World Around Me • •

[John-Paul Calloway]

JP was used to receiving gifts at the end of his performances. Often it was flowers, or trinkets from the diehard theatre goers of the West End who appreciated his performances. His dressing room was overflowing with bouquets he hadn’t taken home, and there was a competition between him and the rest of his cast members as to who could fill the most vases by the end of each week. It was just a little bit of fun between the actors to make light of the flowers that came to their doors after curtain call each show. They appreciated the gifts and the praise of a job well done, but there was obviously only so many surfaces for the pretty petals to go on. However, when he got back to his dressing room to find the parcel sitting on his coffee table there, he grew suspicious. He asked one of the attendants where it had come from and they explained it had been delivered during the second act; something unusual by JP’s knowledge. He had only needed to open the box and pull back the wrapping inside to take a peek at the contents before one name slipped into his mind and had his blood boiling with anger.

He shoved the gift back into the box without really looking at what it was. He had seen a glimpse of it and knew straight away that it shouldn’t be in his hands or anyone else’s for that matter. It seemed that Hale hadn’t been able to take the hint when she had been in London last time that JP wanted absolutely nothing more to do with her. He couldn’t keep this thing in London. JP faked a story about being needed back home, stating that his mother had taken ill and needed him. It wasn’t a lie exactly; the woman had been in hospital this last week and had sent JP several messages that he was choosing to ignore. Living for himself was giving him a much healthier experience of life. He needed to cut this chord with Hale though, once and for all. He couldn’t live with her haunting him like this, popping up whenever he was just finding contentment in his life again. JP was snarling the entire time he booked the plane ticket to JFK, and his anger was simmering for the entire journey, just waiting for the moment when he would see her again.

JP hadn’t brought any luggage with him aside from a small carry on, so he walked straight out of JFK and into a waiting taxi. He wanted to confront Hale somewhere public where she couldn’t hide or pull some trick on him like she had done when she had hidden in his London dressing room. He headed to the university campus and though it felt strange being back there he remembered the route to her office without needing to think about it. Fuelled by his anger, JP didn’t knock when he reached the door but instead just burst right on in, slamming the boxed gift down on the desk and glaring at the woman behind it. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want your gifts, or your visits! I don’t want you in my life!” He shouted, wishing that this time his words might just sink in.

• • •

TAGGED! Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale
WORDS! 556!
OUTFIT! Angry Actor!
LYRICS! What Went Wrong - - - Blink 182
NOTES! <3 <3 <3

[Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale]

Hale wasn't a quiter. She was far too stubborn to quit anything. Even the jobs she knew she shouldn't take on because they were near impossible. Those were the ones she dove head first into. It was no small feat for her to even walk away from her family, from her life as she had done once. She'd been trying to steal herself a life, a forever lie. And it blew up in her face. What was worse, Hassle was afraid she'd lost everything she had actually wanted from life outside the family. If she'd stayed on the inside, she would probably have found a man in one of the "cousins". Her family stretched far and wide and only a handful of them shared Hale's DNA. She would have been at he uncle's side, perfecting her already innate skill of forgery, she would be planning and executing heists and jobs like the seasoned pro she was and she probably wouldn't regret a second of it.

When JP left, Hale was beside herself knowing she was the cause of it. She was the reason he'd left New York and her behind. It didn't matter that their relationship had never crossed that line into something more, they flirted with that line more than they flirted with each other. But him leaving was most definitely the reason Hale turned back to the family business as if she had never left. She couldn't dwell on all the things shed done wrong in her life up until then and she wouldn't anyway. Her entire life was one "wrong" thing after another, even if it was completely normal for the blonde, it still wasn't above board or anywhere close to legal. Shed been part of the con, part of the team and the plan long before she even knew what was really going on, long before the words right and wrong made sense and she realized her right and everyone else's were complete and utter opposites. Her right was everyone else's wrong and their wrong was her forbidden territory. Her family did a lot but they never brought weapons along; they never intentionally hurt anyone. They could do what they did without those sorts of back up plans. The head of the family wouldn't approve and he knew everything; even the things they didn't want him to know about, he knew.

