago. One arrest has already been made, with more certain to come."
They cut away to a shot of the white-haired man being led into the local FBI office in handcuffs. Nolan watches tensely, half expecting a Jack-Ruby-style scenario, but the white-haired man disappears inside, surrounded by federal agents, still alive, at least for the moment.
Anderson Cooper reappears. "No word yet on the identity of the man who has been arrested, but it is thought that he has ties to The Initiative, the terrorist group responsible for the crash of Flight 197. Implicated in the cover up are Conrad and Victoria Grayson, the first couple of one of the country's most prominent families. As you may recall, the Graysons were key witnesses at the trial of David Clarke, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison-it now appears for a crime he didn't commit."
Nolan darts a sidelong glance at Emily. She watches the TV screen as expressionlessly as a statue. Anyone who didn't know her would think this news had no effect on her at all. Nolan isn't just anyone.
"David Clarke was the Chief Financial Officer of Grayson International at the time of his arrest," Anderson Cooper continues.
A photo of David flashes onto the screen. Nolan swallows hard, but it doesn't get rid of the tight feeling in his throat. Even Emily can't keep the sorrow out of her expression.
"It's no exaggeration to say that Clarke has been one of the most reviled figures in American history. Today, he stands vindicated, although tragically too late for him to regain his freedom. David Clarke died in a prison riot. He was forty-four years old." Anderson Cooper pauses, with a somber look into the camera. "More on this story as it develops."
Emily clicks off the TV, and they sit there, staring at the screen as if it's still on. The apartment feels endlessly quiet, the way churches can sometimes, as if making a sound would be somehow irreverent. Maybe it's because he and Emily are both thinking so intently about David, but for a moment, it's as if he's there with them, filling the empty place where he belongs, making them complete.
Nolan wishes he could be this connected to Emily through something other than grief.
"You did it, Ems," he says at last, very quietly.
"I couldn't have done it without you." She tilts her head to look at him, with a pale smile, sad, but also a little relieved.
One day, Nolan likes to think, all the vestiges of bitterness and pain in her will be-not gone, but less, much less-and there might even be moments when she looks like the girl she was meant to be, before her life was detoured by lies.
"Here, I have something for you," she says, dispelling the somber mood, and when she opens her purse, Nolan thinks he must be hallucinating, because she's holding the gun.
"That's-" He doesn't even know what to say.
Emily places it on the coffee table. Nolan darts at a nervous glance at her. She's not giving it to him for his protection; Emily knows better than anyone that he's a firearms accident waiting to happen. He doesn't think she's making fun of him. She's usually unambiguous in her mockery, and anyway, she's smiling. Fondly, actually.
She shrugs. "I just thought you might like to have it."
She's right, of course. If only so he has something of her to hold onto now that the revenge-y times are over and she doesn't need him anymore. It's kind of mortifying, actually.
"Don't worry." She nudges his shoulder with hers. "I took out the bullets, and I used a file on the inside of the barrel. Even if they recover the bullet at the warehouse, it can't be matched to this gun."
God, now there's a whole other thing to fantasize about. Apparently, Nolan has some kind of competence kink.
"It's kind of embarrassing that you know I want this." He nods his head toward the gun.
Emily just smiles, as if to say: Come on, Nolan. I know far more embarrassing things about you than this.
"Thanks, Ems," he says dryly.
She laughs, and it's a real laugh, not bitter or forced or laced with fury. He tries to remember the last time he heard her sound that and comes up with-never.
"Thank you, Nolan," she says, her expression turning more solemn.
Nolan's never heard that before either, not without an agenda, not unless she was trying to pull his strings.
"Um, sure," he says, feeling suddenly awkward. "No prob."
Just when he thinks she has no more power to surprise him, she hugs him. Completely of her own volition. That's definitely never happened before. She feels deceptively slight in his arms, and he presses his face against his shoulder and breathes in the scent of her hair. Having her this close almost hurts, like his heart is being squeezed by a fist, and here is something else he doesn't usually let himself think about. How much he loves her.
