Chapter Text
I’ve been waiting in the interrogation room for perhaps half an hour now. It’s been three days since we came out of the Pit, three days since they bushwacked us and brought us up in cuffs.
They had let us get all the way to the Control Center before springing it on us. The three rangers escorting us had whipped me to the ground and slapped yet another pair of handcuffs on me, and when Elena, spitting and cursing, had tried to fight them, they had hit her with a taser and tied her to a stretcher.
I hadn’t had the energy to cry; I had just laid there and let them carry me. The gondola ride passed in silence. The rangers had untied Makado and she had ridden up with us, casting venomous looks at the still-insensate Elena every now and then. I had tried to catch her eye at one point, even to talk with her, but she had just looked at me and shaken her head.
There was a large bruise on her cheek from where Elena had struck her. Did she blame me for not doing more to stop Elena from throwing that punch? Or did she even know how little I had done? She was still picking herself up off the floor when Elena had marched over to her and knocked her out.
They had taken us both to the infirmary and cuffed us to our beds, in separate rooms with guards outside the doors. The doctors looked happy to have something to do; mine was a slender Asian man with kind eyes. He was very pleased with how my leg was healing and told me that I’d be able to run a marathon if I wanted to in a few months; I didn’t have the energy to say anything.
Three days had passed; the doctor had brought me a few medical magazines when I asked for something to read, and then, shrugging sheepishly, a collection of lurid romance novels when I asked for something a little lighter. “A guilty pleasure,” he’d explained, and I had smiled at him.
Fumi had visited. I had burst into tears the moment I had seen him and he had leaned down awkwardly to hug me, my wrist still cuffed to my hospital bed.
“Why are you crying?” he had asked, and I had shaken my head.
I was crying because I hadn’t even thought about him, I hadn’t asked after him, I had completely forgotten about him. I wiped at my eyes as best I could with my one free hand and forced myself to smile. “I was so worried about you,” I lied, “and they wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“I’m sorry I left you down there,” Fumi said, pausing while I sniffed loudly, and I had shaken my head at him.
“No, it was my fault,” I told him. “I’m sorry I was such a…I was such an asshole to you. I didn’t -“
“Forget about it,” Fumi said gently. There was a flicker of something in his eyes that made me think he didn’t really mean it.
“How did you get out?” I asked, and he shrugged, described a route vaguely to me, in a tone that seemed to make it clear that he had never really been in any danger and that, possibly, he thought I was overreacting by worrying about him, or at least pretending to.
We talked for maybe fifteen minutes more and when he left, I realized that he had made his judgment on me and that whatever kind of camaraderie we had found down there was dead because I had killed it. As he shut the door quietly behind him, I was faced with the sudden conviction that I would never see him again and that, perhaps more importantly, he would never want to see me again.
But I guess that’s only fair.
The door to the interrogation room rattles suddenly and then Makado sweeps in. She looks very tired and she’s dressed down a little, wearing just a tank top and an old pair of maroon sweat pants. I offer her a cautious smile and she throws herself down in the folding chair opposite me. She holds my gaze for a moment, before her face cracks open in a glimmering smile. “You crazy bitch,” she says, her voice creaky. “You made it.”
“I made it?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.
“You’ll get to go home later today,” she tells me. “No charges, no nothing. Admin has decided that the best thing to do is sweep this under the rug and throwing the book at you isn’t conducive to doing so.”
Deep inside my gut, a knot of tension unwinds itself so quickly I almost throw up. “Holy shit,” I mutter. “Thank you,” I tell her, trying to keep the fervent tone from my voice. Makado shrugs.
“I’ll happily take the credit,” she says.
She sits there for a moment longer, regarding me, before her gaze falters and falls down to her hands, bereft of their customary gloves, her caramel skin thickly mottled with off-white acid scars. She knits her fingers together and glances back up at me. “Roan,” she says, “I wanted to say I was sorry. For getting you involved in this, for everything that went wrong…for losing my temper at you down in DUSA, for everything. I was - I was so out of line, I don’t -“
“Mak,” I say gently. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“Even so, I -“
“I don’t want you to beat yourself up about it,” I tell her. I glance down at her hand and then, with only a slight hesitation, I reach across and slip my fingers around hers. She holds her hand very still, her eye half-lidded, looking up at me with a torn expression. I shrug at her. “You were in an intolerable situation, with what that Frost bitch was holding over your head. I don’t blame you for using me to try and get out of it. If you need my forgiveness you have it.”