When she'd gone home, before going off to London, he'd sat her down, treated her like she was fifteen again. It hadn't been until then that she realised she missed the family that much and that she missed being taken care of. There was soup in a bowl, a chunk of fresh baked bread next to it set in front of her. All she had to do was eat and talk. She didn't have to plan a job, she didn't have to worry about being caught. She just needed to be Coty Hale for a little while. It was nice. And it was what made her return to New York afterwards and start the paperwork to take some time off. Forging medical papers had been the easy part. She needed time for stress due to an ailing family. She promised to return at the beginning of the next term for an update, start off slow if things were better with one class, maybe two; if she were up to it. She agreed to one class, one that would be very selective, hand picked by her and those left out were simply told to wait for an opening or take up the offered class with another professor.

At NYU, Hale was recognised. Everywhere else though, she blended in seamlessly. And that helped when she was trying to do her first job, her family job. She wasn't going to leave it now that JP had left her. She could find herself a nice man in the business, someone part of the extended family. Someone she didn't have to lie to, to make up a life that wasn't hers for. She was a thief. Plain and simple. She was working at the university just to give herself something to do in the off time she had. Of course, she knew she would drop off the face of the planet after this term and no one would remember what Coty Hale looked like when that happened; she would become a ghost again. Already her apartment was being emptied by the family, leaving only the fakes she created herself and the furniture required to live. It was the same with her office, slowly she was taking things out of it, of course, she'd never kept anything special in it anyway but she didn't want to bring a lot home with her at the end of the year.

She was in her office now, collecting the things she would need for her single class. In three hours, she would return to her desk, have a couple students pop their head in with a question that didn't need answering and then they would go again. She kept her hours light these days. Her students were bright, they didn't need her tutoring but she still provided them with a mobile number to contact her should they really need to speak with her. She'd engaged one of the burners she kept around just in case, specifically for them. It was simply easier to treat the next little while like it was a long con and then just disappear in a cloud of smoke; seen only when she wanted to be seen and found in the same manner. Hale was lifting her bag onto her shoulder when her door swung open and her head snapped up. She didn't know what she expected to see, her students were relatively calm for jumpy college kids, but she knew she hadn't been expecting a man that was supposed to be on the other side of the planet. She sighed at the crumbled box, knowing the replication inside had smashed in the drop to the desk top. "Well, that replica hadn't done anything wrong." She said as calmly as she could. These days she was back to being her old self, the calm one in a crisis. And damn it all if she wasn't going to stay that way, even with JP standing in front of her.

Tag || John-Paul Calloway
Words || 1 058
Clothes || Sweet Sinner
Music || I Don't Dance --Lee Brice
Notes || <3

[John-Paul Calloway]

His entire life had been filled with people letting him down. It was the reason he had such low self-esteem when he was away from the stage and why he poked fun at himself while keeping everyone a barge pole’s length away. It was the best way of dealing with everything after all he had been through. Wanting to have a moment of selfish happiness was asking for very little in JP’s opinion. He had spent years being the grown up and dealing with the messes of other people when he ought to have just been enjoying his life, so he felt like he was owed something now. He had found that, exactly what he wanted, in London. It was the first time in his life he hadn’t felt burdened by any of the trouble his parents were causing, or mourning his ruined relationship with Kate.

All of that had been ruined, thrown back into the front of his mind with his return to New York City. It was the last place JP wanted to be. He honestly had never saw himself coming back here again after leaving the last time. He didn’t want to come back. There was nothing in the city for him and everything he had now was in London. JP knew there was no other way of getting rid of Hale though without confronting her again. If their last fight hadn’t gotten through to her then JP was determined to make her understand this time that he wanted nothing more to do with her. Their friendship was through; it had ended the night he had discovered the truth about her life and had found his stomach turned by her lies. He couldn’t see any way back from that.

JP didn’t care about the damage he had caused to his supposed ‘gift’. He was here to make a point and that point was that Hale needed to stay the hell away from him – in all forms. He had finally found a molecule of happiness reserved for him in London, something he had longed for his whole life, and he’d be damned if she was going to take that from him now. “But it came from you and that’s the problem.” JP snapped. He kept the distance between them because seeing Hale only made him angrier than he had been already during the flight and the car ride over here. “I don’t want anything from you ever again; gifts, calls, and especially not you.” The anger rolled off him in waves and he was on the edge of exploding completely. “And the only person you have to blame for that is yourself. You lied about everything and now I’m disgusted by the thought of everything you’ve done.” It was the painful truth and maybe hearing it would make Hale see that he was done with her.