She pulls away, as she always does, and gets to her feet.
"Ems." He takes her hand, and he doesn't want to let it go.
He can't stand the thought of her being finished with him.
She leans down and presses a quick kiss to his forehead. "I'll see you tomorrow."
Only after she's gone does he realize that she really means it. That's what the gun is, it occurs to him, a kind of anchor. Emily wants him to have something of her to hold onto, and naturally being Emily, her symbolic gesture comes in the form of a firearm.
Nolan picks up the gun. He'll never like weapons, and it still feels awkward in his hand, and he thinks maybe the whole thing with the-and how he-was a fluke. Then he imagines Emily, her long, elegant fingers wrapped around the grip, her steely gaze as she sights down the barrel, and, yeah, no. Not a fluke.
It's probably a good idea to put the gun somewhere safe, he decides.
Nolan possesses unsuspected reserves of self-discipline, and when he tells himself, "Just this once and never again," he means it. But he didn't get to be a billionaire many times over by ignoring the changing landscape and failing to adjust to it. He stashes the gun away in the bottom drawer of his dresser where he keeps-well, the kinds of things that belong in the bottom drawer of a dresser.
He revises his resolution to: I'll only use it when I really need it.
Fandom: Revenge
Pairing: Nolan/Emily
Rating: R
Word count: 3,800
Prompt: Nolan isn't that great with guns. He can't figure out whether it's terrifying or pure pornography that Emily is.
Notes: This is for my Birthday Smut-a-Thon. Thank you to my dear isagel for the fantastic prompt! Also available at AO3.
Shot through the heart
By Lenore
Nolan has done many things he never could have imagined in support of Emily's little revenge crusade, and just when he thinks she has no more power to surprise him, she hands him a gun.
"Um." He keeps his palm flat, trying not to touch the thing as he pushes it back at her. "I really think this is more your department than mine, Ems."
"I need you to hold onto it," Emily says, and when he still hesitates, she adds sharply, "Nolan."
"Yeah, yeah, okay." He fumbles the gun into his grip, the metal creepy-cool against his palm, the weight of it awkward to balance. "What do you want me to do with it?"
"You can start by pointing it away from me," she says dryly, nudging the barrel in the opposite direction.
He makes a face. "You know I'm not exactly a natural with firearms."
"I don't need you to use it. I just need you to have it. Here." She manhandles him, turning him so she can shove the gun into the waistband of his pants, smoothing his jacket back down to cover it. "Perfect. No one will ever know it's there."
"I'll know," Nolan grumbles under his breath.
"Come on. We're late for a meeting." Emily throws him his car keys. "You're driving."
"Do you want to tell me who we're meeting?" Nolan asks, as he hurries after her to the garage.
"I'm not sure you want to know."
"That's very comforting, Ems."
The location of this mysterious meeting does nothing to ease Nolan's concerns: a graveled area behind a warehouse, more refuse heap than parking lot. Emily directs him to a spot near the building, and they both get out.
Nolan looks around. "Now what?"
"We wait." Her expression is as inscrutable as ever.
Nolan slumps against the car. "Great."
They don't have much time to kill. A car soon comes rattling down the gravel drive, kicking up dust. When it stops and the driver gets out, Nolan hisses at Emily, "You've got to be kidding me."
"Miss Clarke, Mr. Ross," the white-haired man says, smiling a really fucking creepy-ass smile. "It's a pleasure to see you again."
"I can't say the same," Emily answers, with a flat smile.
"Yeah, that goes for me too," Nolan chimes in.
The white-haired man chuckles. "Fair enough. But since we're not all friends here, I'm sure you'll understand the need for caution. If you wouldn't mind?"
He gestures toward Emily, and apparently this is a familiar routine. She holds up her arms, and he makes quick work of frisking her. When he turns his attention to Nolan, Emily snaps impatiently, "Does he look like he knows what to do with a weapon?"
