Chapter Text
Chapter One
Meg glanced up from the papers in front of her when she heard the door to the penthouse click open. Michael and Jack were still mid-way through their excited conversation, speaking loudly and without much more than a nod in her and Geoff’s direction. They continued walking straight down the corridor towards the bedrooms as they spoke, and Meg’s eyes drifted briefly to the shadowy figure lurking behind them.
“Hi Ryan.” Geoff called out, waving. Ryan reached towards his covered face and dragged his beloved skull mask off until it was limp between his fingers. Meg took note that he had only gone for the black eye make-up that job, rather than the full face. Must’ve been an easy one.
“Hi Geoff.” Ryan nodded. Then, after a lengthy paused, he licked his lips nervously. “Meg.” He greeted her.
Meg bit the inside of her cheek, and forced her eyes back down to her paperwork. She said nothing, didn’t dare look over in his direction until she heard the disappointed shuffling of feet against the polished wooden floors and then, Geoff’s sigh.
He was itching to say something, she could see that by the way he had suddenly starting shifting in his chair and glancing around the room, unable to focus his eyes on anything particular. Considering he was the leader of a notoriously elusive gang, Geoff was concerningly easy to read.
“Spit it out.” She said. Geoff sighed again.
“Meg, look- you know I like you-”
“-If this is about Ryan, I don’t want to hear it.” Meg continued kept her eyes fixed on the paper map of Los Santos and briefly held one finger up towards Geoff’s face. Daring, considering she’d barely known him a few months and Geoff was- to the outside word- terrifying. However, he only smirked and rolled his eyes and then, when she forced herself to glance up over the rims of her glasses, whine.
“Meg.”
“I mean it.” She narrowed her eyes briefly enough to glare at him but without the malice to linger before looking back down to the heist notes they were working on. “I don’t want to talk about him.” She added, after a pause.
“He’s a nice guy!” Geoff, as usual, was nothing if not persistent and child-like in his technique- leaning across the table on his elbows and kicking his feet up across the floor like an oversized toddler. “I mean, yeah- there’s the whole creepy skeletor mask and the whole Mad King thing but… he’s one of the good-bad guys.” He batted his eyelashes and jutted his lower lip out towards her. “You should really give him a chance. You could even be friends.”
Meg sighed, placed the pen down on top of the map and reached to take another sip from her whiskey. It was becoming a habit, sitting with Geoff in the main room of the penthouse with half a bottle of expensive whiskey, some highlighters and the TV. They rarely got half the work they wanted to done, but always managed to finish the alcohol. Geoff watched with a distantly impressed stare as she finished the rest of the drink with her head knocked back, and then when she straightened, she didn’t break stare.
“I gave Ryan a chance a long time ago, Geoff. That’s all I have to say about it.”
Geoff didn’t have much to say after that.
Several Months Previous
It had all started, coincidentally enough, with one Lindsay Tuggey.
She was a vital member of what Geoff cruelly described as The B Team, a small local-based sub division of the Fake AH Crew that took on smaller jobs and more often than not- cleaned up their messes when they got a little too excited and peed all over the city streets.
Lindsay was a good gatherer- the concrete jungle they lived and worked in could be as vast and never-ending as the internet to a person who didn’t know the right places to look. Lindsay Tuggey was certainly someone who knew the right places to look, so when Geoff needed a temporary new member who could be moved in at pretty short notice and knew a thing or two about bank heisting, Lindsay was the person for the job.
Barely a week later she returned to him with one of her many contacts. This one apparently had three bank jobs under her belt, a confirmed kill list longer than his right arm and a taste for video games and fantasy. Geoff didn’t hesitate before dialling her number- it was rare enough to find someone with the required skill set, let alone someone who could simultaneously be just as nerdy and pathetic as the rest of the crew.
“Thanks Lindsay.” He smiled. “She better be as good as you say.”
Lindsay just looked at him with a vague sort of smirk across her face that read exactly as she intended it to. “Please.” She scoffed. “When have I ever steered you wrong?”
