Seeking Solace (Hobbs)

[Dante Stark]

Stark had sat in the apartment for three weeks only leaving to hunt and get supplies he'd needed, he had only been back in New York for three weeks and the two people he'd kept in contact with was David and Georgia. Stark hadn't bothered to contact anyone else he was staying well off the grid for now, while he was gone he'd heard about his mother passing away and he'd been to her grave to lay some flowers down and apologise for bailing out on her. Standing up Dante grabbed one of his black jackets and slid it over his t-shirt as he knotted his military boots and stepped outside the door.

Outside in his garage was his beautiful new 67' Chevy Impala that he purchased before he'd left town, he'd rented it previously when he and Hobbs had been out annoying Vaughn Logan... Stark looked at his phone and dialled Hobbs number, it went through to answer phone and he sighed before leaving a message. "Hazel, it's Dante I'm finally back in New York, I'm sorry that i bailed out on you.. I'd wished i had asked you to come with me.. Hunting isn't as glamorous without a partner that i can bare. - I missed you in a sense but you'd probably say that was gay or something.. Any way I'll be heading into the Compound soon and i just wanted to talk to you before you saw me again " Dante spoke softly as he finished his message and jammed it back in his jean pocket.

Starting the engine it let out a mighty roar as he reversed out of the apartment complex and out towards the road. Stark drove towards the compound stopping just outside of the secret entrance, taking his time to breathe out in the air he finally went down through the secret passage. Stark passed a few hunters who said hello to him as he'd walked by. Stark wasn't really focusing on people more a less getting reacquainted with the old place.. Finally he'd stopped in the main complex and looked around he'd missed the old place but there was something about being out on the open road that made him miss it.

Stark walked towards the mess hall and grabbed himself something to eat and he'd sat away from everyone in one of the corner tables where he'd had lunch with Cortes and Hobbs before. Stark finished up his snack and finally sucked it up and headed towards her lab.. He fought vampires and Lycans and yet he was scared of his hunting partner, there was something about her that just chilled Stark sometimes.. He'd knocked slowly on the door and checked nobody was around. "Hazel.. It's Dante.. I think we finally need to talk." Stark said softly leaning against the door and waiting for her to respond to him.

[Hazel 'Hobbs' Yeung]

Meanwhile, over in Candyland, Hobbs had her head full. She was sitting on a wheeled office chair, knees tucked up to her chest as she perched on the edge of her seat like a bird. She leaned against the edge of her work bench, peering down through a microscope lens at a small cluster of wires and circuit boards as she delicately poked at it with a set of tweezers and a microscopic laser welder. Tiny plumes of smoke rose from the tip of the tin welder. Her headphones blasted Black Sabbath into her eardrums, and Hobbs was half-preoccupied trying to catch the straw of a rum and coke glass with the tip of her tongue and guide it into her mouth without looking away from what she was welding. Overall, a very tricky task.

She was too busy and too deafened to notice that her phone rang out, and didn’t glance at it to realise that she had a voicemail. She certainly didn’t know who it was from.

It had been three months since Stark vanished without a word of goodbye. Not a phone call, not a postcard, not one single measly text message. Hobbs never really stopped wondering what happened to him, whether his bones were now rotting away in a ditch by the road, or whether his flesh had been digested in some Werewolf’s belly. Her hair, having partially grown out, had been ruthlessly chopped back like an unruly lawn, and it was now cropped shorter than it had been before she ever came to the Compound. Over the last three months she’d split her time evenly between her lab and the gym, rebuilding her atrophied muscle until she was almost as strong as she had been back in the army. She was still thin, still pale, still an insomniac, but now she looked almost healthy; a remarkable feat for a woman who’d been worrying herself sick for three months.

She became mildly aware of someone standing at the doorway. Was it Logan back again for another visit? She turned off her MP3 player, pulled her headphones off and looked up.

In that instant, all the warmth in her expression of welcoming a newbie to her domain turned to ice. Her face was haunted by the ghost of her last smile before it slid away like sand through fingers. And there, standing at the doorway, bold as brass, was Lieutenant Danticus Stark, calling her by her first name as though he had the right... He turned up out of nowhere after three months without a single word of correspondence and he had the nerve to call her Hazel?
And he said they needed to talk? Too little, too late. Hobbs had nothing to say to him anymore. Hobbs stood up abruptly, pushing away the chair as she did so, and when she spoke it was with a voice so cold it could have frozen hell. "Get out."

[Dante Stark]

There was something fierce tugging at him as she'd practically screamed at him to get out.. He'd obviously hurt Hobbs very deeply and for that he'd felt like scum of the earth.. Of course he'd never give his true reasoning to leave but he moved his foot in the way of the door so she couldn't completely get rid of him.

