A V E R Y

'Damien, we're having a meeting to go over the details tomorrow,' I said, biting my lip in anticipation of his answer. 'Will you come? I mean, you run this place, so it would be-'

My dad smiled at me before ruffling my hair a little, leaving me scowling and smoothing it down again. 'Of course I will, darling. And I'm completely on board with the idea, by the way.'

'Good. Any question? I have to go tell Maddie and then Sienna wanted me to help her go over her thesis.'

Damien thought for a moment, and when he turned back to me, there was an amused glint in his eyes. 'Who is going to be there?'

'Um, me, you, Maddie, Mason, the twins and Sophie, if she can make it. Her parents have an event to go to in the evening, so she's not sure whether she can come.' Damien was grinning unabashedly and I frowned at him. 'What? Why are you smiling in such a creepy way?'

'Firstly, Avery darling, my smile is not creepy, and second... Did you say Mason was going to be there.'

I groaned and shook my head. 'Yes, he will. So be nice.'

My dad huffed a little. 'I won't make any promises, darling. If he wants to date my daughter, I might actually have to do a background check for surety.' He was smiling again, but at the mention of dating, my face dropped, and he caught on straight away.

'What did he do? Did he hurt you? My God, I will kill that-' A dangerous look entered his eyes and I winced internally for anyone who had first-hand experience of it.

'No, no,' I chuckled, resting my head on his shoulder, 'God, you're even worse than Maddie.'

Damien pulled away and gave me an affronted look. 'Well, I certainly hope so.'

'Is Damien being a hard bastard again?' Martha sing-songed, appearing in the doorway of the lounge.

'Nah, he's fine. Just the usual over protectiveness.' I laughed when Martha slapped his shoulder and left them to it.

I had to tell Maddie about the meeting. And then help Sienna. Right, yeah. I was totally consuming myself with work so that I didn't have to think about Mason, but that was besides the point.

'Maddie! Mads, where are you?' I yelled up the stairs, tilting my head up to see if she was on the landing. She'd said she would be upstairs trying to find a knife she lost when we were training - apparently Eric had taken it to look after for a bit, and now she couldn't find him.

Typical Eric, disappearing when you needed from him - it was funny, actually, the places he went off to. Once, there was a mission in the afternoon and the guy left to go and get a taco when there were five minutes left before we left. Five minutes. Regardless, we somehow managed to stop the weapons trade and Eric led us through the whole thing back at base, eating his lunch happily.

'Are you insane?' Damien said, not angry - no, he was more shocked we'd come out winning.

Eric shrugged, grinning. 'Well, I didn't have breakfast, so..'

Damien stared at him for a minute while the rest of us watched in silence. Damien pretty much never yelled, but something reckless like that could've pushed him over the edge. Instead, he laughed and slapped our 'weapons master' on the shoulder, and said, 'Next time, bring me back something, you inconsiderate man.'

'Yes, sir.' Eric had replied, leaving the room with a happy smile that was bordering on smug. Maddie and I had just looked at each other and rolled our eyes.

Anyway, I was completely off topic.

'Maddie! Where are you?' I called again, gripping the banister as I took the steps two at a time. 'Hello? Maddie?'

'Yeah, I'm here,' her voice came from one of our costume rooms, muffled, as if there were layers over her mouth.

'What are you doing?' I asked, walking into the room. Maddie was stood on a chair, rifling through a box that was clanking with the sound of metal on metal. Dresses and suits, handbags and purses were scattered everywhere, some on hangers and in wardrobes. There were shoes, too - everywhere. To a shopaholic, it was like heaven in here.

'I couldn't find Eric, but apparently he dropped off the knives in this room in a hurry. He went to get food.' Maddie huffed, shoving one box back and pulling another forward, her hair falling in her face.

'Man's got his priorities straight,' I laughed, dragging a stool next to her. 'Which one are you looking for, anyway?'

'It was the one Eric gave me, actually; you know, the one with the red handle?'

'Yeah, I know the one.'

We rifled for the boxes for another couple of minutes, before Maddie grumbled and jumped off of her stool.

'I'll find it later.' She looked agitated, and I gripped her shoulders, forcing her to meet her eyes.

'What's up?'

'Nothing. I just... have a really bad feeling about this. But it's nothing. I'm okay, I promise.'

I watched her uncertainly, but is she was feeling unhappy, she clearly wasn't letting it show. 'Okay. If you're sure.'

'I am. Anyway, what did you want?'

'Oh, I wanted to let you know about the meeting tomorrow. With all of us, to discuss how we're going to deal with GRAVITY, and all that stuff. You in?'

She smiled, her expression lightening. 'Is Mason going to be there?'

'I- I hope so,' I stuttered a little.

'Oh, great. Do I have to add him to my kill list?'

I laughed, grabbing her in a fierce hug. 'No, you don't. We both decided it would be best, for now. I don't know, I just...'

'What?' My best friend said, guiding me to a chest of drawers that we hopped onto. I leaned my back on the wall and huffed out a breath, swinging my legs back and forth.

'I like him, I do, Mads, and I want to try it out with him... But I'm scared that we'll get hurt - and not just by bullets or knives.'

'Emotionally?'

'Exactly.'

Maddie nodded, clasping one of my hands in hers. 'Tell me all about it.' She settled back and tied her hair up, all business-like.