• • •

TAGGED! Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale
WORDS! 484!
OUTFIT! Angry Actor!
LYRICS! What Went Wrong - - - Blink 182
NOTES! <3 <3 <3

[Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale]

New York held nothing Hale wanted anymore. Her career could be taken anywhere, to any college or university she chose and they would welcome her with open arms but she wasn't interested in that anymore. She would finish out her time at NYU like she'd said and then she would disappear in a cloud of smoke, never to be seen and remembered again. Her family business made her a wealthy woman. Even though she'd been out of it for ten years, she was still family, she still received a small cut whenever a job was done and that cut was put away. No one trusted banks in her family, especially considering there had yet to be one that could keep them out. They all claimed their security was the best in the world and then with a snap of their fingers, their precious money was gone without a trace. And now with JP hating everything about her, New York was filled with memories she didn't want to remember anymore.

They always said you can't go home. It was the most quoted line out there but it wasn't true in Hale's case. She could always go home and it would be like she had never left. For her, she could never walk away; not fully. She was family. It was as simple as that. And despite her years of trying, she finally realised that she didn't want to be away from them. Being away meant little contact, it meant seeing glimpses, like ghosts in the crowd; there for a moment before disappearing between one person and the next to pass by. Most people thought they saw dead relatives when that happened to them, Hale knew it was her family keeping an eye on their little girl. She was the youngest and she was Morgan's daughter. The family cared about the uncle but the uncle wasn't blood related and he hadn't left any children fatherless while Morgan had left behind a daughter to grow up surrounded by men, living and working in a man's world. She hadn't minded that last bit and everyone missed and loved Morgan but Hale had always made the best of it. In fact, she thought she had been making her mother proud by thriving in the life and probably would have upset her when she'd left that life to try and steal another one for herself.

"Would it have made it better if I'd signed Ida on the card? My aunt wouldn't have minded, I'm sure." Hale said absently, trying her damnedest not to reach the same level as JP on the pissed off scale. She wasn't mad, she was really sad but she wasn't mad. Hale didn't get mad, she got even. Revenge might not have been the best thing in her line of work but it was what drove her sometimes. Coty Hale was not a woman to piss off. She might have been out of the actual work for ten years but in those ten years, she'd gotten her revenge on quite a few people whom she had promised would see it. They had all laughed it off and forgotten about it while Hale waited and planned and then finally took action.

"I lied to protect you and to try to give myself a new lease on life. Ten years I'd been away from that life. Ten. And then my foolish cousins botch a job for a terrifying man and I have to save them. From themselves and from this guy. Our uncle warned us all away from that family, that man and yet they sauntered in there like they were in charge and they weren't. My family could be dead, heads on stakes in this guy's garden if it hadn't been for me going back in. So you can blame me all you'd like, say it's my fault that you don't trust me, it's fair enough. But if I had to do it all over again, I would. My family is everything to me and I'll not have one of them dead when I could have stopped that from happening." Hale said softly, not allowing herself to show as much emotion as she felt. If she did that, she would have been screaming at him and this was not a conversation to be overheard. Of course, if it ever was, she could say she was helping him run lines but that would be another lie to add to the very long list of them.

Tag || John-Paul Calloway
Words || 751
Clothes || Sweet Sinner
Music || I Don't Dance --Lee Brice
Notes || <3

[John-Paul Calloway]

JP had no thoughts of New York that were pleasant anymore. He didn’t want to recall the city that never sleeps. There were brief moments of contentment that were surrounded by grief and annoyances that only served to push JP to the edge, to his breaking point. London had been his fresh start, and while JP had been let down too many times to get his hopes up, he was feeling quietly optimistic about his future there. Boarding a plane to return to a city that he loathed, that was full of bitter memories, felt like taking a giant leap back from everything he had accomplished in the last few months. He didn’t want to bring himself down or set himself back, but he was only stewing in his own anger staying in London, knowing Hale would continue to send him things and try to worm her way back into his life. He needed to make her see that they were through, they were done, and that he was shutting her out of his life once and for all.

