Spades and Angels

Dancing Close to the Ledge...

(the song is for when Mads and Lo dance at the end)

Maddox

No, I don't think I do Maddox Reyes. And that scares me since I think what I feel for you, what we feel for each other is darker. More dangerous and possibly enough to ruin us. Destroying us all.

Lo's parting comment to me on Wednesday sticks. Looping around in my head almost as often as the moment itself does. Tormenting me late at night when I try to sleep. Distracting me when I'm with the others. Occupying my head until my previous mental disconnection takes on a whole new level that has Hali nudging me on Friday morning at around lunchtime.

"Mads? Are you good?" She spares me a worried glance then and I blink twice to try and shake the image behind my eyes of how Lo smiled at me in that dark room. Focusing hard on forgetting the way she moaned. Or how she moved, those small shivers or the way she tried to lean into me with a passionate energy that seemed so removed from the standoffish Spade girl I knew her to be. Same with the way she, I think unintentionally, kept rolling her hips as if trying to push back something. All small details my mind refused to let go of all day. Something not helped by her blush every time we locked eyes, even if just for a second. Or that I think she somehow had an orgasm at the same time as just kissing. Not sure how.

Shaking my head again to try and clear out the lingering images and sounds from yesterday I see Hali's still watching me with an unusual frown pinching her forehead and eyebrows. "What happened?" Hali frowns again and I do the same at her when she doesn't speak. "Hails? Did something happen?" I try again but she just watches me with that same confused frown. "Hails? What happened?"

"N-nothing exactly." She mumbles, focusing on me for another second. "Mads what happened to you? You've been distant for weeks, preoccupied as shit. Barely here. Did someone say something? Do something?" Now the frown comes back where it had disappeared in light of a previously confused expression. "Is it about whoever you invited to tonight?" She gives me an almost knowing look as if she can guess to whom I sent the invitation. "Did you pick someone or is that why you're still looking? To see if you can find one of the strays?"

That answer gets a mental sigh out of me when I realise that, for all her perceptiveness, my friend hadn't noticed how I seemed incapable of not looking for a certain person in the cafeteria. Or out on the quad where I can see a fraction of the outside through the glass. Realising she didn't know what I'd, admittedly, impulsively done at the time I smiled at her and raised a brow. "Why do you need a date South? Figured Ash would have asked you, or you two not going?" As predicted my friend scowls at that but does little else since I know she'd been able to hear the teasing behind my words. That I didn't mean what I said. "Well did he?"

"Yeah. Yeah, he did asshole and you know it. I was just wondering if you'd asked someone since you seemed very cool about the whole thing. As if you've got a separate agenda that none of us know about." She gives me a kind look then, not a pleading one, but a kind one. "Just..." She trails off with a sigh, falling silent for a second before trying again, "Just be careful Mads. I-I can't make you tell me whatever it is you're doing but just be careful. Before you end up doing something or going somewhere you shouldn't be. Crossing a line you can't cross back over and pulling us all into your shit when it goes south and you lose control of whatever it is."

Her words make sense since if this operation Riv and I were doing to get Lo out of the Spades goes south we are all going to be in deep shit and I know that. Riv too since we're trying our best to keep it under secrecy for that reason. Already knowing what could happen if the wrong people, or too many people, figured out what we were trying to do.