So I opened my mouth and all of those bottled feelings poured out, each emotion and fear and worry lifting from my heart and being balanced by both of us.

Because best friends did that.

And, hell, I was grateful as hell that I had mine to do that for me.

***

M A S O N

'We need help, dude,' Jacob said, running a hand through his hair. 'We're dead if we go alone. We need trained assassins, people who know what they're doing.'

'And you don't think I know that?' I scowled.

'Well, we need to do something about it, Mason. We can't go to New York without a plan.'

I sighed and took a sip of my water. We'd been talking about the damn mission for an hour now, and we kept coming back to the same thing over and over again - without enough people on board, it would be suicide.

Carnage.

'Who can we hire in this short amount of time? And how do we do it without you dad finding out?' Josh mused from the other side of the room, leaning his arm on the table.

'I don't know, guys, so asking me over and over again won't help.' I scowled and went through my papers again.

The door blew open and Avery and Maddie stalked in, closely followed by Avery's dad.

'Sorry we're late,' Avery announced, sitting down next to me and raking her hands through wind-swept eyes.

'Hey.' I murmured, squeezing her hand. She looked over at me and grinned, the smile evident in her eyes as well as on her mouth. God, that mouth.

Then I reminded myself that we both agreed on space and pulled my hand away.

'Hey yourself.'

I breathed in her scent for a minute, forever changing due to the obscene amounts of bath products she owned.

Then I spotted her dad and immediately straightened. Together or not, I wanted to make a good impression; I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't trust me, but it was something I would work on if the issue came up.

'Mr. Fuller, hi. Thank you for coming,' I said, holding my hand out. He reached out and gripped it, shaking it firmly and smiling a little. Whew. Maybe this was going to be okay.

'My daughter and her friends needed me, so here I am. You don't need to thank me, though - let's begin.' Right. He was taking control and I was glad of it.

'So what did you get to?' Maddie asked, folding her hands in front of her.

Josh grinned at her. 'Well, we were just discussing how this mission is a complete bust as we don't have enough people to go.'

'What do you mean, we don't have enough people to go? I thought we already we had it sorted?' Avery looked over to me, her eyebrows slightly raised.

'That's what we thought, too,' I said, 'But after we sent some guys to scout the place out, we're going to need way more than just us to get this undercover - and in broad daylight, too.'

Jacob slumped in her chair a little. Damien frowned at the table; I could practically see the cogs in his mind whirring.

'Who do we hire?' Maddie asked.

'We don't know. We don't have anyone left - everyone if either too afraid to side with us, or they'll simply do it for their own means and leave us in the dust. We can't trust anyone.'

'It doesn't matter. We have to go.' Jacob's eyes bored into each and every one of us. 'I'm not giving up - those bastards win if we don't at least try.'

Avery was eerily quiet beside me.

'I have one person who can join us.'

Five pairs of heads snapped towards her, mine included.

'Who?' asked Damien, watching his daughter intently. 'Who is it?'

'You know Sophie?' We all nodded. 'Well, she said she can help. She said she'd come along with us, so that's at least one more person on the list.'

Damien sighed, and rubbed his hands over his face. 'Well, I guess that's good. One person could mean the difference between life and death.'

We all lapsed into a silence.

I couldn't stop thinking about the drive. If we didn't do this, would the risk of actually going through with it be worse? Or would it be worse to literally hand the DM the drive if we didn't go?

Groaning, I dropped my head into my hands and massaged my temples.

'We're getting nowhere. We might as well call it a day and come back together in a few days.' I said, suddenly exhausted.

'He's right,' Josh said, already on his feet. 'We've got another month at least to figure this out. You coming, Jacob?'

'Yeah.' His brother followed him out and the door clicked shut behind them.

The rest of us just sat there, waiting for a light bulb moment.

It didn't come.

***

A V E R Y

I think a lot of the time people underestimated me. I mean, there had been countless missions and raids that I'd been on where I confused the others so much that it became easy to knock them out and get on with the task at hand.

So when I called Sophie and asked her to meet, I was glad she asked no questions and came immediately.

'What is it?' she asked, when I let her into the Salvation, pulling her through into the lounge. The walls of this particular room were soundproof, so I didn't have to worry about the wrong people hearing.

'I need to ask you something. I know you're coming to the New York trip with us, but... I was hoping for more recruits, to be honest. And with such a short amount of time and not enough money to start hiring - plus the risk of work getting back to the DM, I am going to ask you anyway.'

Sophie nodded. 'Okay, shoot.'

I opened my mouth and the plan tumbled out, my words clear and enunciated, a contrast to me rapidly beating heart. In the middle of my proposition, Sophie began smiling.

'Yes! Yes, that could work. You fucking genius, Avery!' she laughed, hugging me hard. 'Oh my god, we could actually pull this off, you know.'

Yeah, it could work, and by some miracle... We'd survive.

I smiled right back at her. Things were going right for once, and damn, did it feel good.

'We have to go over the plan, though.' I said, pulling papers out of the folder I had left in the cabinet.

'Okay. Let's do it. Show me what you got.'

***

Well, things are really kicking off, aren't they? What do you think Avery told Sophie? Comment and let me know your thoughts!

Dedication goes to @thato___23___ for all of the votes. Thank you so damn much for the love 💖

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-M