Nolan doesn't have to try to look hurt at her dismissive tone. "Thanks a lot, Ems." He's painfully conscious of the cold weight at the small of his back.
The white-haired man holds up his hands. "Fine. So let's get down to business. You said there's some way we can help each other. I'm listening."
"Now why would I want to help the man who murdered my father?" The white-haired man's creepy-ass smile has nothing on Emily's.
"Why, indeed," the man says dryly, and he pulls out a gun. "I had a feeling this little get-together might be a pretense. I'm afraid if we can't work together then I'll need to tie up the loose ends."
Nolan swallows hard. He really hates being a loose end.
"You should have killed me when you had the chance, Miss Clarke." The white-haired man slides his finger onto the trigger.
"It'll be so much more satisfying when I bury you," Emily tells him.
It all happens so fast: the white-haired man is firing, and Emily is pushing Nolan to the ground, the cold weight of the hidden gun is suddenly gone, and the white-haired man's gun goes arcing through the air. When Nolan's synapses have a few more microseconds to fire, he realizes that Emily just shot the gun out of the man's hand.
"So not worthy," he says under his breath.
Emily keeps her gun trained. "On your knees," she orders the white-haired man.
He drops, clutching his bleeding hand to his chest. "I see you've changed your mind about how to honor your father's memory." The look he gives her is smugly knowing: See? We're no so different, are we?
Nolan's not much on violence, but for just a moment, he wishes he had a weapon in his hand.
"Don't talk about my father," Emily snaps.
"Or you'll do what?"
Emily smiles sweetly. "This."
For just a moment, Nolan really thinks she's going to pull the trigger, and his stomach turns inside out, and his brain frantically scrambles to figure out what he'll do in the aftermath, how he'll get her through it. But there's no sharp crack of gunfire, just a squishy thud as Emily's boot connects with the white-haired man's face, knocking him out with a single kick.
"Get the ropes," Emily tersely orders.
Nolan stares in confusion. "Ropes?"
She directs an impatient glare at the car's trunk, as if he should have telepathically gleaned that she'd hidden revenge-y supplies there when he wasn't looking.
"Oh, those ropes," he says in a deadpan.
He leaves the tying up to her, because she's scarily good at it, and he watches as she retrieves a familiar-looking folder out from under the car seat. Familiar because Nolan compiled it himself. She drops the folder onto the silver-haired man as if she's building a bonfire.
Nolan really hopes she's not building a bonfire.
Sirens blare in the distance, putting an end to Nolan's firestarter worries, but-fuck-the cops are a whole other problem.
Although not to Emily, apparently. "Right on time."
"What-when-"
She raises an eyebrow at him. "Do you want to hang around asking me questions? Or do you want to get out of here?"
"Good point."
They jump into the car, and the tires squeal as Nolan takes the turn out of the parking lot too sharply. They just miss being spotted by the barrage of cop cars that go squealing down the road to the warehouse.
"Slow down," Emily orders. "We don't want to draw attention to ourselves. Head into the city. We should put some distance between us and Long Island for a few days." She tucks the gun into her purse to get it out of sight.
The purse is a dainty thing, creamy white leather with a thin strap. And the gun is inside it, the gun that Emily could whip out in an eye-blink and wield like an expert marksman. Nolan doesn't like guns, doesn't like weapons of any kind actually, never has, but now he's hyper-aware of it, its shiny, deadly presence, dangling by a strap from Emily's delicately made wrist.
It's something about the contrast. He can't stop thinking about it.
They get caught in traffic on the LIE, even though they're going the reverse of rush hour. Emily stares absently out the window, as if she's never seen this particular stretch of concrete and urban blight before, as if she doesn't see it now. It occurs to Nolan that this may be their last adventure together in the name of vengeance. He pushes away the flutter of anxiety about what this means for their friendship. She needs to be finished with this. If that means she's also finished with him, then that's just the way it has to be.
He drops her at her apartment. "I'll call you later," she says as she slides out of the car.
The purse swings from her arm as she heads into the lobby. Nolan feels strangely sorry to see the gun go. Or to see Emily go. Something. It's confusing.