He had no desire to forgive her. It wasn’t possible for JP to forgive her. Through his parents he had put up with a lot of crap over the years, heard some awful excuses and lied to spare them jail time when he needed them to actually be around, but he was through being everyone’s alibi, or confidant. He just wanted to be able to live his own life without feeling like he only attracted criminals and people who thought the law was something that could be tossed around and played with. JP wanted to be free, to live his life without worrying what was coming around the corner and without glancing over his shoulder. There had always been calls from his mom, or his dad, or someone else to tell him that there had been trouble back home, and people always expected him to clean up the mess made. It had been that way ever since he was a little boy, and JP couldn’t do it anymore, for anyone.

“You could have signed it Harry fucking Potter and it wouldn’t have mattered. It would still be you, and I’d still hate it.” There was nothing Hale could say that could calm him down, and joking about what had happened certainly wasn’t going to help matters. At least not from JP’s point of view. He reluctantly listened to Hale’s words, but they had very little of an effect on his anger. He’d cleaned up messes his whole life, maybe not to the extent of what Hale was talking about, but then it was her cousin’s fault in the first place, and JP couldn’t see it any differently from that. “And that’s the choice you made that cost us what we had.” He said simply, the anger still running under his words. It wasn’t complicated as far as JP was concerned. Hale had lied to him, betrayed everything they had, and he simply couldn’t forgive her for it. He was done with her.

• • •

TAGGED! Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale
WORDS! 515!
OUTFIT! Angry Actor!
LYRICS! What Went Wrong - - - Blink 182
NOTES! <3 <3 <3

[Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale]

Hale knew she’d royally fucked up with JP just as she knew there was really no way she could get him to see that she had been trying to change. She’d been protecting him and the life she’d created when she’d gone that night with her cousins but no matter what she said to him, he was having none of it. And the worst part was, she knew exactly why he felt the way he did. She wasn’t the computer hacking genius in the family, that was yet another cousin but she had called him up to find out what she could about her new co-workers. And then again when she’d become closer to JP than anyone else. She had wanted to know who she was dealing with, she always went into every situation with the knowledge she needed and becoming a professor at a school was no different. She knew the dirty little secrets of everyone she could possibly come in contact with; not that she was about to share those secrets. She had no use for them and no intention of letting the information slip past her gloss covered lips. Of course all that meant was that she’d known before pulling the job with the old crew that JP would probably hate her if he ever found out; which was in all honesty, what she’d been thinking when she’d lied about her story.

Though she really hadn’t expected him to freak out the way he had. Her story was rock solid, it made perfect sense and it made her the victim of a nonexistent crime. She had called a friend to pick her up and yet all that friend had seen was police on the phone and automatically thought the worst. For all her faults and transgressions, Hale was a surprisingly positive person. But JP had hated her instead of asking if she was okay, if she’d been hurt and maybe that was because she’d used a cheerful tone on the phone but the police officer would have put her at ease and quite possibly made her calm if it all hadn’t been an elaborate scheme.

“Harry Potter is a fictional character.” She said as if just that made perfect sense. In a way it did. JP got to know the real Hale. The one who was just another face on the street, the one who wondered what she was going to order in for dinner because she couldn’t cook to save her life and if she could spare the extra time to take her Yorkies for an extended walk. She was as real as she could ever be with him but for her it really hadn’t been enough. That may have been Hale at the time but it wasn’t all of her. She had a past that was as colourful and as checkered as, well, Hale didn’t know what but she knew she couldn’t hide that from JP forever. Eventually it would have come out and eventually came a hell of a lot sooner than she would have liked but it was also too late to back down from it. She had to prove that she wasn’t anything like his parents. For one, she didn’t get caught unless it was on purpose; like that night. “We didn’t have anything, JP and that was the problem. I wanted to be close to you and we were still miles apart despite how close we were. There’s no way on this planet that I can prove to you that I’m not your parents and as much as I love you, I don’t think I want to try anymore.” She said, not realising her words until it was already too late to take them back. It was certainly a first for the French woman; she was usually so much better with words.

