No Angel

Part 7

Andy watched Simba as she struggled to keep her eyes open. She was smiling at him, really smiling, for the first time since they'd gotten off the plane. It hadn't even been thirty hours since that moment he'd accused her of being in his seat, but they'd already been through a lifetime of hell together.

"Favourite colour?" he asked. They'd begun a round of twenty questions. Well, Andy asked the questions while Simba told him both their answers.

"Blue," she said, "and yours is green."

"Correct," he laughed. "Okay, favourite superhero?"

"Too easy, Superman, yours is Thor."

"That's really in my file?" he asked in disbelief.

"Not technically, but your dachshund has his own page in your file," Simba told him, followed with a yawn. Ah, yes, he thought, little Thor who he'd left with his mate for the duration of the tour, at least he knew someone important to him would be safe.

Andy watched Simba's sleepy eyes dart from the door to the bedroom window and back to him at least once a minute and despite how she looked, he knew she'd be ready to jump into action any second if they were in danger.

"Okay, I give up, you know everything, you know me better than I do and I'm disappointed in myself."

The agent gave a short laugh. "It is technically my job to know all of those things. How you broke your front teeth, your favourite pizza, every person you've ever associated with, even your first love. Knowledge is how I keep you safe, every tiny detail makes a puzzle of your life and it's how I can tell when a situation isn't right."

"My very first ever love probably isn't in my profile, it wasn't something I never told anyone," Andy said.

"Alice Stevens, year eleven, she dumped you in front of your whole class, including the teacher," Simba said with an edge of victory in her voice.

"Wrong," Andy said, not nearly as surprised as Simba. "I was fifteen. My older sister's best friend and I would make out in secret when she came over. When I told her I loved her, she laughed and called me adorable."

"Ooh, harsh," Simba said with actual sympathy. "I'll do you one better, I found out the last guy I was dating was one of Miller's men."

"No way! How? Who? Did you kick his ass?" Andy felt a flash of terror as he remembered the way Simba had beaten that Matt kid and he had only flirted with her for a little while. What had she done to a guy who'd lead her on for weeks, or months?

"Rumour has it that Miller ruled him not medically fit to be out in the field anymore." Simba breezed over the explanation like she was still talking about her favourite colour or superhero, and as much as it terrified Andy, it only made him more attracted to her.

"No way," he said. "You've got to give me more than that!"

Simba smiled with her eyes still closed. "You really want to talk about my ex, right now?"

"No," clarified Andy. "I want to talk about you beating up your ex, right now."

With a sigh, Simba rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. "Not much to talk about. I was protecting you on a regional tour, the one used as a cover for a Phantom and Bradie mission last year.

"You were at a local on mission night, having too much to drink, flirting your arse off with some woman twice your age, and I spotted him. No cover story in the world could convince me he wasn't there working for Miller. So while you were dancing on tables singing Mr. Brightside, I was out back fighting the bad guy off with empty glasses and an ashtray. And in between my punches, he made sure to tell me how needy and desperate I was."

Andy was in awe. He remembered some of his previous heartbreaks and couldn't imagine fighting, life or death, hand-to-hand while going through that.

"Maurice tore me a new one for letting myself be compromised," Simba continued. "But I reminded him I had given the guy my fake identity, so all he'd found out was that I was an agent, but beyond that, nothing."

"So you were in love with the guy but you still didn't trust him enough to tell him anything real about you?" It made Andy wonder how many of her twenty questions answers had really been the truth.

Simba snorted a short laugh. "I definitely wouldn't call it love. And even if it was, doing this job . . . when you trust people . . . well, being honest just puts people in danger."

When she rolled back to face Andy, Simba could see the thought lines forming on Andy's face.

"What's that look for?" she asked him.

"I don't remember that night," Andy answered, still deep in thought.

"That's because I'm good at what I do. Doing my job right means you never know you were in danger in the first place. So I guess I did kind of fail on the plane after all." Simba shrugged as she remembered Andy calling it a win after Lynx had ripped into her.

"No, it's more than that," Andy argued. "I know the tour you're talking about, that it was a cover for a mission Bradie and Phantom went on. But I don't remember that night, the night they were actually on the mission, I got so drunk it's a complete black out."

Simba looked at him with sympathy as she saw his shame about it. Before she could say anything to comfort him, he continued rambling. "You've been following me, learning about me all this time, all you must see is a drunk and a flirt. A hot mess."

"Not at all," Simba said soothingly, putting a hand to his bare chest. "I've actually noticed your worst nights are always when Shaun and Bradie are away. I think you just feel left behind, but it goes back to what I said earlier. Just because you don't go out on missions, doesn't mean you're useless. I wouldn't be protecting you all the time if Miller would stop making plans to kidnap or kill you. And he only does that because he knows how strong of an asset you are."

Andy considered her words for a long time, and he knew Simba had a good point. He wasn't usually told about threats made against him, an understandable decision. If he was in Maurice's position he probably wouldn't want an asset to know they were in danger so constantly. And he believed Simba when she said that she spent a lot of time protecting him—that much was clear.

The bassist had spent so much time thinking about what Simba had said that when he looked at her again, she had fallen asleep. He took a moment to watch her in awe—it was the most relaxed he had ever seen her. Andy knew the agent would be awake and ready for action at a moment's notice, but he liked seeing her like this, she looked content and it made her beautiful in a different way to her badass look.

When Andy laid down closer beside her, Simba hugged closer to him, so he wrapped his arms around her. He enjoyed feeling like he was the one protecting her for a moment before he fell asleep, too.

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Bit of a nothing fluff chapter, but I hope it was still good. I've had the next few chapters written for ages but I got stuck on the ending and stopped posting, but I'm determined that I will finish this story one day.

Please vote if you're still reading haha

Happy reading,
D'Arcy x