Finding You

by Max Hudson

  “Car’s that way,” he murmured, giving a quick jerk of his head in indication as he turned and locked the door behind them, then set off down the sidewalk.

  They continued to just walk. Holding hands. Like this was normal, like absolutely nothing was wrong. It only took them a few minutes to reach the car, and they both slid easily inside as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

  If he hadn’t been nearly hyperventilating, Simon might almost have been able to convince himself that that was indeed the case.

  Adrian started the car. They peeled off slowly down the street—very slowly, actually, which even after only a few days getting in and out of that passenger seat Simon knew was not typical of this particular driver.

  “Ah, any reason we’re—?"

  “Don’t want to look like we’re in a hurry,” Adrian replied before he could even finish the sentence. “Just in case.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  They both lapsed into silence again. Then, with a sharp puff of air that was almost but not quite a sigh, Adrian released the wheel with one hand to reach over and grasp Simon’s fingers tightly, just for a moment.

  ***

  The drive to Adrian’s apartment felt like it took longer than it should have. Not just because Adrian was driving slower than he normally did, but because Simon was convinced every new car that appeared on the road behind them and followed for longer than forty-five seconds was in fact following them.

  Adrian seemed to feel similarly. Or perhaps he was just being cautious on principle, because even though nothing actually suspicious seemed to be happening. He took a few detours here and there to get back to his building, which also serve to lengthen the drive.

  Finally, they pulled into the parking lot and both quickly climbed from the car, drawing toward each other almost instinctively once they were out in the open air. Simon glanced around, trying to be subtle about it as he searched for any sign that anything was out of the ordinary.

  Apparently he wasn’t subtle enough, because Adrian’s hand flickered out to rest reassuringly on the small of his back for a moment as he fished his keys out of his pocket to let them in through the front door.

  “It’s gonna be fine,” he murmured lowly. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  Simon couldn’t exactly believe him, but even the simple fact that he was trying to reassure him was actually comforting in its own way. He summoned up a small smile and nodded at him as they stepped into the elevator and the doors dinged cheerfully closed behind them.

  He took a breath and rolled his shoulders back. Then he let his head sort of loll from side to side in a probably futile attempt to work at least some of the tension out of his body.

  “Just a quick stop back home, then we’re out of here again,” Adrian murmured beside him as the elevator bumped to a stop on his floor. Simon glanced down at him sidelong. He got the feeling he was talking aloud in an effort to keep himself grounded.

  He didn’t really feel the need to respond to that, He just nodded and trailed a step or two behind Adrian as they approached the door to the apartment.

  “We should figure out what exactly we’re going to say to the cops,” Adrian continued his under-his-breath monologuing, though he broke off in a low curse as the key stuck in the door for a moment and he had to throw his shoulder into the door to get it to open properly. Kind of despite himself, Simon felt a smile twitching at the right side of his mouth and he reached out to press his hand to the door over Adrian’s shoulder, adding a little extra force to get it open.

  “Does this happen a lot?”

  Adrian huffed and rolled his eyes as they managed to swing the door inward. “More than I’d like. We got lucky the last few times we were here. I was sort of hoping that luck would hold.” He snorted and shook his head, stepping through the doorway into the apartment. “Although I don’t know why it would, I wouldn’t exactly say we’ve been having what most people would call “good luck” lately.”

  He froze, so quickly that Simon stumbled into his back and had to fling a hand out to press against the wall in order to keep his balance. He had just barely opened his mouth to ask what the hell had just happened, when he actually took a look around Adrian’s apartment and he realized exactly what had shocked him.

  For a long, long moment, they both just stood there, barely inside the doorway, staring in mute bafflement at the woman lounging easily on Adrian’s couch.

  She grinned up at them, placing a still gently steaming coffee cup down on the coffee table before sitting up straight and dropping her hands onto her knees with a soft slapping sound.

  “Hey, boys.”

  “Minnie?!”

  Chapter Eight

  Adrian Crow

  Minnie was here. In Adrian’s apartment. Grinning at them like she was in on some joke that they were missing.

  “Minnie!” he repeated, finding himself sort of incapable of making any other coherent words actually come out of his mouth. “You—what the—?"

  “I think maybe you both should sit down?” Minnie offered with one arched eyebrow, hazel eyes glinting at them with a playfulness so familiar that it made his chest ache for a moment.

  He opened his mouth again, relief and confusion and anger warring for the dominant emotion in his brain, but before he could actually speak, Simon got there first.

  “What the hell, Minerva?!”