Tag || John-Paul Calloway
Words || 693
Clothes || Sweet Sinner
Music || I Don't Dance --Lee Brice
Notes || <3

[John-Paul Calloway]

JP had been balancing on his last nerve for many years. He’d been like a well trained tightrope walker, making his way across and teetering here and there but only ever for show of the audience constantly watching him. Then the rope had snapped and he’d plummeted below, but not to a safety net. His thoughts on humanity had been smashed, shattered into a million irreparable pieces that night he’d discovered the real side to Hale. Before her his opinion of society was already pretty damn low. His parents had seen to that when he was still just a kid and then there had been Kate. She had wanted him to give up everything for her with no consideration for his feelings or his dreams. When he tried explaining it all to her she broke up with him, casting aside several years of love because she wasn’t willing to sit down and find a happy compromise. Hale…he had no words for Hale. He just knew that he had trusted her, liked her, and maybe enjoyed her company a little more than most. To have that turn out to be nothing more than a great, fat, lie was like a dagger to the heart. Everyone it seemed turned out to be selfish, manipulative, and only in this world to live for themselves. Well, he was done. He wasn’t going to be another chess piece for anyone else to sacrifice.

All of his life he had been someone’s one phone call, alibi, or excuse for the way they behaved. It made him sick to his stomach to recount all of the times he had just been a pawn for someone else. He had gotten away from all of that and he wasn’t about to walk back into a similar life. He had fought tooth and nail to get to where he had and he still only managed to get there with a tiny bit of self-esteem but piles of self-loathing about how his life had turned out. Fate had been a cruel mistress when she played with him, and had no intentions of playing nice anytime soon it seemed. London was yet another fresh start, another new chapter, but it seemed that ultimately even that would be destined to blow up in his face, too. At least that was how JP saw it now. How could he not after every time something good came his way, something terrible soon followed to screw it all up?

JP fired a dark glare at Hale. “So is the entire life you play here. Nothing I liked about you even turned out to be true.” He said in a low voice, eyes alight with the rage he still felt about all of this. He hated liars, he hated being lied to and he would have rather never met Hale than gone through all of this. Her words sent another surge of emotions through him, reigniting the rage that didn’t need poking at. “My parents?! Did you go looking into my fucking life?!” He bellowed, stepping closer, enraged at the very notion that Hale would cross that line after everything else she had already done. “That’s a funny way of loving someone.” He spat, saying nothing more about that particular matter because he couldn’t move beyond his own anger to be shocked at anything else.

• • •

TAGGED! Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale
WORDS! 564!
OUTFIT! Angry Actor!
LYRICS! What Went Wrong - - - Blink 182
NOTES! <3 <3 <3

[Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale]

Hale hadn’t exactly wanted the fresh start she’d been given. In fact, after all the heat had died down, she’d had every intention of returning to her previous life. It was in her blood and she’d learned, however tough it had been, that she just couldn’t turn away from blood. She knew some of the family, the younger ones like her had tried and failed just as she had but at least they’d all given it a shot. And for a while it was nice not having to look over her shoulder every ten minutes, being able to walk from point A to point B without making at least three wrong turns to get there. When she’d been younger, no one had looked twice at the teenagers in the street, they’d been glanced over because no one ever thinks the kids might be guilty of art theft that impressive. But of course it had been them. Still, they’d taken awkward routes under the guise of checking out the sites before returning to their hotel room or the flat they’d taken up residence in for the duration.

In Hale’s case though, she hadn’t returned immediately. She’d like school at it turned out. Well, more accurately, she liked knowing more than the one teaching her. Her classes had been a breeze but they were something to pass the time back them and in another bout of total honesty, Hale had wanted to see what it was like to be on the other side of that line. It had been wonderful for as long as it had lasted. “Don’t be stupid. Of course not. The only thing I lied about was what I’d gotten up to in my life before college. It’s not hard to be someone else if you keep nearly everything about you the same.” Hale pointed out with a shake of her head. She hadn’t actually done much when she’d decided to get out of the life. She was still the same person, she just made her money another way. She was the same person she always had been essentially.

