Chapter Text
Felt weird, to be back in Executive, like he’d been hiding under a rock which had been turned over suddenly. Arish couldn’t stop squinting at those bright overhead lights, gleaming off those clean desks, those boring cubicles, the potted plants and the high concrete walls. He hadn’t even spent that long stuck down in Maintenance—what, forty hours, forty-two hours at the outside?—but it had felt like weeks, with the NSC power plant rumbling and groaning, all signals red, plus the people floating outside the narrow windows of his small bunker, chanting Leave your insides by the door, push the fingers through the surface into the wet. Everyone who wasn’t wearing an HRA would eventually succumb to what they now called the Hiss, that was clear even back when no one had any idea what was going on, and so Arish had made sure everyone kept their harnesses on and kept a cool head. After some of the dead had begun to glow red and attack people, he’d steered them true, battened down the hatches and tried to find a way out of this mess. Good in a crisis, that’s what it said on his latest annual performance review. There was always a way. This sure wasn’t the first storm he’d ever weathered in the Bureau and he did hope it wouldn’t be the last, at least not in any lethal way; but it certainly was the worst yet in terms of body count; and if the new Director hadn’t come along to clear a path to the cooling pumps, well, he wouldn’t be here now trying to sort through Marshall’s papers and that was a fact.
Goddamn Marshall, too, disappearing just when they needed her the most. Her rangers kept complaining that she’d left them under the orders of a security guard, as if that was the worst bit. In Arish’s opinion he’d done better in Maintenance than they had in Research, but he said nothing about that and kept giving solid, sensible orders that even the most gung-ho trigger-happy of these Rambo impersonators couldn’t help but grudgingly follow. Really they weren’t a bad bunch, the rangers. They were just a little on edge, stretched thin. Everyone was.
Because he was a sensible guy Arish had arranged for someone to hold the fort while he got some sleep under a desk somewhere; he had to, or he couldn’t function much longer. Not long, five hours at most. He was ten minutes away from the beginning of that self-appointed break and wondering where he could find a place to sleep that was both safe and quiet—it felt like he was going to have to settle for one or the other, really—when Jesse Faden appeared in the middle of the Control Point with a blast of displaced air.
All around the room the rangers startled, some even jerking their weapons up on reflex. Some of the papers on Arish’s makeshift desk whipped away despite his best efforts to grab them.
“Sorry about that, Arish,” Jesse said, walking towards him.
“Aw, that’s my bad, really,” he answered, crouching down to retrieve them. “You’d think I’d remember to pin them all down by now.” He gave her a sheepish grin as he got back up, and she answered with a brief but warm smile.
She had this way of looking at him—looking at everyone in the Bureau, really—with this intense focus, like she was trying to figure them all out. Arish couldn’t quite make sense of that. If she was the Director, that meant she was in contact with the Board, right? And that meant the Board would answer all the questions she had. It made him feel nervous, when she stared at him like that. He wanted to tell her he was too unimportant for that kind of scrutiny. The rangers weren’t wrong: at the end of the day he was just the security guy, trying to make sure people got through the week in one piece.
“Is that, ah, a new suit?” he asked. Well, he had to ask: she’d think he was an idiot if he didn’t comment, because only an idiot wouldn’t notice. From afar it sort of looked like a dress, all dangling straps of leather, but from up close he could see that most of the outfit was actually a form-fitting Spandex jumpsuit. Really form-fitting.
“Yes—I found it through the looking-glass,” she said. “You know, the mirror in the Synchronicity lab?”
“I don’t know everything they’ve got up in Research,” he admitted. “Not many people do, really. You went through a mirror?”
“Don’t worry about it, Arish.” And that, right there: maybe some people would call that condescension, but he was actually grateful to be dismissed from problems that weren’t his own. She got that. She handled things, as the FBC Director should. “I got blood on my jacket, so I figured I might as well change.”
“Well, it suits you. Very… Matrix-y,” he joked. Immediately afterwards he wanted to kick himself; hadn’t HR sent him enough memos? And what kind of lame asshole would admit to being into the Matrix after years working for the Bureau?
She gave him a smile, which was too kind of her; she was clearly trying to be nice to people, and he appreciated that. “Thanks, Arish. Are you getting enough sleep? You’ve been on your feet for a long time, I think.”
