King of Hearts (House of Cards Series 2) [Student/teacher]

Six of Hearts

A/N: Working on short sleep and too much caffiene. I'd apologize but I'm not entirely sure if this is gonig to be bad, or awesome so..... hope you like it!

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Three years and thiry-six days since the last time West had killed a man, he held a gun and contemplated pulling the trigger. It would make things so much easier for him, for his family and for his Angel. The man in front of him was on his knees, snot and blood oozing out of his broken nose and tears mixing with the rain on his face.

"I. AM. OUT." West growled, cocking the trigger back and having the fierce satisfaction of hearing the man on his knees whimper before West did what he needed to do.

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Sunday -Dawn

West left his 'la sleeping in her rocking chair, quietly creeping out of the house so as not to wake her. She'd missed him while he was away, and in all honesty, West loved his grandmother and had missed her calming influence too. Although sometimes she knew how to push his buttons better than anyone save Maddison.

His grandmother had wanted to hear all about his vacation, and when he tried to dodge certain deatils, she pestered them out of him until the Cubano ended up blushing like a little child and looked at his feet, confessing that he had told his girlfriend he loved her. His grandmother had a surprisingly wide romantic streak and brazenly critiqued his methods of telling Maddison he loved her. It was humiliating! And yet West never once even considered bottling it all up, keeping her out of it. She had been the one stuck in the hospital waiting room, not knowing if he was gonig to live or die because of what Joao did. West knew he owed her more than just his current life to this old woman's stubborn determination to see her only grandchild become a man worth being proud of.

So they had spent the bulk of the night discussing the Rabid Dogs' newest actions against West. It was one of those moments where West realized that although his abuela had 'converted to Canadian', at heart she could never leave the culture that had beaten paranoia and suspicion into both of them when it came towards involving the authorities. It didn't even come up in conversation as an option.

Across the city, Maddison was still asleep, no where near ready to face the day at dawn. Especially not on a Sunday when she didn't have to wake up. Coming home after a week in paradise had been... anticlimatic to say the least. Siobhan was already off to go see Romeo, and Maddison's mom and dad were happy to see her, but still distracted with bills and monetary concerns.

She'd felt conflicted going to be last night, wishing she had someone to talk to about the photographic evidence against her and West. But there was no one in her family she could talk to outside Shiv. Her parents still didn't know that West was a freaking student. They knew he was younger, but not that he was technically off limits. And then she had turned on the tv to distract herself and gaped at the news as it paraded poor Alice across the screen. Suddenly her own problems didn't seem quite so insurmountable compared to that young woman's. Bad enough that everyone knew she was a stripper, now everyone, would know all the secrets that poor girl had kept. It was a sickening violation of her privacy and Maddison hated the media for it. Disgusted with the world at the moment, Maddison had gone to bed and taken a sleeping pill just to make sure the world stayed away for a little while.

So West found her curled up on her bed, snoring and drooling all over herself and he simply climbed into the bed with her, needing to hold his Angel and feel that she was safe. Because he wasn't 100% sure he'd survive the day.

Sunday - Noon

Maddison knew West was keeping something from her when he started to get vague about his plans for the night. The only thing that he was specific about, was that he could not spend the night with her. An insecure woman might worry that he was planning a rendezvous with another woman. Mad knew better than that though; West was not the kind of man to use the term love lightly. He'd meant it when he said it, which is how Maddison realized that there was probably more to those pictures than West had let on. She was just stubborn enough to ask him about it, but a sneaky part of her wanted to find out for herself. So if he was really determined to not involve her in this, she'd just have to involve herself. The possessive, protective jealousy went both ways in this relationship. That and Maddison figured it was better to seek forgiveness than permission. He'd learn eventually that it was just easier to inculde her from the get go.