The Detectives need to refine the deal

Sinead hated that she was nervous. Again.

And this time it wasn’t the kind of nervousness that had butterflies fluttering between her gut and her cunt because Marc was scary and sexy and she was turned on. This time she was nervous because as she waited for him, Jules was next to her in the coffee shop and Sinead dreaded that Jules was going to see something. Catch on to Sinead’s secrets. The things she wasn’t telling her best friend.

If anyone would notice that Sinead acted differently around Marc, it would be Jules.

So she couldn’t. And yet, she sort of felt like she had to.

Marc was in control, and he’d made it clear he didn’t like the idea of a brat being in… whatever they were calling the thing between them. But what was considered bratty when it wasn’t a BDSM thing? What if she wasn’t being bratty, she was just being a cop and a detective, but he felt like something she said or did was bratty?

“Sinead, what the fuck?” Jules asked quietly, setting down her coffee and giving Sinead’s foot a hard enough nudge that the bouncing leg slipped off of where she’d crossed it at her knee.

“Sorry,” Sinead said, readjusting in her seat. “Probably didn’t need this cup of coffee.”

“I told you to get tea,” Jules rolled her eyes.

“Tea might as well be water filtered through a handful of dirt.”

“Because coffee beans are so much more refined.”

“You drink coffee too,” Sinead countered.

“Next time get tea so you aren’t bouncing off the fucking walls. God, you’re gonna need to pee as soon as we get back in the car, aren’t you?”

“Shut up,” Sinead sighed. The door to the coffee shop opened and she glanced over, but it wasn’t him.

“Is he usually this late?” Jules asked.

“No,” Sinead said. “Usually he’s pretty prompt, even when he says he’s running late. I think it’s a European thing or something.”

“I thought the French were known for being sort of lax on promptness?” Julia snorted.

“OK, maybe it’s just a Marc thing,” Sinead shrugged. “Or, like, an ‘I make a shitload of money because I’m smart as fuck and super structured in how I do things’ thing.”

“Sounds like he has a stick up his ass to me,” Jules said. “Though I guess he wasn’t like that when we had dinner at your place.” Then she smirked and snickered. “What if you’re all hot for him, and it turns out he’s into getting pegged or something? All that sexual tension and suaveness and he wants you to grab a dildo and-”

“Fuck off,” Sinead sighed, very aware that Marc was the exact fucking opposite of that, then sat up as she saw Marc through the front window. “He’s here.”

“Calm your tits,” Jules murmured with another smirk, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Twat,” Sinead murmured back, then tried not to smile as Marc finished brushing the snow from his coat and strode through the seating area of the coffee shop and approached their table.

“Detectives,” he said with that fucking smile of his as he nodded to them and swept off his coat, folding it neatly once and hanging it over the free chair at their table. “A moment, if you please. Can I get you anything while I order?”

“We’re good,” Jules said.

Marc looked to Sinead.

“We’re good,” she confirmed.

Marc nodded and went to the counter to make an order, and Sinead could tell immediately that he was being his smooth-talking self as the older woman behind the counter gave him a warm look and started bantering with him.

“OK, he’s hot,” Jules sighed. “You’re still on thin fuckin’ ice.”

“Fuck off,” Sinead sighed, shaking her head. She wasn’t sure what was worse, Jules knowing just enough to **** her like this with her little barbs, or Jules not knowing before and flirting with him in her apartment.

Marc came back carrying his coffee with a ceramic cup and saucer - a fucking cup and saucer when everyone else in the place had basic cardboard takeaway cups. And he had a croissant on a plate, buttered neatly.

As soon as she saw the croissant, Sinead regretted not ordering one. Or a doughnut.

“I apologise for the delay, Detectives,” Marc said as he set his plate and saucer down and pulled out his chair, adjusting how his coat hung on it before taking his seat. “It was not my intent to keep either of you lovely ladies waiting on my account.”

“It’s fine, Marc,” Jules said, leaning back in her chair and eyeing him over a bit. Sinead wasn’t sure if she was doing it because she was doing another round of judging him, or just to bug Sinead. Either one was equally likely.

“Thank you for coming,” Sinead said. “I know we could have met at your office, but this seemed… more appropriate.”

Marc lifted an eyebrow as he took a sip of his coffee, then set it down on the saucer neatly. “Is this meant to be a clandestine meeting?”

“...Sort of,” Sinead said.

“More yes than no,” Jules said, leaning forward in her seat. Sinead took a second glance at her friend and partner - had Jules unbuttoned an extra button on purpose, or had it just slipped? It wouldn’t have been the first time for either. “Look, Marc, I get that you and Sinead had your arrangement with you helping her sort through financial documents and such, but I didn’t realise you were… Fuck it. I didn’t realise you were ‘going undercover’ with her. That’s super dangerous.”