Now that was something Trench would’ve never asked; as a point of fact Arish had only talked to the man once or twice. Sure, they hadn’t been facing a Bureau-wide crisis during his term, but still. “Well, actually, I was just about to go on break, ma’am. I mean—Jesse. Ha, sorry.” For the love of God.
“Great. You deserve a break,” she said sincerely. “I’m off to the Quarry now.”
“The Quarry?” It was stupid to miss Maintenance, especially since the place was five kinds of hell right now, but he really didn’t belong under the bright neon of Central Executive. And the Quarry was the most beautiful place in the whole Bureau; of course he’d feel a little longing. “Are you going after Marshall?”
She sighed. “Everyone says that’s where she went, but it’s a whole other world down there. Literally. Searching the entire place would take days. I’ll just go have a look around and hope I get lucky.”
“Well, I can give you some pointers, if you like. I never saw her going down there, but I do have a good sense of where you can set up camp.”
“Arish, that would be great,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
It was a weird question, because he was just planning on showing her on a map, but he assumed she asked because he’d just claimed to be going on break. “Sure,” he said brightly. “Anything for the new Director!”
And he was so busy berating himself for sounding so pathetically overeager that he followed her automatically when she gestured at him to come along, and he didn’t realize why until they were both in the middle of the Control Point and she was wrapping her arm around his waist.
*
The air contracted around him until he felt like he was sinking into quicksand, then blasted apart again; the silver-blue glow of the Quarry enveloped him as he fell to his knees in the dirt, gasping for breath.
“Are you all right?” Jesse was leaning over him in concern.
“Yeah, uh, yeah,” he answered. “Just a bit surprised is all. Wow, I—didn’t know you could bring people along.”
She helped him up. “I didn’t either. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m really making this all up as I go.”
Still breathless, he looked around. It was the Quarry, with its scintillating sky full of strange stars, and the endless blocks of black rock floating peacefully all around. No sign of Hiss. He realized he was still holding Jesse’s hand—well, she was holding his hand—and quickly let go. “Sorry about that,” he said. “All good now. So, about Marshall…”
“Never mind.” Jesse sounded annoyed, and he felt a sting of alarm: what had he done, how could he fix it? “I think I know where she’s gone.”
He followed her gaze: one of the jeeps parked at the entrance of the Quarry was missing. Fresh tire tracks were leading into the gaping maw of a mining tunnel. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Well. Guess there wasn’t much point in me coming along.”
“Thanks all the same, Arish,” she said, and it was truly ridiculous how much more settled he felt, hearing that she wasn’t mad at him. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re… bleeding…”
He touched his face and his fingers came off red. “Oh,” he repeated. “Just a nosebleed. Nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t think I should bring you back through the Control Point,” she said, staring at him again, this time clearly out of concern. The intensity of it made him very conscious of his body, his feet, his face, his hands. “We’ll have to take the long way home.”
“Yeah, uh, maybe that’d be safer. Sorry, didn’t mean to saddle you up with an escort mission.” Then his mouth kept going. “I mean, escort in the military sense of the word, of course.” She looked at him weirdly. “I mean, I wasn’t trying to imply—I wouldn’t want you to think I was implying anything like—we all feel safer for you being there, and that’s the truth,” he finished pathetically, before giving an awkward laugh. “Well, now, I’ll just go and find a pit to jump in, if you don’t mind. Or dig a hole for myself, since I seem to be so good at it.”
“Arish,” she said warmly, with a bit of a chuckle in her voice, “it’s okay.”
“I swear I don’t usually put my foot in my mouth so much.”
“Well, you’ve been under a lot of pressure. Besides, this was supposed to be your break.”
“True. All the same, I’m sorry. And that wasn’t a slight on your outfit, either, it really is very nice.” Jesus Christ, he thought. Stop fucking talking.
Jesse was giving him a calculating look again. He shifted from one foot to the other.
“You know, I pick up random papers when I get around this place, to try to get a sense of what’s going on,” she said. “I read a report about two people who sneaked into the Quarry for—unprofessional activities.”
