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I realize I'm making it sound like something no one on earth should ever read, but... I don't know, I can't be the only one who likes this kind of clusterfuck, right?
if they find you I will protect you
Parker Pullman is twenty-six years old and he hates his job.
Standard stuff. His alarm goes off every morning at a quarter til six, and he's already hip-deep in e-mail and social media alerts before he hauls his ass out of bed, and the commute from Forest Glen into DC sucks, and his therapist won't let him drink before noon anymore, and dating is hell and working in IT is hell and he hasn't spoken to his father in almost three years and he has, he's pretty sure, the entire world's supply of PTSD, he is convinced he's hogging way more than his fair share, which means he usually starts his day by journaling about his nightmares, and that's just fucking peachy.
On the other hand. He lives by himself, which is nice. He has health care and vacation days and a shit-ton of life insurance. He's living in the golden age of television and gay marriage is legal in all 50 states and he's only been shot twice.
So it's, you know, whatever. By six in the morning, he's usually brushing his teeth and giving himself a silent pep talk in the bathroom mirror. These are the choices you made, he tells himself. You have the life you said you wanted, and if you don't like it, you can choose to quit.
That's not a small thing. He gets that most people don't have that luxury; most people can't quit the things that make their lives the hardest, but Parker is able-bodied and financially stable and almost uncannily resourceful and lucky as shit, and he doesn't let himself take any of it for granted, not for a single day.
He hates his job, but he doesn't quit, and he takes complete and total responsibility for that every morning in the bathroom mirror, before he shuffles out to feed his pet iguana, Constantine.
Parker is all about responsibility – his therapist thinks maybe a little too much, but then, she doesn't know that there's a war going on.
Most people don't.
He eats yogurt and half an avocado for breakfast, because he's trying to cut back on carbs, and he puts Stuff You Should Know on his phone and listens to it while he starts his shower, and he doesn't leave himself time to jerk off, because then he'd really be tempted to go straight back to sleep and say fuck it to his stupid RKISolutions desk job and fuck it to the FBI and fuck it to the entire existence of Parker Aaron Pullman from Cincinnati, Ohio and Penn State and Forest Glen, Maryland. The guy's a douchebag anyway; his hobbies are Cards Against Humanity and fucking terrorism.
But this is his job, and these are his responsibilities, and he can count off every single choice he ever made that brought him here.
How many people can say that?
He has a fogless mirror in his shower so he can shave. Parker rarely passes up the chance to look into a mirror, and it's not because he's vain (although he's in the best shape of his life, and while it's not exactly charming to say it out loud, he does think he's pretty goddamn fuckable). It's just because looking into his own eyes helps him remember who he is.
Parker's real name is, god help him, Mieczyslaw Stilinski (No Middle Initial); he's from Beacon Hills, California, and he's an undercover intelligence asset of the FBI responsible for the arrest of seven human-supremacist militants in three separate cells affiliated with Tamora Monroe and her Aconite Front.
He fucking hates his job, but he chose it. He chooses it all over again every day, because he can't grow fangs and claws and he can't save the people he loves when they're being hunted with pipe bombs and bear traps and poison gas, but he's smart and he's resourceful and he's got nerves of goddamn steel. Ten years now, he's been risking his life for his pack, because he fucked up once and a good friend died, and one is all he's willing to lose. Full stop. Forever.
So every morning he shaves in the shower, and then he looks himself square in the eyes and reminds himself who he is and why he does what he does, and he touches the tattoo on his chest, traces the outer circle and the inner circle and then touches the star in the center and says to himself, Because Allison, and says to himself, For Scott.
He hasn't spoken either name aloud since 2015. Not to his handlers. Not to his therapist. Not to his iguana. Not to anyone at all. You can't be too careful.