“Ah, Julia,” Marc said with one of those fucking smiles of his. “Please, providing Sinead with an unobtrusive escort into locations that would otherwise be more difficult for her to access is my pleasure.”

Jules gave him a deadpan look. “Yeah, sure.”

Marc sighed, cocking his head slightly. “Detective, I would be happy to provide you with a similar excursion. I’m sure Sinead would vouch for my proficiency as an undercover partner.”

“Marc,” Sinead groaned. “Just… stop talking.”

Jules snorted and Marc gave her another one of those grins.

“Look,” Jules said, lowering her voice a little more as she leaned into the table between them. “I’m not saying what you’ve helped us uncover so far isn’t helpful, but every time you get involved and things aren’t done by the books it makes things more complicated. You know this, Sinead knows this. At this point, things have gotten so fucking complicated that the little knot you two have tied is going to take some serious unpicking to make any of it workable.”

“It sounds like you’ve already come to a decision on how that ‘unpicking’ needs to occur, Detective,” Marc said with a little smirk. He glanced at Sinead. “Sometimes it is helpful to get a third, outside perspective on things.”

Sinead felt her eyes widen just slightly, reading the unspoken question in his eyes. Does Jules know? Marc was asking. NO, she silently screamed back, hoping he would get the message without Jules catching on.

“Well, that’s me, the third perspective,” Jules said, almost but not quite rolling her eyes. “And yeah, we worked out what needs to happen. I get why you’re refusing to be an official informant, Marc, but it’s really fucking us here - none of the financial documents you’ve got us are admissible in court, which means nothing we find out following them without being able to show another way we discovered the info is rotten too. And since you don’t want to be named or testify, that means every time you do something with Sinead it’s pretty much useless too. So your whole thing with the cards and finding out about the smuggling? So far it’s totally useless to us.”

“I appreciate the dire picture that you have painted for me, Detective Xu, but I sense you’re coming to the climactic declaration of this midday meeting?” Marc asked. He’d been taking small bites of his croissant throughout the chat and now he gestured with the tail end of it. “In other words, perhaps you should get to the point?”

“We need actionable information, Marc,” Sinead sighed. “Something one step removed from Victor so that everything we’ve done so far can be plausible happenstance. Something that Jules can chase down separate from me, because Victor knows my face now and that it’s tied to you. I can’t show up in court or he’ll know you’re involved, and that’ll roll downhill. So we need to figure out what those antiques were, where they are now, or even better where they are going and how. If we can find out what and where then Jules can set up a plausible discovery of them, which can lead to us getting a warrant to dig up everything else we already know about from your work.”

“I see,” Marc said, looking back and forth between Sinead and Jules. He was leaning back now, and Sinead’s training told her he’d settled into a power position. Open body language, feeling unthreatened and dominant. Feeling in control.

Before, it would have gotten Sinead’s back up to see him like that. Not him, but someone standing between her and what she needed for a case. Someone she was going to need to cajole, intimidate or otherwise manoeuvre into doing what she wanted.

Now, because it was Marc, because of everything between them, Sinead felt her pussy start getting wet.

Sinead knew that Marc, in control, in a position to make demands, meant that she would be paying a larger price than before. And that meant that she might finally get the fucking that she’d been craving from him.

God, I’m fucked up, she thought to herself. And yet she couldn’t help it.

“If you’re about to ask what’s in it for you, I’m going to seriously consider taking a key to your probably very expensive car,” Jules said dryly.

“Not at all, Detective,” Marc said. “No, I’m very happy with the current arrangement we have going. In fact, I would say that I have very few complaints at all. Other than the business with the legalities of the information, would you disagree, Sinead?”

“No,” Sinead said quickly. “No, I’m happy with the terms of our… agreement.”

“What do you think of helping us get this straightened out then?” Jules asked.

“I think it will take some careful execution, but I can likely figure something out,” Marc said. “Though I may only be able to discover what, where or when, not all three.”

“Whatever you can get for us, we’ll make it work,” Sinead assured him.

“Where and when are more important than what,” Jules added. “We can figure out the What once we have the suspicious cargo in custody. We need to catch it before we can tag it.”

“Understood, Detective,” Marc nodded, taking a final sip of his coffee and setting it down on his saucer. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do need to get back downtown. While I will always appreciate a visit with a pair of beautiful women, and my two favourite Detectives, I am expected to be available to my paying clients. En avons-nous fini très chères?”

He shook each of their hands, acting like the smarmy French bastard he was and kissing their knuckles before sweeping his coat on and giving them one more nod before leaving.

“God, that’s corny and shouldn’t be attractive,” Jules said as he stepped out the door of the coffee shop and back into the snow. “But somehow he makes it work.”

“I know,” Sinead grumbled. She hated the fact that she loved it.

“Do you?” Jules asked her with a sly smirk. “Do you know?”

“Fuck off,” Sinead sighed.

<U>Translations</U>

• En avons-nous fini très chères? = Are we done, dear ones?

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