Makado opens her mouth to say something else, then shuts it again and shakes her head. I feel her fingers squeeze gently at mine before retreating from my grip. “You’re kind,” she tells me, nodding. “Kinder than I deserve, I imagine,” she says. She rises and gestures for me to follow.
“Come on,” she says. “I arranged transportation for you, get you out of here finally.”
“Can I see Elena before I leave?” I ask, trying not to sound desperate, and Makado smiles at me.
“You’ll see her,” she assures me, and I find myself grinning all the way through the maze of corridors making up the security building until we’re out into the hot West Texas sun.
* * *
We sit there on the front steps for a long while, the air filled with the sound of wind passing through the far-off trees and the cries of equally distant birds. From here, far along the road behind the electric fence, you can’t even see the Pit. There’s the very top of the sedative plant visible over a hill to the north, and then down the road a heat mirage rising off the asphalt, that’s it. There’s a car coming down the road but it’s a long ways off still.
“Is that my ride?” I ask. Makado glances at her watch, then nods.
“It should be,” she tells me.
“I’m surprised you aren’t driving me yourself,” I say, getting to my feet and stretching. “That little VW bug of yours is fun.”
“I’m up to my ass in paperwork,” she laughs. “Once we’re done here I’m going straight back to my office and trying desperately to get caught up.”
The car’s getting nearer. I haven’t seen it before, and it’s still too far away to make out the driver, if I could even see them through the dark-tinted windshield. “Is everything going to be okay?” I ask Makado. “With the Pit, I mean.”
She shrugs. “Who knows,” she says. “We’ll manage, I imagine. Between you and me,” she says, leaning in towards me, “I think it’s probably a good thing we didn’t get our hands on another one of those crystals.”
The car rolls to a halt just across from us. I can see movement inside but the windows are, as I predicted, far too dark. Makado squeezes my shoulder. “See you,” she says, and then she turns round and starts back up the steps.
The car door slams and when I look up, I see Elena, a pair of aviators perched on her head, the corners of her eyes crinkling with the force of her smile. For a moment I don’t know what to say, but then she rushes to me and folds me against her chest, and for a long while that’s enough. “Jesus Christ,” I mumble against her cleavage, “it is so good to see you.”
Her lips come together on the top of my head. “I was so worried about you,” she murmurs, and I laugh and look up at her, at that sleek Slavic face with her wonderful little nose and her bright eyes and her soft, soft lips. She bends down a little further to kiss me.
Behind me I hear the door to the security building shut, and I pull away from Elena, even though it kills me. “Hang on,” I tell her when she raises an eyebrow.
“Roan,” she starts, but I shake my head.
“I have to do something,” I tell her, and then I rush back into the building. It takes my eyes a minute or two to adjust to the relative darkness inside, but when I do I see Makado halfway through a door to what must be her office. She’s turned back, eyebrow raised. I cross to her quickly and fold her into a hug. She stands there stock-still for a moment before she bursts out laughing and wraps her arms around me as well.
“You good?” she asks, a faint smile on her lips. I grin at her.
“I forgot something,” I tell her. I push past her into her office and grab a pen and a sticky note from her desk. I write my number quickly and then hand it to her. She looks down at it and for a moment I think she might be about to cry.
“Keep in touch, okay?” I say.
“Okay,” she says, unable to stop herself from grinning at me. “If you’d like me to, okay.”
“Will you be alright?” I ask.
“I’ll be fine,” she says. She nods to the door. “Go on,” she says. “She’s waiting.”
“When should I have her back to you?” I ask, trying to make a joke of it. Makado raises her eyebrows.
“You get to keep her, actually,” she says, her voice cool. “She quit a few hours ago when I came to see her in the infirmary.”
I look back and see Elena leaned up against the doorframe, the hot Texas air billowing in as she holds the door open. “You coming?” she calls.
Makado nods to me. “Go,” she says. “I’ll call you.”
I give her hand one final squeeze, and then I turn back and run to Elena, and we let the bright sun and blue sky swallow us whole.
SIX MONTHS LATER
I click my tongue at myself, exasperated, and then lean back in my chair, let it roll back a little. I look over the glowing page on the screen and bite my lip. Something’s missing but I can’t put my finger on it. I mean, it’s just a story about the water purification plant downtown but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want it to be good. If it’s going on my paper it has to be good.