This odd sense of absence follows him home; his apartment is quiet and empty, dull after the afternoon's excitement. He walks straight over to the bar and pours himself a finger of scotch, reconsiders and pours a second. Nolan's drink of choice is champagne; spirits are more like medicine. The whiskey burns on the way down, just the way it should, just the way he wants it to, but it does nothing to dispel his restlessness, the itchy feeling building under his skin.
He slumps onto the sofa and leans his head back against the cushions, letting out a long sigh. It hits him then, a flashback, if flashbacks come in jigsaw pieces: the smooth curve of Emily's cheek and the hard, determined press of her mouth, her slender fingers wrapped around the gun's grip, not tensely, certainly not casually, but with lethal efficiency. Some unruly part of Nolan's brain takes a detour and starts to wonder how it would feel if Emily touched him like that, with a bossy sense of mastery.
It takes all of an instant for him to get hard.
"Oh fuck," he says out loud.
Nolan doesn't think about Emily like that, doesn't let himself, ever. Because David was his only real friend, and Emily is David's only daughter, and that doesn't make them family, but close enough. For Nolan, anyway.
Not to mention that when dealing with the queen of compartmentalization, you have to learn to draw a few lines yourself. There's only so much of Emily she'll allow any one person to see. Nolan has always been profoundly aware of this. And the kind of nakedness he wants from her is the urgent phone call at two a.m. when she needs his help, the rare bit of truth she occasionally shares with him, the even rarer moment of vulnerability she allows him to see. If the cost of that is never having any other kind of closeness with her, he's happy to pay it.
Except now-he can't stop thinking about-
Nolan knows what people see when they look at him, gangling limbs and social awkwardness and a fashion sense that makes him seem out of touch. Nolan knows, because that's exactly what he wants them to see. He has secrets of his own, the fact that he is capable of truly terrifying depths of self-discipline is one of the most closely guarded. Not just a secret, but his secret weapon.
After his second year of college, he spent the summer on Nantucket, one of the hired help, sharing a falling-down cabin with three other students trying to make enough money to go back to school in the fall. On off days, everyone else lazed around on the beach or got falling-down drunk at the dive bar with the fifty-cent Pabsts. Nolan spent every free moment holed up in his little closet of a room, ignoring the sounds of fun he wasn't having. By the end of the summer, he'd nearly finished the coding for what would become the world's smartest smartphone.
When Nolan tells himself, "Just this once and never again," he means it.
There's no point in getting up and going to his bedroom, he decides. After all, he really shouldn't be completely comfortable while he's doing this. He chucks his clothes right there and lays back on the sofa and strokes a hand idly along his side, hoping maybe the urgency will go away.
It doesn't.
When he closes his eyes, he pictures Emily, dressed in one of her ninja outfits, crouching over him, the thick soles of her boots pressed against his thighs, leaving marks.
"So," she says, her expression so carefully controlled it's both terrifying and unbearably hot. "This is what you want, huh, Nolan?" She pulls the gun from her waistband in one fluid motion.
"Yeah," he admits, letting his fingers wander down the length of his cock. "Sorry."
Pathetic, he thinks. Even in his fantasies, he's groveling and apologetic.
Fantasy Emily just smiles. "You like it when I'm in charge, so let's go with that."
She lays the gun flat against his chest, and he sucks in a startled breath. Heavy, cold weight on his skin-a heavy, cold weight that could put a hole in him-and he can't help moaning.
"I thought you'd like that," Emily says knowingly.
She drags the gun down his chest, over his belly, rubbing it in circles.
"I'm going to tell you what to do, and you're going to follow my instructions precisely. Clear?" She stares down at him, her eyes hard and bright.
He nods eagerly. "Clear."
"That's very good, Nolan. You're very obedient." The gun dips down over his hip, and she drags it along his thigh. "Now put your hand on your cock." He does, and she tilts her head, assessing. "Tighter. A little more. More."
It's almost painful. Almost.
