Intertwined

Hold My Hand

"Ew, it smells like a sex dungeon in here!" Natali walks to the balcony and opens the curtains and doors. 

"Natali, get out!" Gaga yells through her sleep haze.

"Don't worry, I'm leaving but thought you should know the detectives are here. They came early." 

Bradley grunted in response and pulled Gaga in closer. "Fuck, already? Why are they here? B, get up." 

"Beats me." Natali couldn't help but look around at the condition they left the room in. "You two need Jesus, bye." Natali leaves just as the pillow Gaga throws hits the closing door. 

Bradley had been quiet the entire time they got ready, taking breaks to give her kisses. "Hurry up. I'll be downstairs waiting."

"One more kiss." Bradley pleaded. Gaga playfully rolled her eyes and gave him a tender kiss that did not satisfy his need. He tried to pull her in but she was too fast and smiled as she left the room. "Not cool, Germanotta. You owe me a better kiss." He yelled after her. 

Bradley continued to dread bringing up their trauma and continued dragging his feet to while getting ready which only made him even later to greet the detectives. "Here he is now. Bradley, we're in here." Gaga yells for him, having reached her limit of small talk.

"How are ya?" He shakes their hands.

"Hello Mr. Cooper, it's nice to meet you...again. We apologize for coming so early. Um, we're happy you regained your memory and thus the accounts from the night. We know you have your doctors appointment but there have been new developments in the case and we had hoped to ask you a few questions as soon as possible. I hope that's alright?" Bradley looks to Gaga, the two communicating their trust with their eyes. Bradley nods and sits down. "Why don't you start from the moment the masked men appeared." 

"Yea, sure. Um..." Bradley scratches his neck. "We heard an announcement over the intercom and then the doors locked. The moment the men reveled themselves and their guns, I went to sit with Stefani. I guess they were transferring money from people's bank accounts and savings into their own accounts, one by one. They had a system and way of making the transactions go really quickly, so they just forced us, threatened us to wait our turn."

"But not you." The detective curiously noted. "What I mean to say is you went to hide. Why did you go hide?"

" Well I... No I didn't...One of the guys was giving Stefani a hard time and I had to get her out of there."

"Why?"

"What do you mean why?" Bradley asked more forceful than he expected. Gaga slipped her hand into his to calm him down. 

"To my knowledge and by everyone else's account of the events that took place, you and Ste-Lady Gaga were not dating or an item but you still ushered her backstage, hiding you both away. So, everyone else stayed still and gave up their information, everyone but you."

"Like I said, I wanted to get her out of all that. She was basically naked and humiliated and... look I don't know, I was attracted to her and she was so vulnerable. I just wanted to protect her." Bradley gives her a small smile, feeling her squeeze his hand. The detectives look at each other. 

"Ok. Then what happened." 

Bradley hated everything about this. He wanted to curl into Gaga and go back to sleep. He was hungry, he wanted to cook her a big breakfast and whisper in her ear how amazing she was last night. Bradley wanted nothing more than to continue getting to know the beauty next to him "Well, we just waited for a bit, listening. We heard a few gun shots that went off." He turned to her slightly, the feelings rushing back into his stomach. "You were shaking like a leaf." Gaga nods at his testimony. She recalls the feeling of uncontrollable fear, for her life and for Natali's. "Caring for you gave me purpose and distracted me from my own fear. We wanted to leave, just the two of us, remember?" She nodded, embarrassed that the thought crossed their mind. "But we could never. That's when I knew we were more alike than I thought." Bradley mildly smiled at his confession and turned back to the detectives. "Um, so that was some 30 minutes after this all started, maybe more, when we came up with a plan-"