Chapter Text
The noise in the Cody house was gone, but the silence Baz left behind was worse. It was a heavy, suffocating kind of quiet that pressed against Pope’s chest until he couldn’t breathe, a constant reminder that he was a ghost walking around a house full of people who were terrified of him.
But here, in the corner booth of the Sandy Anchor the noise was different. It was normal.
Pope sat perfectly still, his large frame tucked against the worn vinyl. To anyone else, he looked like a threat waiting to happen, rigid, intense, unblinking. But his mind was just... resting and tracking Emma.
She wore a plain white t-shirt, jeans, and a faded black apron tied around her waist. Her long brown hair was loosely pulled back, a few sun-kissed strands framing a face that had never looked at him with horror. Not once.
He watched her pour coffee for a couple in booth three. Pope was a predator by trade; he knew how to read a room, knew exactly when someone was lying or putting on an act. He could see Emma’s customer service smile, the polite, mechanical curve of her lips, the one she gave to the rude guys by the door. But then she would hit a table with a kid, or an old lady, and her eyes would crinkle. It was real. He liked that she didn't fake it for everyone. It meant that when she looked at him, he could trust what he saw.
Emma walked back behind the counter, sliding the glass pot onto the burner. She leaned against the stainless steel prep station next to another waitress.
Pope tuned his ears past the low hum of the radio, catching their voices.
"Who made this coffee?" the other girl grumbled, staring into the pot. "It's like mud."
Emma glanced at it, a tiny, amused smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. "...You did."
The younger girl paused, blinking. "Oh... you're right."
A sudden, bright laugh broke from Emma, a soft snicker following from her coworker.
Pope’s chest tightened. He didn't understand how people did that, just laughed at stupid, mundane things. Home was always a chess match, always a fight, always blood. But the sound of her laugh completely cleared the dark, roaring static out of his brain. It made him feel like his heart was actually beating.
Before he could look away, Emma wiped a stray tear from her eye, still smiling, and caught him staring.
Pope didn't blink. He just waited for the inevitable, for her to look uncomfortable, to turn her back, to realize he was a freak.
Instead, her smile shifted. The tired, working-girl mask melted completely, replaced by that soft, genuine warmth he had been tracking all morning. She grabbed the coffee pot, walked out from behind the counter, and headed straight for his booth.
"Hey, Andrew," she said, her voice easy. She didn't sound scared of him. "Need a top-off?"
Pope looked up at her, his jaw tight. He looked over his shoulder, his eyes scanning the empty booth behind him, before looking back at her. Who, me?
Emma let out another quiet, breathless laugh at the gesture, shaking her head. "Yes, you. Regular coffee, right?"
"Yeah," Pope said, his voice a little rougher than he meant it to be. He watched the dark liquid fill his mug, his eyes tracking the way her wrist moved, the scent of her perfume over the smell of burnt coffee. He wanted to say something normal. Something that would make her laugh again.
He looked at his mug, then up at her brown eyes. "Don't worry. I like the mud."
Emma blinked, then her whole face lit up, a real, genuine chuckle escaping her. "I'll tell Chloe to keep making it terrible just for you, then."
She slipped a little slip of paper, his check, onto the table, right next to the empty pie plate and saucer he had already meticulously, neatly stacked for her. She noticed the dishes, her smile softening even more. "Thanks, Andrew. You're always my easiest table."
She walked away to hit another section, and Pope just sat there, his scarred knuckles white around his warm mug. He felt a tiny, foreign spark of something like life in his chest.
As Emma turned to head back to her section, she felt her heart doing a tiny, nervous flutter that she hoped didn't show on her face.
She was naturally a bit shy, usually the type to look down or busy herself with silverware when a man stared too hard. But with Andrew, she didn't feel the need to hide. To the other girls on the floor, he was an enigma, a big, imposing man with intense eyes and scarred hands who barely spoke. Chloe had warned her after Andrew's first visit that he looked dangerous.
But Emma didn't see a threat. She saw someone who looked entirely exhausted by the world.
In a restaurant full of people snapping fingers for refills or trying to make uncomfortably personal small talk, Andrew never demanded anything from her. He just respected her space and treated her like a person. And he always stacked his plates. The first time he’d done it, she had given him that grateful smile, and his genuine confusion over it had tugged hard at something in her heart. Who hurts a man that much, she had wondered, that he doesn't even expect a thank you?
