Page 10 of Rogue’s Mark

"Do what?"

"Throw around a joke that isn't funny. It’s annoying. I'm fucking serious, Rogue. I have been in this building for months now. I helped blow Fischer's cover. I sat in that room last night and I heard what I heard and I am not—" She stops and resets. "I am not just a Runt anymore. You know that."

I do know that. But knowing it and acting on it are two different things.

"You'll be included when there's a reason for you to be included," I say. "Right now, there isn't."

"That is such bullshit—" She makes a short, frustrated sound and turns away from me, toward the desk. "You know what, just fucking forget it. Close the door on your way out."

"You already asked me to close it."

"On your way out, Rogue."

"Vi."

"I mean it, Rogue, I'm not in the mood for⁠—"

I cross the room in three steps, maybe four, and my hand is in her hair, turning her, and whatever she’s about to say gets lost.

"You want to be in the room," I say, quiet. "Well, you are in the room, right here, right now. With me in it.”

"I told you to leave," she says, her voice shaking.

She looks at me for a long second, and something washes over her, a culmination of argument, frustration, and learning when to push and when to read the room.

She reaches up and grabs the front of my shirt.

I take her mouth, and she makes that sound I’ve been thinking about since the first time I kissed her. I knew I was screwed then. Months down the road, even more so.

While her fingers tighten in my shirt, my hand slides from her hair to her jaw, tilting her where I want her, and she lets me. That’s the thing about Vi that undoes me every single time, that she knows just what I want.

A bunch of her papers end up on the floor, though not all at once. A folder goes first, then those that were open on the desk, followed by the ones from the bed when we fall onto it, and she makes a noise about the mess that is half protest and half surrender.

"Those are organized," she says. “Well, they were.”

"I know," I say. “They’ll be organized again.”

"Rogue."

"Vi."

She gives up.

The thing about her, the specific, ongoing thing with her, is that she's been learning the Rot's ins and outs for weeks now. She knows how shit works. She knows the rules of this place and what it means to be ours, and she’s still here, anyway.

Not that she could or would leave. But she’s really in the fucking place.

I pull back just enough to look at her. Her hair is a disaster, half out of whatever she had it in, and she's got a crease on her cheek from where she was leaning on her hand reading her notes. She’s looking up at me with dark eyes and her shirt twisted sideways.

I have no interest in being anywhere else in the world right now.

"What?" she says.

"Nothing." I take the pen from behind her ear. "Just looking."

She rolls her eyes, which is extremely Vi, and reaches for me.

I catch her wrist. Hold it.