not your fault, but mine
tangerine x single mother!reader (with tangerine being paternal, I know y’all love that)
2.1k words
cw: kidnapping, brief child endangerment, a lot of swears for the wordcount
tag list: @honestlywtfisgoingon @white-wolf-buckaroo @felhomaly @venusthepirate @lunarpansexual @wanderedaway @georgiee-riviere @mushywutty @piechans @apieceoffabulousshit @4ng3l-0n-34rth @minjaz @starl1g4t @earth-elemental18 @luhvbot @underratedboogeyman @july-is-summer @vocalvixen20cp @northerngalxy @tangerinesgf @chaoticroaddreamerpasta @rxcently @skrrten @nightmarefeast @lost-lila @hardcore-flower @mrsdanieljackson
a/n: thank you to @lady-jane3 for being my beta! if you enjoy this fic you will probably enjoy this one by @whatstruthgottodowithit!
Tangerine has been a little bit in love with you since the two of you first met.
Sometimes it’s pertinent for handlers to be sent on missions with their agents in the field. Insider intel and all that jazz, overseeing what’s going on. When he saw you in the hotel lobby waiting for him and his brother he was smitten with the smart black dress and look of professional interest you wore; but he was fucked when he heard you laugh at one of his jokes.
It was enchanting. You were enchanting.
You wriggled your way into his affections without even meaning to. You worked well with them both, and you were easy on the eyes and on the soul. Strong and capable in your own right, too. The job was easy because you were there; and when you all went out to celebrate that night it didn’t hurt that you were so receptive to Tangerine’s advances you’d ended up shagging him by the recycling bins round the back of the pub.
The fact that you’d exchanged private numbers afterwards was a welcome surprise though. Tangerine isn’t usually the sort of bloke people are interested in having a long term relationship with, so he’d expected it to be a one-and-done sort of night. But then there you were the next week, getting coffee back in London. Like the two of you were civilised people, not involved in the business of murder for hire.
It became a weekly thing. No more fucking, not yet anyway; just sitting there and chatting. He found himself looking forward to it each Friday. Seeing your smile, hearing your laugh again. It was a few macchiatos later you dropped the bomb.
“If this is going to be a thing, you’d better know I have a daughter.”
He peered at you from over the ceramic rim of his coffee cup.
“Right.”
“If it’s a problem, we call it here. She’s the most important thing to me. I like you a lot, Tangerine, but if a single parent is too much for you to handle I need to know now. So you don’t break my heart.”
You were upfront about it and he respected that. Maybe if you were anyone else he’d turn tail and run at that announcement.
But you weren’t anyone else. You were you. Gorgeous, wonderful you.
“That’s alright with me.”
The grin you gave him made him know he’d made the right choice.
Then the moment he’d been bricking it over came. After a few evening dates and a couple of dalliances with you in local hotels, he was introduced to your daughter. She was a shy, quiet girl of six, who hid behind you and peeked out at him from the safety of her mum as a shield.
“This is my friend Tangerine, love. Are you going to say hello?”
When she shook her head and hid her face in your shirt, Tangerine knew he was in for an uphill battle. But he’d fight it, for you.
It was like trying to dig a tunnel through an iceberg with a spoon. The process was long and tiring. But he always made sure to be thankful whenever he was invited along to one of your days out with your daughter, to be given a chance to be part of the family.
Your daughter is cautious. It sounds like you had a nasty breakup with her dad, and you never discuss it much - but your little one has trouble trusting new men because of it, it seems. But as the ice starts to melt around her he finds himself loving her as much as he loves you.
He knows he can’t buy someone’s affections. But when he shells out an eye-watering amount for a stuffed dinosaur at the Natural History Museum and your daughter beams at him, he thinks it might be alright to cheat a bit.
She might be quiet, but she’s concise when she speaks; pithy and never using more words than she needs to. Still she has that same intensity many young children do. She reminds him of Lemon, actually, back when they were kids: sincere to a fault, but affectionate in her own way.
When she first held his hand in a crowd out in public, Tangerine grinned harder than when he heard West Ham got into the FA Cup final (didn’t win though, did they? Fucking Liverpool). Maybe he didn’t sign on to have a kid in his life, but he can’t help but feel incredibly lucky it ended up happening. And sitting with you cozied up on one side of him and your daughter falling asleep on his arm on the other, he’s even more surprised that he’s genuinely happy.
He heads to your house with a bouquet of flowers for you and a toy in garish packaging for your daughter. Oh, he’s going to earn points for this one - she never asked for it outright, but he’s seen the way she lights up whenever the advert comes on the telly. He’s not Lemon, but he’s still smart enough to pick up on these things.
And you’ll be pleased she’s happy, of course. And when you’re pleased it usually leads to him being pleased later that night.
But the blood in Tangerine’s veins freezes when he sees your door is ajar. You don’t leave it open, ever, and he can hear his heartbeat thunder when he nudges it and sees broken glass behind.
He drops the toy, and the flowers burst into petals on the concrete as he runs inside.
It’s a mess. The coffee table is shattered, furniture has been overturned - and, fuck, there’s blood on the carpet. Signs of a struggle.
He shouts for you at the top of his lungs, for your daughter, sweeping the house and checking anywhere someone could be hiding. He comes up empty. Fuck. Fuck! How could he let this happen?
Dazed, he heads into your bedroom. Sits on the bed. Fishes his phone out of his pocket, numbly taps your number to dial it.