  Adrian stepped sharply to the side to get out of his way as Simon rushed forward and swept their friend up into a massive hug that actually lifted her physically off the couch. Then he plopped her quickly back down and took a step back, arms folded as he glared down at her. Adrian stepped up beside him, shaking his head slowly from side to side as his brain tried desperately to process what was happening.

  “I second that question,” he muttered weakly.

  Minnie looked between the two of them, smile still in place, though the expression had turned just a tad sheepish. It passed quickly though and she leaned back against the cushions of the couch, propping her ankle up on her knee. “Look. I know you’re both confused. And probably more than a little annoyed with me.”

  “Annoyed?” Simon repeated. Adrian glanced up at him, his eyebrows creeping up fractionally toward his hairline. He had only heard Simon sound that irritated a few times. Most of them in the last forty-eight hours or so. “Annoyed,” he said again, voice positively frosty. “Minnie, I am so far passed annoyed I can’t even see it in the rearview mirror. I was panicking, I thought you might be hurt or—or worse and—”

  He cut off, clenching his jaw tightly and looking away as the muscles in his neck twitched slightly.

  Without thinking, Adrian reached up to lay a hand gently on his shoulder. He was still pretty lost himself, but the impulse to comfort was now almost instinctive when it came to Simon at this point.

  He glanced back at Minnie and saw her eyes were locked on the gesture, contemplative. He found himself flushing slightly and hesitated, unsure if he should draw his hand back or not.

  Then he decided, fuck it, and he let his hand slide down from Simon’s shoulder to grasp his hand gently, letting their fingers lace together. Simon glanced down at him, surprised. But after a moment his expression melted into something soft and slightly relieved and he squeezed Adrian’s hand gently in response.

  “Uh-huh.” Minnie was smiling again, though this time it was the soft, I-see-that-thing-you’re-trying-to-hide-and-it’s-adorable smile that he had grown all too familiar with when they shared a dorm.

  Her expression sobered up quickly though and she sighed, reaching up to run a hand through thick mahogany curls. “Look. On the one hand, you have every right to be irritated with me. I know this all must have been scary, and I’m sure you have about a million questions.”

  Both Simon and Adrian opened their mouths at the same time to respond to that. Before they could she raised a hand and continued sharply, “But.” She narrowed her eyes. “Guys. Come on. I’m a frickin’ police de
tective, you can’t just try to solve my missing person’s case by yourselves!”

  “We tried going to the station, but—!”

  “Yeah, except you sent that cryptical as hell message and—”

  They both cut off and looked at each other.

  Minnie actually chuckled quietly at that, but the sound was brief, and her expression sobered up again quickly. “Look. I’m sorry you guys were worried—really, I am. That was never my intention. I didn’t mean to just leave you hanging like that. I know it must have looked really bad.”

  She looked between the two of them. Her expression had gone softer, the line of her mouth curving just slightly and her eyebrows just a bit upturned, an almost concerned expression. “But everything is okay now. So, are we good?”

  Adrian and Simon exchanged another quick look. Then Adrian shook his head with a dry, rather unamused chuckle and reached up to press his fingers against his temple for a moment.

  “I… Yeah. Yeah, Minnie. But you just—”

  “You have to tell us what happened,” Simon cut in, finishing the thought he hadn’t quite voiced. “What do you mean ‘it wasn’t supposed to’? What was supposed to happen?”

  Minnie huffed out a breath and pushed herself to her feet. Though she wasn’t exactly a giant—smaller even than Adrian—once she was standing she just had that kind of authoritative presence that made someone take a step back, giving her room as though she took up much more space than she did.

  Sort of the opposite of Simon.

  Adrian cast a glance up at the taller man out of the corner of his eye and amended that thought. It was the opposite of what Simon used to do.

  Stepping around them to the other end of the coffee table, Minnie paused and flicked her eyes down to the piled “evidence” that had been left on the table that morning before they left for her house.

  She leaned down to tap the crinkled Post-It. “You looked this up.” It probably should have been phrased like a question, but her tone was definitive, certain.

  Adrian nodded. “Yeah. Suspected armed. So—whatever happened, Mina’s on the other end of it?”

  Minnie snorted and looked up at him drolly. “God, no. That’s what you— Jesus. You didn’t actually try to confront her or anything, did you?”

  Both Adrian and Simon shifted their feet and glanced away. After a moment, Simon muttered, “Not confront. Talk to. Or at least try.” He glanced at Adrian with a pointedly quirked brow.

  Adrian threw his hands up, glaring. “Is it my fault she assumes the worst of me?”

