Renegade Rising || Leo Fitz Book Two

Chapter FourtySix

The car job was supposed to be easy. Key word being "supposed." Asia knew the second they entered the car lot they wouldn't be able to buy any car worth the money they had on this property. Nothing that would get them out into the mountains where Skye was. Nothing that would get them out there in one piece, at least. They were at one of those skeevy kind of places that always tried to scam people out of money. But Asia did not express her distaste. So she left Coulson to do the haggling, and proceeded to move through the used cars with Hunter, looking over each one for something that would work.

"So," she began casually, as they slipped between rows, moving behind the brick building that housed the offices. "Want to talk about what happened?" She asked him, hands in the pants of her hammerstyle grey sweaters, popping a bubble of her mint gum, eyes flicking over in Hunter's direction, watching his uncomfortable reaction.

"Whatever do you mean, love?" He asked, looking down at the ground as he kicked the tire of a rusty old Volkswagen van, the car wheezing as he did so, as if it were crying out in pain.

"Oh, you know," Asia replied with a shrug, moving over to the next car, leaning over and peeking into the cracked driver's side window. "Best friend and ex knock you out and kidnap you, steal you to a remote location, then you find out they've double crossed your team and you're also in the middle of the ocean." She ticked the things off on her fingers before flicking her gaze over towards him again. "Seriously, Hunter, all joking aside. If you want to vent, vent." She, of all people, knew how debilitating it could be to keep all of that bottled in. First hand.

Hunter shrugged, frowning as he inspected the car she was looking at. "It bloody sucked if that's what ya mean," he rolled his eyes. "Could have done without it, that's for sure. But now we just have to focus on saving Skye and getting our base back. And maybe getting a car that isn't a fucking bucket of bolts."

Asia looked up and followed his gaze over to a Jeep Wrangler, black, parked behind the building. Sure didn't look like something they were actually selling. She cocked her head to the side, looking over at her friend.

"Alright, mate, there's two schools of thought here," Hunter clapped his hands together then rubbed them back and forth. When he turned back to look at Asia, she was already on the ground with a screwdriver, unscrewing the license plates on one of the older cars in the lot. She glanced back up and him and grinned wryly.

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License plates tucked snugly inside her jacket, Asia and Hunter made their way over to the Jeep, after Hunter had taken a moment to sneak the keys from inside the office. It would be quite the nice grab and go, if Coulson wasn't still busy chatting with the man in charge of the property. Asia had tried waving discretely, jumping up and down, just about everything besides actually shouting out the mans name. She turned back at Hunter and shrugged. "Guess we're going to have to go for the less subtle route."

"Well, love, subtly never really was my strong suit," Hunter grinned as he climbed into the front seat and adjusted it to fit his height. "You want shotgun or sleeper first?" he rolled down the window and asked, as he revved the engine. The car purred beneath his foot, ready to race off.

"Back is fine," Asia said with a shrug, opening the door and sliding in. "I'll have to take care of the license plates after we get rollin, ya know?" she laid casually over the leather seats, feet resting up against the frame of the glass window on the opposite end. She looked up at the ceiling a popped another bubble of blue gum.

"So, do you want to talk about it?" Hunter asked her quietly, looking back over the arm of his seat, glancing down at her, watching the bubble pop in her face as her gaze flicked up towards him, their eyes meeting.

"Talk about what?" She asked casually, as if her skin weren't crawling at that very moment. As if she didn't feel like jumping out of the window and running away at the very proposition of such a question.

"You know bloody well what," he rolled his eyes with a sigh, before looking back down at her. "The base being run over by so called agents, being taking captive, your team being ripped out from under you. The whole lot of it." He squinted his eyes at her, almost as if he were trying to intimidate her into talking.

Asia sighed and propped herself up. "Nah, don't really need to," she shrugged. "It's not really bothering me. I know we'll get the base back. I know our team will be okay." She looked out the window for a moment, thinking, then looked back towards Hunter. "Because I don't know what we'll do if we don't." They held the heavy gaze for a moment, before Asia's lips quirked up into a grin, "I do have some cool news though...." she trailed off, before speaking once more. "Leo and I are official. Like official official, dating or whatever." The grin on her face lit up all the way to her eyes.

Hunter smiled back, earnestly for once. "Good, you kids need each other." Then, he turned to face the steering wheel once more, glancing over at Coulson who was still negotiating with the car salesman. "And you know what, I spot a man who needs us." He revved the engine again and switched into first gear.