"Hobbs.. I'm sorry, so sorry.. I should have kept in touch with you and i fell like an ass for what I've probably put you through.. But i felt i could do so much more than what we did in New York.. I've been state to state ganking vampires and werewolf's alike.. And one thing stayed a constant in my mind.. That thing being how much i bloody missed your witty banter.. and just being you overall that's what brought me back to this city.. And you can call me all manner of things but bloody hell woman.. I'm not going to bail on you again." Stark said calmly, he wasn't going to fight her..

Stark moved his foot to prove he was willing to allow her time to allow Stark to be her friend again, of course that would have come with a costly price tag.. Had he offered to buy her booze.. But Stark felt he could reason with Hobbs.. She'd looked different and he noticed the changes that she had gone through... Usually he'd have complimented her but this was not the time for his remarks this was serious business between the pair.. There was defiantly some tension in the air and Stark could feel her icy stare piercing him like daggers.

"Just.. I'm Sorry.." Stark said looking down at the floor, he was waiting for her to slap him across the face and slam the door on him.. Of course he deserved whatever she did to him as it was his fault he was now in this predicament.. Stark looked down at the floor before looking back up at Hobbs and allowing his gaze to meet hers.. He liked glancing in her eyes as they felt warming on a good occasion but now they just felt cold... Stark stood there locking eyes with her waiting for her to make her move.

[Hazel 'Hobbs' Yeung]

Hobbs just stood there, perfectly still, silent, her face a mask of thinly veiled hurt and hate and resentment. It hurt her to look at him, but after having spent three months convinced that she was never going to see his face again she couldn’t bring herself to look away. And there was a terrible look in her eyes, a crease between her pinched brows that expressed betrayal.

"You’re sorry?" Her voice was quiet. She willed it not to break. "After all this time you turn up out of the blue and all you can say is that... you’re sorry?" To have him stand there and hear him claim that he missed her, promise that he would never leave again, it was like he’d just punched her in the stomach. It was a lie to say that he’d missed her, and she knew it. And to hear him say he’d never leave again was perhaps the worst... He didn’t care what leaving the first time around had done to her.

"You were gone," she said, trying to steady the barely perceptible wobble of her voice. "For three months. I had no idea where you were or what you were doing because you never deigned to tell me," she bit at him, the venom leaking through. "You could have been killed, torn to shreds, beaten to a bloody pulp, left to rot in a ditch by the road. For all I knew you were dead. And I had to deal with the fact that I was probably never going to see yet another friend ever again." But that wasn’t nearly what hurt the most. Stark had been aware almost from the very beginning that she had lost men before. Friends had been killed out in the field, and he’d willingly put her through that again. "You knew about Afghanistan. You knew about Declan. You fucking did it to me again and didn't even care, you selfish son of a bitch. How easy would it have been to just pick up the phone to let me know that you were even alive? Is that too much for you or did you just not give a shit about what must have been going through my head?"

His apologies meant nothing to her, they were words that should have been spoken three months ago. If he was so apologetic, he should have called, or emailed, or something. Communication these days was so damn simple, so quick, so effortless, and he could have easily contacted her, to say goodbye or to let her know where he was going, for how long, and why. Hell, just a simple phone call letting her hear the sound of his voice would have meant the world to her. At least then she would have known that he was okay. He carried a phone on him at all times, he had twenty-four hours a day worth of chance to call her... for three solid months, and he never did. But the fact that he didn’t contact her, not once, meant that he simply didn’t want to. Hobbs hadn’t meant enough to him to warrant one single fucking text message. And that was the greatest injustice of them all.

[Dante Stark]

Stark had realised that his leaving Hobbs may have been better for himself but he'd left her behind and that's the most awful thing about this whole damn situation he'd thought.. She stared him down and he stood there he almost wanted to scream at her and explain himself.. But that always made situations worse.. What did he have to lose had he done it. Stark paused and placed his hand on her door as he stared blankly into her eyes.. "There's two times i left you Hazel, the first time was at that motel... And well then this three month gap it all leads down to two goddamn things.. I did it because.."

Stark paused and felt his throat swell as he was about to reveal his goddamn secret to her, he shared many things with her and this was going to spill shit straight over the floor. "I did it because... I love you Hazel... And that's why i left.. Because of you and the way i felt about you.. Stark said his voice almost raised.. If anyone had been close to them they would have heard this argument.. But thankfully Stark couldn't see anyone.. And then his face dropped once he'd realised he'd blurted out how he fucking felt about her..

In these next moments Dante was waiting for god to just smite his unworthy face of this earth, but there was something about the waiting that made this all seem like ice picks to the heart.. Stark hadn't felt so withdrawn from the world the only time he'd felt like this was when he was stuck out in a battlefield and right now he'd rather be caught in a fire fight then have to deal with his mess...