“Oh, yeah, we’ve all heard of that,” he said, his own voice far away through the sudden waterfall rush in his ears. “One of my teams found the bodies, actually. But that was over by the Formation,” he added, as if people couldn’t possibly fuck elsewhere in the Quarry.
She smiled, just a tug of the lips. “People around here do need to relieve the pressure, don’t they, Arish? And who could blame them?”
“Ma’am,” he began.
“It’s Jesse.” She considered his harness with a critical eye. “Do you think you could undress completely while keeping your HRA on?”
“I, well, now, I,” he said desperately. “I don’t think, I mean…”
“No?”
“I mean, I think that’s possible?” he babbled. “I sure hope so, really, because I was hoping to take a shower later, if you’ve cleared the Medical Wing…”
“You should start with the tie,” she said.
“I mean," he tried again, "you know, people did die around here…” But he was obeying her already, his hand coming up to tug at the knot. God, he really was tired. Not thinking straight, not thinking at all. Hadn’t slept in almost fifty hours.
“They didn’t have me with them,” Jesse answered, and she had a point: he hadn’t exactly seen her mowing through hordes of Hiss, because he’d been a bit busy himself at the time, but his team had survived with only two casualties and she’d cleared a path to the service elevator. “Besides, nowhere’s really safe in the Bureau right now. Here at least there’s no one else around.”
The idea of anyone else hearing about this—seeing this—made him dizzy for a moment. His tie had come undone, and he was awkwardly unbuttoning his black shirt under the clunky harness, wedging his hands under the straps. What was he doing? One button wouldn’t give, so he popped it. What the hell was he doing?
This wasn’t really happening, was it?
She was looking at him undress. Massive chunks of black rock drifted silently in the background. He swallowed. “Are you, um, keeping the outfit on?”
“Well, you seemed to like it.” She didn’t seem embarrassed at all; just amused. “Need a hand?”
“I mean, I—” he began again, stupidly, and then she stepped close to undo his belt.
The waterfall rush was deafening him now, coursing through his entire body. From a distance he became aware that he was hard; that he’d been desperately, disastrously hard ever since she’d uttered the words relieve the pressure. This was so goddamn inappropriate. He was used to weirdness, but this was wrong, this wasn’t normal; this was the Director, and she shouldn’t even have been talking to him, much less unzipping his uniform pants. “Ma’am—”
“Jesse,” she said, and pushed her hand down his boxer shorts, tugging him free.
His brain short-circuited, so it was just as well that she grabbed his hair with her free hand to pull him close. It was a really aggressive kiss, her tongue going deep into his mouth, or maybe it just felt that way because he was just taking it helplessly instead of taking the lead, like he usually did, like he was supposed to. He wasn’t that much of a chump usually, he’d been dating more seriously this year because he was ready to settle down, but she was so far ahead he couldn’t hope to catch up and he couldn’t think.
Get your head in the game, for the love of God, she’ll think you’re a total—
“Mind if I get on top, Arish?” she asked in a low voice. She pushed him back so he’d step out of his pants, holding him by his harness when he almost tripped.
“No, I don’t—sure, anything you want.” He was completely naked now, while she’d stayed fully dressed in that strappy black outfit. Completely fucking naked in the goddamn Quarry.
When she pushed him again, gently but firmly, he sat down on the cold mineral ground, tried to find a comfortable spot that was more dust than gravel, and then forgot all about his discomfort because she was sitting astride his thighs, pinning him there, one hand fisted in his hair to bring him back up into the kiss, the other hand going back down, her fingers briefly raking through thatched black hair before wrapping around the shaft again. His hips jerked; and for a moment he thought he would come right there, that’s how fucking worked up he was, and well, who wouldn’t be? Was this actually happening? Oh God—now her hand was moving—don’t fucking come, don’t fucking come, Jesus Christ, she won’t let me think, I can’t think—
She must have pulled down her Spandex pants, because next thing he knew she was lifting herself up, positioning him and then coming back down, so that he found himself wrapped up tight into wet, gripping warmth. His head fell back and he promptly banged it on a rock, his eyes helplessly open registering a ribbon of alien stars before he thought to close them. She adjusted herself, sinking even deeper, sending a rush of fire up his spine, and he reopened his eyes because he couldn’t just lie there, couldn’t just check out completely. When he pushed up on his elbows to look at her, she had unzipped the front of her suit and, grinning, she leaned forward to push her breasts into his face, making him take one into his mouth, instructing him to suck and, when that wasn’t enough, to bite.