Hale made a face at that, the slightest cringe because though it hadn’t been her, it had been her uncle who looked into everyone in his niece’s life. To be fair to him, he looked into everyone that came into contact with his family more than once. With Hale, since she’d tried to stay out of the life, he’d done some more in-depth research. “I didn’t, no.” She told him honestly. It hadn’t been her and she wouldn’t have done it. “I genuinely wanted a normal life for a change.” Of course, now it was looking like that would never be the case and she would have some real work ahead of her to change every picture associated with her name. She didn’t back down though, instead crossed her arms over her chest and let JP get as close as he pleased. She was scared of him, there wasn’t actually much she was scared of. And someone getting a little too close whilst yelling in her face had already happened a dozen times before anyway. The downside to living the life she had, most things happened and when they happened a second time, it had less of an impact.

Tag || John-Paul Calloway
Words || 609
Clothes || Sweet Sinner
Music || I Don't Dance --Lee Brice
Notes || <3

[John-Paul Calloway]

All JP had ever wanted was to get out of Southwest Harbor and the shitty start he had been given there, and to find his luck elsewhere. He was starting to feel now like bad luck just followed him around like a lost puppy he didn’t want. At every moment in his life when he thought he had found happiness or contentment, it jumped him and shook his world until everything was upside down and he didn’t know his left from his right. Every single damn time. JP had yet to have a real break from the bad stuff, and if he were to ever write his autobiography it would be such a misery read that people would probably need anti-depressants to get through the damn thing. Nothing worked out for him, and it wasn’t for a lack of him trying. He just seemed to attract the wrong kind of people; liars.

“How can I even believe that now? Everything I thought about you was false, and this little world you had was just a shiny cover.” JP couldn’t take a word Hale said at face value. She could be lying again, weaving another tale to try and build the life she wanted to have. He had been hurt too many times before and after this he had no trust left in him. Whatever had been that before was shattered, probably still scattered on her apartment floor from when he found out the truth. All he wanted was a simple existence free of the troubles of his childhood. It was apparently too much to ask for because the universe had thrown Hale into his path and let her rip apart his life again.

His eyes darkened and he took slow steps away from Hale to try to control his temper. He didn’t want to lash out, but he didn’t take kindly to having his private business poked around in; it was private for a reason. “I never mention my parents to anyone. I don’t mention my past, for that matter. So someone poked around to find out about them and then you sat back and listened to JP’s story! It’s just as bad as doing it for yourself as far as I’m concerned. You went behind my back, looking at things you had no right to look at!” If she wanted to make things right between them then she was going the complete opposite way of doing it. JP was only getting in a worse mood now. “As long as you have your family around you could never have a normal life.” He said with a shake of his head. He had seen enough to know she’d rush back to them in a heartbeat, and that was always going to ruin what she had going for her here. It had ruined anything between them alright. JP didn’t think there was a snowball in hell’s chance of fixing that damage, especially not with what he kept finding out since.

• • •

TAGGED! Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale
WORDS! 504!
OUTFIT! Angry Actor!
LYRICS! What Went Wrong - - - Blink 182
NOTES! <3 <3 <3

[Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale]

There had once been a time when Hale thought she would never try to leave the life. Of course, there had once been a time when she thought the family were invincible; that none of them could be hurt. They could get caught, of course, if they didn't do the right recon or prepped long enough. But they couldn't be killed in her young naïve eyes. Even when her own mother died, she didn't really believe they could die on a job. She'd been on her way back with gelato! And then uncle Tomas had to go and die thanks to some tampered with equipment. And Hale found herself attending university. In the most basic of ways, her entire life was based on a lie but that could have been said no matter what she had started out with when she'd been eighteen. After all, she'd never had the conventional upbringing. She had never attended any sort of proper school until university; not unless those three months when she had been fifteen, posing as a twenty year old in California counted. And Hale had a feeling they didn't, even if she did attend a couple classes because it had actually helped with the recon work.