Walking back to the kitchen prep station, her heart felt lighter than it had all morning. She could feel his eyes following her as she walked away, and for the first time in a long time, Emma found herself looking forward to tomorrow's shift.
Behind her, Pope wrapped his knuckles around the warm mug, staring at the neat stack of dishes she had just touched. For a few more minutes, he just sat there, letting the quiet settle into his bones before he had to go back out into the sun, slide into his truck, and drive back to the house where the ghost of Baz was waiting.
Pope pulled the heavy Ram pickup into the driveway, the engine idling with a deep, mechanical rumble for a second before he cut the ignition. The truck’s massive tires had kicked up a thick cloud of dust that settled lazily over the other vehicles already parked in a tight, familiar cluster, Craig’s dirt bike leaning hard on its kickstand, Deran’s truck, and J’s sensible, boring sedan.
Everyone was home.
He pulled his phone from his pocket. The screen lit up, showing four missed calls from Smurf and two from Deran. Pope stared at the glowing numbers, his thumb hovering over the glass.
He just slid the phone deep into his pocket, letting the dark screen go black again.
Pope walked around the side of the house, his heavy boots thudding against the concrete path, passing the bright, unnaturally blue water of the pool. The Oceanside sun beat down on his neck, hot and oppressive, but the second he slid open the glass door and stepped into the kitchen, the air-conditioned house felt like an icebox.
They were all packed around the marble center island, and the tension in the room was thick enough to choke on. Ever since Baz had been taken off the board, the house felt less like a home and more like a bunker where everyone was waiting for someone else to pull a pin on a grenade.
J was leaning over the counter, his eyes fixed on a legal pad, chewing on the cap of a pen.
Craig was pacing the length of the refrigerator, a sweat-beaded bottle of beer in his hand, his large frame restless. Deran sat high on a barstool, his arms crossed over his chest, looking thoroughly irritated.
And then there was Smurf. She sat at the head of the island, a frosted pitcher of iced tea in front of her. The exact moment the glass door clicked shut, her sharp, pale eyes snapped directly to Pope.
"Where were you?" Smurf asked. Her voice had that soft, melodic maternal tone, but beneath it was a razor blade. "Too busy to answer your phone, baby?"
Pope stopped just inside the room, standing in the shadows by the pantry. He didn't look at his brothers, and he didn't adjust his posture. He just kept his unblinking eyes locked on his mother.
"I was out," he said. His voice was a low, rusty gravel.
Smurf’s head tilted slightly, her gaze tracking over his face, searching for a twitch, a lie, anything. The silence stretched out, heavy and suffocating, until she echoed him. "Out?"
"Out."
Craig stopped his pacing, taking a slow sip of his beer while his eyes darted between Pope and Smurf. Deran shifted uncomfortably on his stool, clearing his throat but saying nothing. Nobody wanted to push Pope these days. Without Lena around to anchor him, and with Baz gone, Pope looked like a walking time bomb, hollowed out, unpredictable, and entirely dangerous.
Smurf let out a tiny, dramatic sigh, setting her glass down with a soft clink. She didn't press him. She knew exactly how to play the long game. Instead, she offered him a warm, forgiving smile that didn't reach her eyes and gestured to the papers scattered across the marble.
"Well, I'm just glad you're here now," Smurf said smoothly, shifting straight into business. "Because J found us a beautiful setup across town. A credit union. It's an independent branch, lots of cash moving on Fridays, and the security is a joke."
Pope took two slow steps forward, his eyes scanning the blueprints, though his mind was still back in that quiet corner booth. "A credit union?"
"Yeah, but the exit is a nightmare," Deran muttered, tapping a blunt finger against a map of the surrounding streets. "There's a bottleneck at the intersection right across the street. If a silent alarm triggers and local patrol cars block that intersection, we’re trapped in the parking lot. We'll be sitting ducks."
J looked up from his legal pad, his face completely blank, cold, and analytical. "Which means we can't let the local cops focus on the bank. We need a distraction. Something loud, messy, and violent right across the street to draw every patrol car in a three-mile radius away from the credit union for at least five or six minutes."
Smurf picked up a thick red marker. With a slow, deliberate movement, she traced a line directly across the asphalt of the sketched-out street on the blueprint. Her manicured finger stopped on a small, rectangular building right at the corner.
She looked up at Pope, a sharp, satisfied grin spreading across her face.