"Stroke," she orders.
He bites his lip and does it, and she watches, directing his movements, using him as her instrument. It's not that much different from the way things usually are between them, only naked, and with an imaginary firearm, and for his pleasure. Okay. So that's actually kind of different.
"Play with your balls with your other hand. Harder. Come on, Nolan. I know you like it when it hurts a little."
He does, but he's never much good at doing that to himself, not as hard as he'd like it anyway. He tends to flinch away before he can quite reach the magic line where pain starts to blur into pleasure.
Emily regards him with a critical eye. "Are you going to disappoint me, Nolan? Is that what you're doing?"
He shakes his head desperately and pulls harder, and he can see red behind his eyes, the deep, saturated color of too-much-so-good.
"Much better," Emily says silkily. "You listen so well, don't you, Nolan?" She draws the barrel of the gun across his knuckles, so close to where he's-
His balls draw up, and he feels the lightning flash in his blood, the telltale tingling at the base of his spine.
"Did I say you could come?" Emily barks, pulling the gun away.
He shakes his head helplessly, grits his teeth, and just barely manages to stave off orgasm. He lets out a shaky breath. Sweat drips into his eyes. He's so painfully hard that every stroke of his hand is the best kind of torture.
"That's it. Just a little more, Nolan. A little more."
His stomach twists, aching and too hot, the way he feels when it's too much, when he really just needs to come, but he keeps going. Just a little more. Just like Emily wants.
This earns him a wide smile and her breath warm and humid against his ear. "I could make you do anything, and you'd like it, wouldn't you, Nolan?"
That sounds like permission, or close enough anyway, and Nolan screws his eyes tightly shut and bucks up into his own grip and comes all over himself. He likes to think that his fantasy Emily would approve, but the picture of her fades away before the last of his orgasm. He stares up at the ceiling, catching his breath.
"Get a grip," he finally tells himself and goes to have a shower.
Emily doesn't call later as promised. She shows up at his door with Chinese takeout-from his favorite place, he notices. "It's all over the news. I thought we could watch it together."
For a moment, fantasy and reality collide, and Nolan can't move. He's pretty sure he's blushing. Fuck.
"Nolan?" Emily frowns at him. "Are you okay?"
He nods and clears his throat and manages to say, "Come in. You want a beer?"
They settle on the sofa, takeout containers spread out on the coffee table. Emily wields the remote control, flipping through the news channels. Nolan quickly looks away when his traitorous imagination tries to picture a gun in her hand instead.
On CNN, Anderson Cooper addresses the camera with blue-eyed gravity. "We're following an unfolding story so fantastic it's as if it were invented by Hollywood. Documents delivered to the police by an anonymous source reveal a far-reaching conspiracy behind the downing of Flight 197 more than a decade ago. One arrest has already been made, with more certain to come."
They cut away to a shot of the white-haired man being led into the local FBI office in handcuffs. Nolan watches tensely, half expecting a Jack-Ruby-style scenario, but the white-haired man disappears inside, surrounded by federal agents, still alive, at least for the moment.
Anderson Cooper reappears. "No word yet on the identity of the man who has been arrested, but it is thought that he has ties to The Initiative, the terrorist group responsible for the crash of Flight 197. Implicated in the cover up are Conrad and Victoria Grayson, the first couple of one of the country's most prominent families. As you may recall, the Graysons were key witnesses at the trial of David Clarke, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison-it now appears for a crime he didn't commit."
Nolan darts a sidelong glance at Emily. She watches the TV screen as expressionlessly as a statue. Anyone who didn't know her would think this news had no effect on her at all. Nolan isn't just anyone.
"David Clarke was the Chief Financial Officer of Grayson International at the time of his arrest," Anderson Cooper continues.
A photo of David flashes onto the screen. Nolan swallows hard, but it doesn't get rid of the tight feeling in his throat. Even Emily can't keep the sorrow out of her expression.