"Actually nothing I've ever said to you was a lie." She told him. She really only had so many ways to tell him this exact same thing. She withheld the truth but she had never actually lied to him. And even then, she didn't actually withhold much of the truth. She told him all about the adventures she'd gone on with her family, she just left out the heist parts of it all. She'd been to all the museums she told him about, she saw all that she saw but she didn't tell him she also knew where all the cameras were, the rotation of the security guards or how to disable the pressure systems most of the paintings were on. She didn't tell him that a couple of those paintings that she'd seen actually now hung in her family home, some hidden under dusty old cloth to protect them from the dust and dirt of their attic. Hale had wanted to keep JP away from everything she had been until she could tell him and know he wasn't going to freak out. When he did find out though and did snap the way he had, she had taken a step back, started really freaking out about how she could disappear. Coty Hale was her real identity. If she lost that, she was fucked. She should have created a new Hale when she'd created her new life. But she had wanted it to be as normal as ever and Rebecca Monroe wasn't who Hale really was.

Hale kept quiet, letting JP get out all that he needed to. It was tough and scary to think you know a person only to have that entire thought flipped upside down. The difference was that JP did know Hale; better than anyone and they were about to lose that. "Mine isn't a family you can run from, JP. Mine is the kind of family you're stuck with no matter what. There are no cutting ties, no disappearing because though the FBI, Interpol and all the rest of the acronyms think they're the best, they're not. My family is. If they want you found, you're found. If they want to know every little detail about you, they'll get their hands on it. They let me try to get away, they let me have a normal life while it was beneficial to them. But I was hardly ever away from it. The difference between you and me is exactly that. You were able to get away from them and I wasn't. You have the choice now to forget who I was before I met you, who I'll no doubt be again from time to time. But you should know that Coty Hale is clean." Hale said as honestly as she could, moving to pace the small area behind her desk. "And for the record, we have actually spoken enough and I am smart enough to put microscopic pieces together. It wasn't too much of a stretch to figure out something happened and since the root of my problems is family, how difficult is it to guess yours might be too?" She asked him, curiously. She hadn't looked into his family and she never would have but the same couldn't be said for her own family. Her uncle had looked into him, had told her as much after the fact and gave her the option of knowing the truth about the man she was "shacking up with". She couldn't say she wasn't interested. She was but she had wanted to learn it from him; like a normal person.

Tag || John-Paul Calloway
Words || 807
Clothes || Sweet Sinner
Music || I Don't Dance --Lee Brice
Notes || <3

[John-Paul Calloway]

JP’s upbringing had taught him everything about what he didn’t want to be. The biggest thing in that had been that he didn’t want to be a liar. His parents had lied about what they had done or who they had been with time and time again even if JP pointed out that he knew the truth already. He wasn’t some dumb, naïve little kid. He never got a chance to be innocent and believe in Santa or the tooth fairy. His life had been seeing cops search his bedroom while apologising to him, and having a new uncle every other week once his dad walked out. After that it was just a string of never being good enough a son for Luke, and picking Arielle up from whichever bar or gutter she had fallen over in next, as well as collecting her from the police station when they called home to say she was being released. Again. People had bullied him and laughed at him for what he did, or told him he was no good for as long as he could remember. JP just wanted something that stuck with him that was positive and that didn’t remind him of those days. Yet it felt like fate was a cruel mistress who refused to give him the break he wanted.

“You just missed out the truth. In my book it’s just as bad.” JP said, not giving a damn about technicalities or excuses. He had reasons for doing things the way he did and taking issue with what he hated. “I don’t care what you have to say about why you couldn’t, or what you didn’t do. In my life I’d rather have people be honest with me. It saves a lot of wasted time.” That was exactly how he felt. He felt like he had wasted time building something with Hale because he didn’t know if any of it was real or fake, or part of some elaborate lie she was building as part of something her family wanted. All he knew for sure was that he didn’t want to be a part of that at all.

He shook his head the entire time she was speaking. No, she didn’t know about his life. He didn’t care if she had made a few weak guesses or heard from an uncle who knew everything. Hale did not know what if had been like for him, or why he was the way he was now. And he didn’t care what excuses she was making or why she was trying to explain away her actions. “You should have just stayed the hell away from me when I told you to.” He said, moving towards the door. “Words don’t matter anymore. There aren’t enough to fix this, or make right what you ruined.” He turned the handle and pulled the office door open. “I never want to see or hear from you again. And I mean it.” He slammed the door behind him and headed straight off the campus. He didn’t like being back there and he didn’t want to hang around any longer than necessary.