He doesn’t hear your phone go in the house. It rings off to voicemail.
Right. Okay. Right. You must have it with you. That’s something.
Adrenaline surging through his body, he checks to see if your location is turned on. It is. Whatever happened, you made sure to know you could be found.
He stands up, clenches his fist so hard his knuckles turn white, and starts to call Lemon as he leaves.
You wake up to the taste of metal in your mouth. Christ, your head hurts. It’s a sharp ache that reverberates around your skull. Something sticky is running down from your forehead and has gummed your left eye shut, but you look around with your right the best that you can.
Some sort of warehouse. Of course. How original. Things begin to come back to you: the men smashing your door in, the couple you managed to deal with before you were overwhelmed. Your hand still hurts from the punch you delivered to someone’s nose, and you remember the satisfying crunch it made. Oh, god - and your daughter trying to run away but getting caught -
You call her name and you feel a shuffling against your back; you try to move before you realise you’ve been restrained. Hands bound behind you, ankles tied to chair legs. With a groan you crane your neck as far as it will go to take a look.
Your daughter comes to, groggy. You can just about make out her familiar shape in your periphery. If they’ve harmed a single hair on her head, you’re going to set this fucking building alight with every cunt who did this still inside.
“Love?”
She lets out a little sob of terror.
“Mum, what happened?”
“I’m not sure, sweetheart. Are you alright? Did they hurt you?”
She takes a moment to answer, her voice shaking.
“I’m… I’m okay, I think.”
You hope she’s telling the truth, and not just lying to seem brave for you. It’s not like you can turn around and check, is it?
Alright, one thing at a time. You test the restraints. No luck, shit. They’re done tight. With multiple zip ties it feels like. It’s a chore to steady your breathing but you manage to do it, and talk yourself through what you remember.
They burst in, attacked you mostly in silence, but they were talking as they choked you out - about what? Focus, focus.
Oh, fuck. A sentence comes back to you.
‘Let’s see how he likes it when he finds out we have his bird.’
Tangerine. This is all about Tangerine.
You hold back stupid tears. Crying isn’t going to solve anything, is it? But you want to, though. You want to cry over being weak enough to get fucking kidnapped, at being enough of a vulnerability to Tangerine that they’d take you to hurt him, that you got your daughter mixed up in all of this.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The door at the end of the warehouse space swings open. A man crosses over, a balaclava obscuring his face. Despite it all you can’t help but let out a little laugh - how fucking old school, you half expect him to whip out an Anonymous mask.
“Not sure what you’re having a giggle at, love. Seems to me there’s not anything funny about the situation you’re in.”
“Oh, what do you fucking want?” you snap, squaring up the best you can under the circumstances. Keep a brave face for her. The man rolls his eyes.
“Well, darling, a very nasty man likes to get his end away with you. So we figured you’d be a useful bargaining chip when dealing with him. See, he’s pissed off the wrong person, and they’re interested in making sure he pays dearly for it. And the fact you arrange his little missions means this is a two-for-the-price-of-one deal.”
Your daughter whimpers. You bare your teeth at him.
“I don’t give a fuck what you do for me, but let her go. She didn’t do anything, she’s a child.”
The man rolls his eyes.
“What, so she can go running straight to him to tell him where you are? Don’t think so, sweetheart. No, much better to make sure she’s here. Safe. With us.”
He grins and it makes you feel sick. You open your mouth to lay into him, but a beeping from the walkie-talkie at his belt stops you. He grabs it and turns his back to you.
“What?”
There’s the unmistakable sound of gunfire on the other end.
“Oh, fuck, they’re -” is as far as the speaker gets, before he’s cut off with a bloody gargle. The man freezes for a moment, but he’s been distracted long enough - you’ve managed to wiggle one foot free from your restraints and you bring it up as hard as you can between his legs. The man screeches in agony and drops to the floor.
You call for your daughter and tell her to work on her bindings. You feel her struggle behind you. She’s small, maybe she’ll be nimble enough to get free…
The man gets back up all too quickly.
“You bitch,” he spits, and pulls out a knife from around his back. You feel the blood leave you.
Please don’t kill me in front of my daughter.
Any further action he was going to take, however, is somewhat interrupted by the fact a quarter of his head explodes all over you as a bullet flies through it. He looks shocked for a moment before collapsing for the last time.
They’re here. Tangerine and Lemon are dishevelled, covered in blood, and looking worse for wear - but they’re here. Tangerine lowers his gun and runs over to you, dropping to his knees to check you over.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, get her!” you say, motioning back towards your daughter. Tangerine doesn’t need telling twice. He picks up the abandoned knife and starts working on freeing the little girl behind you, as Lemon finishes closing the distance to help you.
You hear your daughter sob in relief and see Tangerine stagger back as she launches herself into his arms.
“Dad!” she cries, burying her little face in his neck. Tangerine doesn’t have an answer to that. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen him properly dumbstruck: standing there, covered in blood and holding your child with wide eyes.
“That’s a lot to unpack,” Lemon mutters with a smile as he finishes letting you go. You stand up and give him a tight hug.
“Am I glad to see your ugly mugs,” you sigh.
“Oi, easy! If you want to keep kissing this ugly mug,” Tangerine says, and it makes your daughter giggle even if she doesn’t loosen her grip.
A bubble of laughter escapes from your lips. Pure relief. Oh, fuck, this could have been bad. It wasn’t though.
Not when you’ve got your boys around to watch your back.
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