Geoff lead the crew into the penthouse with one hand tucked lazily in his blood stained tuxedo pocket. Michael was babbling about something behind him, but he had learned quickly how to tune the kid out when he got too talkative. Plus, Gavin was there as usual to sate him and annoy the others with his ridiculous hypotheticals and penchant for picking arguments out of nothing.
Jack was involved too for once, yelling and laughing along with the lads as Ryan followed silently at the back of the pack. They strolled together into the main room of the large sky-scraper apartment, Michael and Gavin immediately fighting each other for the armchair, Jack cracking the beers and Ryan glancing around the room suspiciously with his gun twitching between his fingers.
“What?” Geoff asked, frowning. Ryan looked across to him briefly, eyes stark white and blue inside the rings of smudged black face paint. As usual- he looked completely insane. Geoff knew Ryan well enough to know that he was actually quite far from it.
“Someone’s here.” He said, voice low. Geoff’s hand immediately flew to the back of his pants to clutch his gun on instinct as Michael and Gavin quietened on the sofa and glanced around the apartment, searching for the apparent threat.
“You really think someone’s here?” Jack asked, picking up his silver pistol from the counter.
Ryan crept across the length of the wall, crouching around the edge with his gun firm and unshaking between his hands. “I’m sure of it.” He said.
“You’d be right.”
Geoff watched as Ryan’s head whipped around to the opposite side of the vast room. The corner leading towards the spiral staircase was shadowy, but Geoff could hear the clack of heeled boots on the glossy wooden floor before a figure stepped into view, a smirk on her painted lips and sparkling chrome gun rested comfortably in her dainty hands.
Immediately, every gun in the room was cocked and pointed in her direction as she slowly raised her hands above her head, resting her gun against the back of her vibrant purple hair.
“Boys please- put the toys away.” Another voice said from the front door. Geoff looked around to see Lindsay enter the room casually with a beer in her hand, smiling at them all. “This is Meg- or Doll as some people know her.” She gestured back towards Meg, who nodded excitedly. “Sorry.” Lindsay apologised. “She just can’t resist a dramatic entrance.”
That was the first encounter Geoff ever had with Meg Turney. And he had to give it to the girl- she had impressed him on their very first meeting, something that few people ever did.
Lindsay had clearly known Meg for a long time, hugging her tightly when they met in the centre of the penthouse. They did what all the girls Geoff knew did- complimented each other on their outfits (Meg was wearing a skin tight black cat suit with heeled boots, Lindsay was wearing a wonder-woman dress with a grey hoodie, sneakers and a beanie) complimented each other on their guns, (Meg’s was chrome and engraved with words he couldn’t make out from across the room, Lindsay’s was gold and had the crew emblem stamped into the bottom) and hugged again, before they turned and Lindsay introduced Meg to the rest of the group.
“I will say, she’s a little out of your league boys.” Lindsay smirked. “Meg’s more of a contract killer than a gang member.”
“I’m just looking to take it easy for a year or two.” Meg shrugged, confident smirk playing on her lips as she locked eyes with Geoff briefly. “You know- run with a crew, do a little heisting and take a nice cut at the end. No big deal.”
“Perfect.” Jack nodded, extending a beer which Meg refused politely. “You seem to be exactly what we’re looking for. Experienced and professional.”
“Unlike these assholes.” Geoff added, nodding towards Michael and Gavin.
“Whatever.” Michael flipped him off with a grin. “Don’t worry Gav, he’s just jealous of our good looks.”
“Yeah.” Lindsay rolled her eyes. “That must be it. Come on Meg.” She bumped the other girl with her shoulder. “I’ll show you to your new room.”
“I’ll come with!” Gavin stood, following both the girls out of the room until just Geoff, Jack, Michael and a still silent Ryan were left.
“So- she’s fucking awesome, can we all agree on that?” Jack asked with a laugh, sipping from his beer. Michael nodded.