His emotions were still bubbling up inside him, anger making him walk faster than he normally would do and take the sidewalk more aggressively. JP was being a reckless pedestrian, foolishly bashing into people and not caring enough to mumble an apology. He didn’t see the crossing lights change, or hear the screech of the tyres on the tarmac. He just felt the sharp impact of his body hitting the hood of the car and then rolling against the windscreen. He felt bones snap and crunch as he rolled back down the way he came and fell hard onto the road, a car sailing by in the opposite direction with the ignorance of most New Yorkers. That was his last thought before everything went black and his head came to rest against the dirty, gritty road surface.

• • •

TAGGED! Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale
WORDS! 671!
OUTFIT! Angry Actor!
LYRICS! What Went Wrong - - - Blink 182
NOTES! <3 <3 <3

[Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale]

Hale wasn't going to apologise for who she was or how she grew up. Without the foundations that she'd had, she would never have found out she was so skilled with art. Or maybe she would have and eventually became a world renowned artist. No one really know for certain what would happen either way. Just that it probably wouldn't have ended up exactly as it had been. Yes, her family was made up of thieves and crooks and a couple unsavoury types for good measure but that didn't mean that the majority of them weren't decent enough people once you take away how they earned their money. Of course, no one actually knew anything real about the Hale family. As far as the world was concerned, they didn't even exist. Hale herself for as far back as she knew about was the only one of the family to have a legitimate job. She might not have used her actual name on any of the forms and everyone except JP may be under the impression her nickname was Hale because of a funny childhood anecdote but she still had a legitimate occupation for the time being. It may all end in the morning and she may have to make her entire apartment disappear in a matter of hours but she was exceptionally good at making it look like she was never some place she was.

Being a liar was part and parcel with how she'd been raised. And she was excellent at it. But she never forgot what was a lie and what was the truth. It was the difference between your garden variety thief and a conman. She was by no means a pathological liar either. Her tales were well thought out, woven together with enough truths here and there to make it seem legit; or to pass a polygraph which were notoriously easy to cheat anyway. She withheld some truths about herself but she'd never actually lied and in her books, in her family's books, that was the difference. They were constantly lying to everyone but they never, ever lied to themselves or each other. It was the only way to keep at the family business. To be called a liar hurt physically but she understood it just as much. JP thought everything was a lie, probably that she had targeted him or something for something he had or could get easily enough. But she hadn't. The only thing she'd wanted from him was friendship. And they'd been friends. JP had been the only real friend outside of her family that Hale had ever had. It was ridiculous considering how many years she'd been around but she'd never strayed so far from her family. And after all of this exploding her in her face, it was unlikely that she ever would again. "It wasn't wasted time." She told him on a sigh. It was all too clear she would not be getting through to him no matter how hard she tried, what truths she admitted to. She had been written out of his books, his life, forever.

She could apologise a hundred times over and nothing would make a difference and that broke Hale's barely beating heart. She had wanted JP in her life so much, she had wanted New York and everything she'd gotten over the last few years but it was all going up in smoke in a single moment. And all because she'd wanted to apologise and give him a gift that meant more to her than any piece of priceless art ever could. She was foolish. And when she got around to yelling at Tallon for being in the city, though she knew it wasn't his fault, but that he would let her yell at him because he was family and she needed to vent and he wouldn't take any of it personally, she would admit to herself- and let Tallon tell her, that she was foolish. She couldn't think of another thing to say as JP left her office and it took her too long to pace the space before chasing after him. He was already so far ahead but she was good at slipping through a crowd and caught up just in time to yell out to him. But he didn't hear her or didn't want to hear her and the car didn't, couldn't stop in time. The image of JP being flung around like a Raggedy Andy doll would be seared into her brain for the rest of her life, never able to forget it. She rushed forward, automatically shouting for someone to call the police even as she was pulling her own phone free and dialing the three digits herself. Scraping her knees as she fell to the ground, Hale felt nothing except sheer terror that she'd done this to JP. Her only thoughts were that she'd killed him despite feeling a pulse on the side of his throat for herself. "Not dead. Not dead." She muttered to herself just at her call connected and she'd told the operator everything she could think to tell them.

Tag || John-Paul Calloway
Words || 856
Clothes || Sweet Sinner
Music || I Don't Dance --Lee Brice
Notes || <3