"It's no exaggeration to say that Clarke has been one of the most reviled figures in American history. Today, he stands vindicated, although tragically too late for him to regain his freedom. David Clarke died in a prison riot. He was forty-four years old." Anderson Cooper pauses, with a somber look into the camera. "More on this story as it develops."
Emily clicks off the TV, and they sit there, staring at the screen as if it's still on. The apartment feels endlessly quiet, the way churches can sometimes, as if making a sound would be somehow irreverent. Maybe it's because he and Emily are both thinking so intently about David, but for a moment, it's as if he's there with them, filling the empty place where he belongs, making them complete.
Nolan wishes he could be this connected to Emily through something other than grief.
"You did it, Ems," he says at last, very quietly.
"I couldn't have done it without you." She tilts her head to look at him, with a pale smile, sad, but also a little relieved.
One day, Nolan likes to think, all the vestiges of bitterness and pain in her will be-not gone, but less, much less-and there might even be moments when she looks like the girl she was meant to be, before her life was detoured by lies.
"Here, I have something for you," she says, dispelling the somber mood, and when she opens her purse, Nolan thinks he must be hallucinating, because she's holding the gun.
"That's-" He doesn't even know what to say.
Emily places it on the coffee table. Nolan darts at a nervous glance at her. She's not giving it to him for his protection; Emily knows better than anyone that he's a firearms accident waiting to happen. He doesn't think she's making fun of him. She's usually unambiguous in her mockery, and anyway, she's smiling. Fondly, actually.
She shrugs. "I just thought you might like to have it."
She's right, of course. If only so he has something of her to hold onto now that the revenge-y times are over and she doesn't need him anymore. It's kind of mortifying, actually.
"Don't worry." She nudges his shoulder with hers. "I took out the bullets, and I used a file on the inside of the barrel. Even if they recover the bullet at the warehouse, it can't be matched to this gun."
God, now there's a whole other thing to fantasize about. Apparently, Nolan has some kind of competence kink.
"It's kind of embarrassing that you know I want this." He nods his head toward the gun.
Emily just smiles, as if to say: Come on, Nolan. I know far more embarrassing things about you than this.
"Thanks, Ems," he says dryly.
She laughs, and it's a real laugh, not bitter or forced or laced with fury. He tries to remember the last time he heard her sound that and comes up with-never.
"Thank you, Nolan," she says, her expression turning more solemn.
Nolan's never heard that before either, not without an agenda, not unless she was trying to pull his strings.
"Um, sure," he says, feeling suddenly awkward. "No prob."
Just when he thinks she has no more power to surprise him, she hugs him. Completely of her own volition. That's definitely never happened before. She feels deceptively slight in his arms, and he presses his face against his shoulder and breathes in the scent of her hair. Having her this close almost hurts, like his heart is being squeezed by a fist, and here is something else he doesn't usually let himself think about. How much he loves her.
She pulls away, as she always does, and gets to her feet.
"Ems." He takes her hand, and he doesn't want to let it go.
He can't stand the thought of her being finished with him.
She leans down and presses a quick kiss to his forehead. "I'll see you tomorrow."
Only after she's gone does he realize that she really means it. That's what the gun is, it occurs to him, a kind of anchor. Emily wants him to have something of her to hold onto, and naturally being Emily, her symbolic gesture comes in the form of a firearm.
Nolan picks up the gun. He'll never like weapons, and it still feels awkward in his hand, and he thinks maybe the whole thing with the-and how he-was a fluke. Then he imagines Emily, her long, elegant fingers wrapped around the grip, her steely gaze as she sights down the barrel, and, yeah, no. Not a fluke.
It's probably a good idea to put the gun somewhere safe, he decides.
Nolan possesses unsuspected reserves of self-discipline, and when he tells himself, "Just this once and never again," he means it. But he didn't get to be a billionaire many times over by ignoring the changing landscape and failing to adjust to it. He stashes the gun away in the bottom drawer of his dresser where he keeps-well, the kinds of things that belong in the bottom drawer of a dresser.
He revises his resolution to: I'll only use it when I really need it.