“Good,” she said breathlessly. Her hand was still in his hair, holding so tight he was tearing up, even as he tried to focus on the job. “Yeah, fuck, like that—”
She began rocking, chasing her own pleasure; his own would clearly just be a byproduct, an aftereffect, which was mighty sensible of her because if she focused on him he would come right there, he really would, he was on the brink already, trying like hell to hold back, it was taking up all his brainpower, and in fact he was so absorbed he almost didn’t hear the shriek that suddenly tore through the air, echoing over the sheer black cliffs.
Then it reached his brain. “Oh fuck,” he gasped, letting go of her nipple. “Oh fuck—”
“It’s okay,” she answered, a bit breathless but steady, her body still moving, her hair sticking to her gleaming face, her confident eyes looking above at enemies he couldn’t see.
“What?” He was pinned down under her weight, she was still gripping his hair, he couldn’t—
“Just the explosive ones, they’re completely mindless.” She let go of his hair and opened her hand, drawing a graceful arc in the air: when her fingers closed it was around the handle of an enormous handgun with an alien-looking barrel.
The shriek started again, louder, horribly closer; she took aim and fired.
The blast was so powerful it should have probably popped her shoulder, but she absorbed it into the roll of her hips; Arish felt it wash through his own body. Then, after pulling a considering face, she timed her next shots with her rolling movements, so that the recoil made her grind down into him. Her breasts were gleaming with sweat too, now, bouncing over his head, a drop making its way down between them, and she had a half-smile on her face, that look of focus in her eye, not a trace of fear, just casual competence as she blasted the floating, twisted corpses one by one—Arish could see some of them now, glowing red at the periphery of his vision, but she always got them, each of her shots echoed by a teeth-rattling blast, and the last one so close it splashed her with bright neon orange-red goo, splattering across her naked skin and Arish’s own body under her, his heaving chest, his strained arms.
“Fuck,” she exhaled, eyes screwing shut, “ahhh, fuck—” and came on top of him, at which point Arish’s body, wound up and up with arousal and sheer terror, unwound so suddenly his vision did white out for a moment there. He’d never known a punch like that; it made him deaf and blind, and it felt like he was coming for ages, carried away into the roaring waterfall.
When he came back to himself—had he actually passed out? No, he’d just—gone away for a bit there. She was still on top of him, grinning, chest heaving, glowing red juice slowly sluicing down her body. Another kind of stickiness gleamed on her inner thighs, pooling under her, over him. “You okay?”
“Y-yes ma’am.”
She leaned down, still grinning, and gripped his hair again hard. “I said call me Jesse, Arish.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he repeated helplessly against her mouth, before she mercifully shut him up again.
*
She dismounted eventually, leaving him there to catch his breath. Zipping herself up was a matter of seconds; he would have to pick himself up, find his clothes among the volcanic rock, slowly slip them on again. Without taking off the harness, or he’d go mad. If he hadn’t already.
“God,” she groaned, stretching. “Oh, I needed that. Are you sure you’re okay?”
He nodded, looking around for his pants. “Yeah,” someone else said through his mouth, in a tone of mad, cheerful bravado. “Can’t let the Hiss get to us, right?”
“That’s the spirit.” She was considering the Service Weapon; she oriented it a certain way, then looked at his naked body musingly. “I wonder if it could morph into anything I have in mind?”
He tripped over his discarded shirt, feet tangling in the fabric.
“Although you wouldn’t want to bend over these rocks,” she added. “They do look kind of sharp. Maybe the Director’s office? After all, it’s mine. I could tell people to stay out for a bit. If that’s something you’d be interested in at all?”
His pants were there, the belt still in the loops; he slipped them on, fumbled with the zipper, tried again twice before he could buckle them up properly. “I can't say—I’ve never—I mean, I think we should get back to work in any case?” he stammered.
“Oh, of course, I didn’t mean now. Let’s get you back to Executive for a start, then I’ll go after Marshall.” She grinned at him, all teeth. “And I’ll see you on your next break.”