“Yeah- she seems pretty cool.” He agreed. “What’d you think of her?” he stood up from the sofa and walked over to pick up a beer from Jack, looking over his shoulder to Ryan, who was now silently leant against the wall with the barrel of his gun tapping rhythmically against his thigh. His eyes were fixed to the ground, clearly distracted and only alerted when Geoff cleared his throat loudly.
“Sorry.” He mumbled. “What’d you say?”
“Said, what do you think of her?” Michael repeated, louder. Ryan gripped his gun a little tighter before raising it to his head, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly.
“She’s…” he paused for a second, looking off absentmindedly into the corner of the ceiling before dragging his eyes back down the walls and again to the floor. “She’s something.” He finished, shrugging vaguely before wandering silently across the room and up the stairs towards his bedroom. As he turned, Geoff watched as Michael and Jack exchanged a confused look and shrugged when their eyes pointed to him questioningly.
“How am I supposed to know what crawled up his ass?” he scoffed. “It’s Ryan- he’s probably on his murder-period. He’ll get over it.”
“He’s probably got a crush on her.” Jack joked. “He seemed pretty speechless.”
“It’s Ryan.” Michael rolled his eyes. “He’s always fucking speechless.”
Ryan bit his lip anxiously as he rounded the corner that would lead him to his bedroom, hands clenching around the gun in his grip. Suddenly, the penthouse had started feeling a little too warm and clammy with Geoff’s glances and Michael’s suffocating questions until he knew he had to get out- and get as far away from Meg Turney as possible.
How had he become so devastatingly unlucky to have her- of all the talent in the city- show up on their doorstep? He must’ve been someone considerably more awful than he already was in a past life.
Ryan sighed, annoyed and uncomfortable as he made his way into his dark bedroom, shrugging off his jacket and dropping his gun to the dresser as the sensor lights came up. He looked in the mirror and caught sight of what was behind him with a frown, itching for a second to reach back for his gun as Meg Turney waved, sat with her legs crossed atop his bed.
The front of her cat-suit was zipped down to reveal part of her chest. Not that Ryan was looking, or anything.
“How’d you give Gavin and Lindsay the slip?” he asked. She shrugged and smirked at him, and Ryan wondered not for the first time how she made the simplest of body movements seem so flirtatious.
“They were done with me pretty quickly. Besides, this apartment is huge. Pretty easy for a girl to take a wrong turn.” She batted her eyelashes at him playfully, and he fixed his gaze to the wall behind her, gripping his fists by his sides.
“Funny.” He huffed. “Didn’t think a girl like you’d get lost so easily.”
Meg rolled her eyes, and straightened her back. “Cut the foreplay Ryan,” her tone became flat, and she pulled the zipper of her cat-suit up slightly. Ryan dared to look at her again, and thankfully, her expression was only one of distaste and boredom. Perhaps she was feeling just as unlucky as he was. “I’m here for business rather than pleasure.”
Ryan couldn’t resist. He smirked, and muttered under his breath, “Wouldn’t be the first time the two managed to mix.”
She glared at him. “Stop it.”
Ryan held his hands up, but the mask of a pleased smirk didn’t dissipate. Meg stood, easily intimidating despite being almost an entire foot shorter than him.
“Look, I don’t want to be friends- not by any means.” She folded her arms across her chest and narrowed her eyes irritated at him as he looked. “But, I also don’t like people knowing my business so if we could keep things professional and not awkward that would be great.”
“Fine by me.” Ryan nodded, extending a hand. “I’ll be looking forwards to working with you, Ms Turney.”
She looked between his hand and his eyes briefly, before rolling her own and sauntering out of the room, pulling the door closed behind her. Once she was out of sight, Ryan leant against the dresser and tried to feel relieved.
He knew- better than anyone that inter-crew relationships never worked out. He’d made the mistake twice- two times too many.
He wasn’t going there. Not at all.
Never again.