"Right here," Smurf said, her voice dripping with satisfaction. "There's a little local place called The Sandy Anchor. We have J and Craig stage a quick, chaotic hold-up inside the diner. Wave some guns around, smash a few things, scare the tourists. By the time the precinct realizes the diner is just a decoy, we'll already have the bank vault cleared out and be halfway to the highway."
The air in Pope’s lungs turned to concrete.
A sudden, sharp spike of pure panic pierced straight through his chest, so violent it made his stomach drop. His heart started thudding erratically against his ribs, a frantic, like a trapped animal that screamed at him to move, to burn the map, to rip the red marker out of Smurf's hands.
Not there. Anywhere but there.
The dark, roaring static, the chaotic noise in his brain that Emma’s soft, breathless laugh had just cleared away minutes ago, came crashing back like a tidal wave, blinding him. The image of her flashed violently behind his eyes, her plain white t-shirt, the gentle way her sun-kissed hair fell out of her clip, and the neat, meticulous stack of dishes he’d left on her table. That was his spot. His one sanctuary. The only place in Oceanside where he felt like a human being instead of a monster, and his family was about to bring the monster right to her doorstep.
If Craig and J went into The Sandy Anchor guns blazing, Craig would be reckless, screaming, and breaking things just for the rush. J would be ice-cold, profiling the room, ready to pull a trigger if anyone twitched. And Emma, soft-spoken, shy Emma, would be caught right in the middle of a nightmare his family built. She would look at the masks and see pure terror. She might get hurt. She might get killed.
Pope’s hands balled into tight fists inside his pockets, his scarred knuckles straining so hard against the fabric that his skin went entirely white. He had to breathe. He had to force his face to stay dead, to keep the wild, clawing panic hidden deep down where Smurf couldn't smell it. If she saw even a flicker of hesitation, she would dig until she found Emma, and then she would use her like a lever to control him.
He cleared his throat, the sound sharp, grating, and dangerously tense in the quiet kitchen. He kept his eyes locked on the red marker line, refusing to look up until the tremor in his chest stopped.
"No," Pope said.
The word was quiet, but it cut through the room like a blade. Craig stopped mid-stride, his beer bottle hovering near his mouth. Deran narrowed his eyes, leaning forward on his stool, while J just watched his uncle, his expression unreadable.
Smurf’s sharp eyes tracked the rigid, locked line of Pope’s jaw. Her smile faded into something cool and calculating. "No? What do you mean, no, baby? It’s a clean plan."
"Craig is too loud. J is too slow," Pope said, his voice completely flat, a terrifyingly empty mask of stone that hid the absolute desperation raging inside him. He finally forced himself to look up, his dark, intense eyes fixing onto Smurf with a weight that made Deran shift uncomfortably. "If they mess up the timing at the diner, the cops hit the bottleneck early. You're all trapped."
"I'm not slow," J said quietly from the corner of the island.
Pope completely ignored him, keeping his focus entirely on his mother, his mind racing to lock down the logistics. "I'll do the diner. Me and J. Craig goes with Deran for the vault and the getaway."
Smurf tilted her head, her manicured fingers tapping a slow beat against the marble counter. She was trying to read him, trying to figure out why he was suddenly taking control of a distraction gig. Pope never cared about the blueprints like this; usually, he just did what he was told or snapped when he was pushed.
"You want the diner, Andrew?" Smurf asked softly, her voice dropping into that quiet, probing register she used when she suspected a secret. "Why is that?"
"Because I know how to control a room," Pope lied smoothly, his voice deadpan and certain, masking the frantic thought screaming in his head. Because I'll be inside. I'll be right there. I will put my body between the guns and her, and nobody will touch her. He looked back down at the little rectangle labeled The Sandy Anchor. "Craig will break something he shouldn't and call attention too fast. J and I go in. We hit it, we handle the crowd, we keep them on the floor until the clock runs out."
“What the hell, asshole?” Craig finally said, slamming his hands onto the counter before shaking his head and stepping back in frustration.
“It’s true, and you know it,” Pope answered, not giving his brother a second look.
Smurf stared at him for a long, agonizing moment, her pale eyes searching his face for a crack.
The silence in the kitchen was suffocating, the heat of the Oceanside sun pressing hard against the glass doors behind them. Finally, a small, knowing smile crept back onto her face. She didn't know why he wanted the diner, but she liked seeing a spark of initiative in him again. It meant he was functional.
"Alright, baby," Smurf murmured, capping the red marker with a sharp, definitive click. "If you think that’s best. You and J take the diner. Friday morning. Eleven o'clock sharp.”