  “A little bit.” Both Simon and Minnie spoke up at the same time, then blinked, looking at each other in a brief moment of surprise, and smiled.

  “Oh. No.” Adrian glared between them, folding his arms. “I don’t care for that shit at all. No no.”

  Minnie’s grin widened and Simon stepped closer to loop an arm around his waist, pulling him gently into his side. Adrian stumbled slightly, surprised by the gesture, and further surprised when Simon bent to drop a kiss on the top of his head.

  Minnie’s grin became a smirk. Before she could say anything, Adrian hurriedly cut in with, “Fine. What were we supposed to get from the note?”

  “Well you weren’t supposed to find it, for starters,” Minnie snipped back. She sighed and straightened up, crumpling the already crinkled note in her fist. “It was just for me. I knew I should have shredded it, but at that point I was in a hurry—” She cut herself off with a shake of her head and gave a little huff. “Never mind. Point is, Mina’s the one who was working with me on this. And I wanted to ask her to keep an eye out for the two of you, but I got called in for assignment before I could really explain what that meant.” She sighed again and pinched the bridge of her nose. “So I guess she interpreted that as chase you off if you came sniffing around. Which of course she did.”

  Adrian’s jaw went slack. “Are you kidding me? That—she just—are you serious?!”

  “Whoa, easy!” Minnie raised her hands peaceably and Simon’s arm around his waist tightened comfortingly. “She was just doing her job, Adri.”

  “And what were you doing?” Simon demanded—there was still an undercurrent of tension and frustration in his voice, but it was clear too that it came from the concern tightening at the corners of his eyes and mouth.

  Minnie exhaled slowly, folding her arms loosely and rocking back on one heel. “Undercover work. Drug smuggling. Which I can tell you now because we’ve got the perpetrators in custody.”

  Adrian felt his professional instincts perk up. “What kind of smuggling?”

  Minnie narrowed her eyes and pointed a finger at him. “No. Not unless this is entirely off the record, Crow, you hear me?”

  He laughed. He couldn’t help it. It seemed to finally be settling in that this was Minnie, she was home, and everything was really going to be okay. “I promise, I promise.”

  Grinning, he looped his arm around Simon’s middle to give him a quick squeeze before ducking out from the other man’s hold and moving toward the kitchen. “Look, take a seat and start talking. If you’re off the clock, you’ve got time to tell us exactly what this has all been about. I’ll make coffee.”

  ***

  Once they’d all managed to get settled, the adrenaline and relief slowly wearing off in Simon and Adrian, Minnie launched into a lengthy, dramatic explanation of what had happened—like she would on Wednesday nights, bitching to the two of them about problems at work, or regaling with stories of assignments that she’d finished up.

  Apparently, she’d been undercover as a vet technician. It had been supposed to last at least two weeks, but the two smugglers she’d been keeping under observation slipped up, and she had performed the arrest earlier that morning.

  “Wait, back up.” Adrian raised a hand, already starting to smile. “A vet?”

  Minnie snorted into her coffee, shaking her head. “I know, I know. Gabapentin, though. That’s where you get it. It’s illegal to move across state lines, so…” She shrugged.

  “Well, better than undercover as a garbageman or something,” Simon noted with a small smile.

  Minnie rolled her eyes and shook her head again. “Hey, my line of work? Not often I get to hang out with cute animals. I’ll take it.”

  All three of them chuckled a bit at that. Adrian tucked himself a little more securely into the corner of the couch, curled up against Simon’s side. Simon shifted slightly to lift his arm and wrap it around Adrian’s shoulders.

  Minnie’s eyes followed the moment and her lips twitched up into a smug little smirk. “You know,” she noted, too casual, “now that we’re all a bit calmer, either of you wanna tell me exactly what this is?” She waved a hand vaguely at the way they were snuggled together on the couch.

  Simon shifted, already starting to stammer awkwardly, and Adrian laid a hand on his knee with a crooked smile of his own. “C’mon, Min. Like you haven’t been pulling for this since the day you introduced us.”

  Simon went still, then looked rapidly back and forth between them. His jaw went slack. “You…you…but—what?”

  Both Adrian and Minnie laughed, grinning at him. Adrian rocked up onto his knees slightly so he could press a kiss to Simon’s cheek.

  “Oh, my boys.” Minnie was positively beaming at them. “Took you long enough.”

  Adrian couldn’t stop smiling. Even Simon’s mildly stunned expression was beginning to melt into a soft, blushing grin.

  “Well, you know what they say.” Adrian shrugged and settled comfortably into the crook of his boyfriend’s arm. “Better late than never.”

 

 

 
filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share