you're too young & eager to love

I've had this sitting in my Drive for a few months now. I felt all inspired during the late summer, and then work sucked away my creativity. I did some editing and tried to wrap it up, but I'd completely forgotten where I intended to take this! Don't you just hate it when that happens? Seriously. Like how dare you, brain! Not being able to remember plans for months ago! C'mon!

I know it was supposed to delve more into Lene and Roman being AU good guys helping refugees and build to their relationship but ... nope. That's mentioned, but I felt like I needed another 8 pages to really explore everything that I was setting up. Lene doesn't even really clearly become the shepherd, which was the position she was supposed to take from Anders. Oh well!

( tired of things that break )

Lene takes an ice bath, descending into the frigid cold toes-first and rolls onto her stomach once she’s fully submerged. The coldness becomes a pain so bright that it feels like a bullet wound, a knife cut, a hangman’s noose. She keeps her eyes open under the water to remind herself that she is still alive, that the ice and the freezing temperature can be withstood.

There’s a purple bruise swelling beneath her left eye, and her lip is busted at the corner. She can still taste blood in her mouth. She has at least one broken rib and knots across her shoulders that are tender enough to make her wince.

When she can’t take it anymore - holding her breath, counting the seconds, freezing to death - Lene pulls herself from the tub, her hands clawing at the porcelain edges. There’s tiny knicks on her cheeks from where she’d been cut by glass during the explosion, and her knuckles are scraped raw. She’s shivering before she has time to shake her hair from her eyes. The dull pain in the back of her head tells her to worry about a concussion. Gingerly, she stands on shaking knees.

Roman tosses her a towel. It’s so white it reminds her of snow, which just makes her colder. But it’s plush and expensive and smells faintly of lavender. She wraps it around herself before carefully stepping from the tub, her wet feet soaking the bathroom matt.

“Headquarters thinks we should lie low,” Roman says, hissing out cigarette smoke in an upward draft.

“Where were you?” Lene takes a second towel from the shelf above the toilet and uses it to start drying her hair, careful to avoid any quick movements. She doesn’t ask as an accusation, but her eyes, so like the color of her ice bath, are steel.

“I was late because I was followed.”

“There’s late … and then there’s missing the entire heist altogether. Were you IDed?”

Roman scoffs at her, flicking cigarette ash into the bowl of the sink. He speaks as he inhales. “Were you?”

“Just thrown out of a window.”

“You’ve had worse.”

She pulls on an overly large shirt, some German script printed in bold across her chest, and sits on the edge of the bath. Lene lets him tape her knuckles and clean her face. When they’ve finished, he pours her a shot of Stoli and gives her two aspirins. She skips the aspirin but takes a second of the Stoli.







“MI6 is so worried, they called the CIA on us.”

Roman shakes the ice in his drink, preferring his vodka on the rocks, and rolls his eyes. He rubs a hand over his mouth, his fingers scratching at the inch of thick beard across his jaw. East Berlin is blanketed in snow, scrawled in graffiti and neon lights and hedonists, and Roman seems to be fitting in well. He’s wearing a leather jacket studded with safety pins and heavy combat boots and an air of nonchalance.

“So,” he says, lighting his third cigarette in ten minutes, “we are in a precarious position then?”

“More like working under a time table.”

“No rest for the wicked.”

“Hey,” Lene corrects, pulling on an overly large sweater, “we’re supposed to be the good guys.”








They spend the next night in a bar loud with music and black lighting, their four eyes on a Russian and woman in a blood-colored skirt. Roman gets drunk in the name of national security while Lene’s hair is an unnatural shade of white, her teeth glowing every time she laughs or cusses.

“That’s her translator,” Lene says, leaning up against Roman’s shoulder to speak into his ear. It’s hard to hear over the music.

Roman takes one look at the hulking, massive man sitting beside Augusta and lifts three fingers to their waitress, signaling for another drink. “I don’t believe it. She doesn’t even need a translator.”

“I don’t think he’s teaching her French at four in the morning, but officially, yes, that’s his job description.”

“I thought she was married.”

Lene groans, running a hand back through her hair. “She is married. Do you even read the reports? The briefings?”

“More like skim, I skim.”

Lene laughs, half exasperated, half knowing, and plucks his cigarette from his mouth to steal a drag.