"Are you happy now.. Knowing that i fucking feel this way about you.. " Stark sighed banging his hand against the door in frustration. The situation was full of tension now and it all resided on how she'd respond to his declaration. And then there was the aftermath of this whole bloody ordeal..

Stark stood there head down at the floor and his body stiff as he waited for some kind of response although it wouldn't be good it was never good.

[Hazel 'Hobbs' Yeung]

Since Stark didn’t give a toss about her, Hobbs in turn had cut him out of her own heart. It was the single most painful thing she’d ever done, and considering that she’d had her leg blown off by an RPG, spent several days in a military desert hospital with her flesh blistered, burned and infected, had her leg taken off, and regularly spent her nights suffering from phantom pains along with the normal aches of being thrown around by Immortals on a daily basis... that was saying something.

Then... he spoke, and her face fell. The look of revulsion and anger melted away into shock, then confusion. Had she misheard him? He... loved her? Hobbs had never heard anyone say that so her, nor had she ever expected to. Because, let’s face it, Hobbs was hardly a pinup fireball of sex appeal. She was a skinny, mentally broken amputee with a bad attitude. She never even tried to make herself attractive, in fact on some level it was exactly what she had guarded against.

Her eyes flickered as she let out a deep breath, of relief, perhaps, maybe disbelief. She wrenched her eyes away from his face, looking back at her workbench at what she knew, what was safe and comfortable and familiar. Her eyes fell to the floor as she tried to muster the words to counter him, but there was nothing but a deep hollow where her voice had once been.

On one side of her, there was a bubble of hope and happiness rising in her chest to hear him say that. Her mind flashed momentarily to a future where they could both be happy, maybe one in which they had escaped the hellish Hunter lifestyle relatively unscathed and into a realm of apple pie normalcy and white picket fences. But on the other side was the cynic, the part of her that knew that it would never work, the part that knew that that reality was too strong a force to deny. It would never work out, not considering what had happened with Cortes, not knowing how completely and extensively screwed up they both were. Two broken emotional fuckwits trying to hack it out in the average suburban life was an admiral dream, but it could never... would never be real.
The cynic was the side that ruled, the one that held onto those iron defences and told her that he had to be lying. There was no way he could have loved her and yet never contacted her, not even once. He couldn’t love her. Not her. Not the rude, mouthy bitch who drank like a sponge and looked like a guy. It was a lie.

Are you happy now.. Knowing that I fucking feel this way about you...
She huffed in disbelief as she strode towards him, her hands almost reaching up before she stopped herself with clenched fists. Whether that was to strangle him or simply to pull him to her she didn’t know. "No I’m not happy!" she shouted, "but I never said I would be!"
Happy? How could she be? She’d told him more about her than she had ever told anyone else. He’d been her best friend, her comrade, her rock to anchor her against life’s avalanche of bullshit. And one day he’d decided to take off for three months; no note, no goodbye message, no text or email. Not one single fucking phone call. And now he figured he’d turn up in her lab and declare his love for her? No fucking way.
"How can you even-" she began, breaking off. "Such a fucking lie... Get the fuck out of my lab."

[Dante Stark]

What hurt the most is she thought he was lying about his feelings for her.. Sometimes Hazel was stubborn and it made Dante feel more tempted to burst out with impulse and show her how he really felt sometimes.. Stark stood there quietly as she raved at him.. "Hazel.. I'm sorry that i never contacted you.. But you can't just outright say I'm lying for once why don't you actually listen and believe me in what i say.. You are special to me and i was a fool i bailed because of our profession and being that having feelings for you that i thought you would reject.. Even while i was gone i bloody thought of you and i didn't have the balls to text.." Stark said coldly as he looked her in the eyes..

"But i do have the balls to finally do this.." Stark said and within a moment's notice he'd pulled her close to him and looked her in the eyes before leaning in and kissing her on the lips.. She would batter him once he was finished but at least this way she'd finally know he wasn't lying to her about his feelings.. Slowly he pulled away from the kiss, his hands still around her waist holding her he smiled softly and waited for her to punch him..

A few thoughts went through his head while he stood there, how good that finally felt and finally how good it was to let her know about his inner feelings for her.. He may have been a womaniser in the past but after hanging around Hazel for a period of time he'd seen how stupid that lifestyle was and had changed after he found out he loved Hazel more than any dumb girl in a bar.. She was special to him.. Stark just froze up when he realised he was still holding onto her waist and no words had been said.