They wait another hour and then they leave … where they promptly continue to wait, only this time it’s in the cold, the snow peppering their shoulders and turning their fingers to ice. When she agreed to this job, nobody explained to Lene just how much of spy work consisted of counting minutes in the dark. At least here they are covered on either side by brick alleyways, and the bar music is loud enough to make the sound of any potential gunfire less noticeable - although East Berliners are already so accustomed to bullets firing in the night, they hardly blink an eye.

When Augusta and her party finally exit, the translator flanks her like a shadow. She has the collar of her coat turned up against the cold, and her heels sound like icepicks as she walks across the cobblestone. There’s three other men with her, but she only hooks her arm around one, burying her cheek against the side of his shoulder when the wind rattles.

Roman moves first; he’s already planning on stubbing his cigarette in the tallest man’s eye and going for a choke-hold move, but Lene catches his elbow at the last minute. She shakes her head no, glancing pointedly to the left.

There’s a car pulling around the corner, headlights blaring. It slows to a stop, and they watch as Augusta and the men slide inside. It’s hard to tell in the darkness, but Lene thinks she can make out Harrow’s form in the front seat.

So, I started this a month ago, and I never went back to finish it. It turns out that Roman and Emere are too similar to be interesting. No conflict. Nadda. Nothing.

Here's the bits I managed:


I want to give in
to my dark self destruction.
I will find you there.
- Anonymous

They’re trying to destroy
something inside that
doesn’t belong.
- Anonymous


At three in the morning, all he can hear is the hum of traffic outside their window and the sharp way she cuts then inhales, strikes then drags, drinks then sniffs. Emere’s eyes are red-rimmed and unfocused, like they’ve spent too much time knocking against her skull. There’s a shake to her fingertips. Her blood must be thin, coursing through her veins with all the ferocity and speed of a runaway train.

He isn’t much better, truth be told, but Roman has always been a king of composure. His hands do not shake. There’s sweat stains under his arms and a wild, James Dean glare in his eyes, but he’s otherwise collected. He leans forward, plucking the cigarette from her hand, taking a drag as she absently swipes her fingers through his loose hair before settling back onto the couch. She pushes her bare feet into his lap, one leg bouncing, the muscles in her thigh twitching beneath her skin.

“What time is it?” She’s smoked so many cigarettes, her voice has that match-strike sound, all grit and stone.

“A little past three.”

Her leg keeps bouncing. He pets her calf, stroking down to her ankle and back up.

“Are you tired?”

Roman stares at her, judging her seriousness, and grins when she smirks. “I won’t sleep for days. You?”

“I have a meeting at eight.”

He glances back at his watch. “Five hours.”

“Just enough time,” she murmurs, swallowing a mouthful of gin and vermouth before she rearranges herself and slinks into his lap, a dusky arm thrown over his shoulders, her mouth catching at his bottom lip, the scratch of his beard as harsh as gravel.





Their Mondays are like their Wednesdays are like their Fridays. Rinse and repeat. A copy of a copy.

She never smells like cigarette smoke or scotch or chemicals. He never looks tired or out done or misused.

Sometimes she sleeps against his shoulder in the back of a taxi, her dark hair tangled and tousled against his broad jaw. He keeps a hand on her thigh, his fingers brushing old scars beneath the hem of her dress.





She takes shots of vodka standing half-naked in the loft’s open kitchen, a hip cocked to the side, wearing one of his work-out tanks and nothing else. It’s five in the afternoon, but she shouldn’t be home - she has a list of appointments longer than the Hudson that have her booked for the next week solid - and she definitely shouldn’t be three sheets to the wind. It’s early, even by Emere’s standards, but she already has that feral cat look about her, the angry, ready-for-a-fight attitude she adopts steadily, hour by hour, as the day progresses into night. It’s usually worse after half a bottle of Ketel One. Roman considers himself lucky, even if the hair on the back of his neck stands up in warning.

He loosens his tie, sidestepping a knocked over vase on his way into the kitchen, and pours himself a shot. While he’s at it, he pours her another one, and leaves the cap off the bottle. He’s a whole head taller than her and he makes good use of the height, looking at the cabinets in front of him rather than down at her. Trying to catch her gaze would be like willingly looking into Medusa’s stare.

“Bad day, dear?” he asks.

Emere takes the shot as an answer and slams the glass down on the counter. “Fuck you.”

Roman lifts his own glass to his lips and tips it back smoothly, the burn settling down his throat and into his chest with the glow of an afterthought. He pours another round. She reaches for hers, and he swats away her hand.

“Hold on, let me catch up, and we’ll see what happens.”

He tips his shot back again, surprised by the sound of her laughter.