[Hazel 'Hobbs' Yeung]

He didn’t get it, did he? After all this time, simply saying sorry wasn’t going to cut it. Hobbs stared at him in disbelief, her brow creased, her eyes wounded. As much as she was relieved to see him alive and well, she was too hurt by his complete disregard for her to say what she truly wanted to.
Didn’t have the balls to text, or just didn’t have the credit? she thought bitterly. She exhaled deeply, disbelief and festering anger written into the lines in her face. Then, he did what she never thought he would do. He moved towards her, and Hobbs’ eyes widened as he pulled her forwards into him. His lips found hers.

She had not expected that, no, and perhaps her proper response should have been a ringing slap to the face followed by yet more blows for all that he’d done to her. Was she meant to accept his declaration of love, after the numbers of women he’d hit on, the women he’d bedded in the past? Hobbs wasn’t nearly egotistical enough to assume that she out of them all, would be the one to finally get him to settle down.

But in that moment, her heart skipped a beat. Maybe two. Her eyes fluttered closed, too involved in the moment to think about how she’d worried about him these past few months, how she hated how he’d sauntered back into her life expecting a ‘sorry’ to make up for it. But at the same time, she simply didn’t care.
Hazel’s hands immediately found the sides of his face, and her fingertips brushed the hair on the back of his head. She pulled him back to her, her returning kiss a hungry one, fuelled by passion. Her heart was hammering in her chest, so hard it was almost painful. She could swear that Dante could feel it too, pressed as she was against his chest.
For what seemed like the longest time, Hazel held onto him, barely registering in the truth of what was happening. In those moments the past three months all came to a halt. She could feel his lips against hers, his stubble against her palms. She could feel his breath against her cheek, could smell his skin, could feel Dante’s own heartbeat against her ribs. For the now, there was nothing more than this moment, and Hazel knew it was more than she ever deserved.

But the cynic crept back into her mind. No, it told her, this is wrong. It will never happen. Give up this futile dream. And so Hobbs broke away after what felt like a lifetime of standing there with him, her hands against his chest. She blinked, trying to reorient herself with the way reality was meant to be, then registered Dante’s hands on her waist. She pushed him back then. Hard. Almost as though shoving him off her, she too stepped back as she put a hand to her mouth, almost in disbelief of what had just happened.
Her eyes flickered up to him, and her brow furrowed. No. He didn’t have the right to just barge in here... after all this time...
Barely thinking about anything now except for how much he’d hurt her, Hobbs raised a fist and swung it squarely at his jaw.

[Dante Stark]

She had returned the kiss, Stark felt his heart skip.. It'd seemed endless but all good things had to come to end and he wasn't expecting to get punched.. Stark flew back and looked at her in disbelief and held his jaw not letting her see the discomfort she'd caused him. Stark looked at her with his puppy dog eyes. Almost forming a tear in them and he just stood there shocked.. There wasn't much to say after that first they were kissing and then she'd swung for him..

"I... " Stark mumbled and looked down at the floor, well the moment had gone and passed all that remained seemed to be a tatters of what could have been.. Stark would have to try and get back into Hazel's good books even if his feelings had been known to her.

Stark stood up and walked closer to her once more, he didn't care if she hit him.. It was far past that now he just looked sad and stared into her eyes determined not to walk away without repairing whatever they had left.. It was all that made him focus.. "Hazel.. I Lov- " Stark cut himself off as he stared at her with a sad glance across his face.

[Hazel 'Hobbs' Yeung]

Sweet mother of – that fucking hurt. Hobbs reeled back, shaking her aching hand and closing it into a fist so tight that her knuckles cracked. She panted once, not letting her own shock or pain show through the glare she now gave him. The frown stayed fixed in place even when Stark put a hand to his jaw and looked at her with such a wounded look that it made her heart break.

Unable to bear it, Hobbs looked away. She stared at the floor, her face crumpled, willing herself not to break. Not here, not now, not in front of Stark. There was too much old, festering anger in her heart, so much that it was almost a physical pain that clawed at the inside of her chest. Bitterness rose in her throat, a tide of prickly tears kept at bay by cold and silent fury. He was at fault here, not her.

At that moment Hobbs knew that even if they somehow resolved this, should she ever forgive him for what he’d done, when all of this was over in one way or another... everything would change. Nothing would be how it had been before. Too much had happened, too many things up in the air for them to ever settle into their former position. The casual, joking friendship she and Stark had once shared was now either gone forever or damaged irreparably. Even if they became Hunting partners again, there was always the memory of what had happened here that would haunt her. And perhaps forever Hobbs would wonder what would have happened, how things would have been if she’d just...

Stark walked nearer to her and Hobbs took as many steps back until she was pressed up against her work bench. "Don’t," she said, and her voice was thin and weary. "Don’t say it. Just... just leave." She glanced up into his eyes but couldn’t hold the glance for more than a second. Now she couldn’t bear to look at him. "Please, just go."