I get up, walk over to the window, crack open the blinds. Pale sunlight pours in; it’s somewhere around three, I think. I’m feeling lazy and sleepy and enervated. I don’t feel like doing much of anything except laying down in that nice patch of sun over there on the couch and falling sleep, just like a cat.
There’s the water purification plant, just there, the gray bulgy building out at the edge of town. We’re just high up enough that I can barely see it from here. It looks different somehow but I chalk it up to having not looked at it in a while. Not like I make a habit of staring at the uninspiring industrial shape of the municipal buildings around town.
I’m smiling to myself now; I’ve heard the door open stealthily behind me and a pad of agile feet make their way onto the carpet. She tries so hard to sneak up on me but every time I can hear it; the door has a weight to it and even though the hinges make no noise I can still detect –
“I heard you come in,” I tell her, but I still spin my chair around and crash my grin into hers, as Elena comes bounding up to me like a puppy and plops herself down in my lap. I can feel the muscle in her smooth, toned thighs shift beneath the soft fabric of her sundress and I let my hands slip down and cradle her ass, pulling her closer to me. Her smile widens fractionally and for a moment her gaze is so warm that I can’t meet it.
Elena starts to say something, but I dart upwards and kiss her, my tongue tracing the inside of her lips, and she gives me a muffled laugh and knits her long, agile fingers into my hair, curling inwards against my scalp and sending a delicious tingle racing along my arms. She reaches downward and cups my breast, her thumb slipping delicately over my stiffening nipple, and I let out a little moan before I can stop myself. I pull back, a little breathless, and take her hand, remove it from my breast as gently as I can, and instead bring it up to my lips and cover her wrist in kisses. She makes a face at me but it doesn’t last long.
“Weren’t you saying this morning how much you wanted me to call out from work so we could make out all day?” she points out, and I roll my eyes.
“Yes, and then you were like ‘noooo, I can’t, I have a big meeting today, I promise I’ll pounce on you when I get home’ and you went to work, and I got distracted with this stupid story about the water plant downtown.”
“So take a break. My previous offer still stands,” she smirks.
I watch as she slowly slips one strap of her dress off her shoulder and lets it fall down, exposing one of her full, soft breasts. She’s wearing the dark navy bra I like, and then she hooks her thumb beneath it and tugs that down and out of the way as well. I bite my lip and with great difficulty tear my eyes away and drag my gaze up to meet hers.
She looks so happy, I manage to think, before she presses her breast against my parting lips. The taste of her on my tongue erodes whatever restraint I had left and I struggle to my feet, tearing at my clothes, her hand already darting between my legs, a loud, needy moan bursting from my mouth, and then she picks me up and carries me to the bed in the other room. The last thing I see before I squeeze my eyes shut and give myself over to her entirely are her slatey eyes hot with desire before she pulls my thighs apart and sinks between them to obliterate me.
* * *
“I forgot to tell you,” she mumbles against my neck. “I brought the mail in.”
I squeeze her naked buttock and feel a throaty purr somewhere at the back of her throat as she stretches her leg up a little higher, her muscular thigh a broad flat pleasant weight across the breadth of my stomach. “Was there anything important?” I ask.
“Bills, mostly,” she murmurs. “Oh, and Makado called.”
“Really?” I ask, sitting up a little. Elena grumbles but readjusts herself so that her face is pressed against my side. She gives me a little nip on the upper curve of my hip and I reach down and spank her lightly.
“Mm, do that again.”
“Hey, focus,” I tell her. “What did Makado say?”
“She can’t make it on Tuesday, they’re doing a drill or something and she has to be there. Told me to tell you hi and to ask if you can do Thursday instead, she already rescheduled her flight, she’s going to make a weekend of it.”
I run my fingers through her shaggy mop of blonde hair and Elena nuzzles herself closer to me. “Are you still mad at her?” I ask, and Elena sighs.
“No,” she says. “Not really.”
“You can come on Thursday if you want,” I offer again, glancing down at her. “We’re going to go to this little Greek place I really like and then go to a play.”
Elena makes a little grumbling noise and I reach down and lift her gaze up to me by her chin. I can’t help but grin at her scrunched face, at her small elegant upturned nose. “Are you jealous?” I ask, in a teasing voice, and Elena blushes and tickles me and then I tickle her and we dive into each other again.
We lay there in silence for a long, long while. The room still smells like sex, like mine and Elena’s scents commingling with the fresh spring air wafting in through the open window. In the tree outside I can see a bluejay. It opens its mouth and calls, a burst of two staccato notes like an alarm.
I’ve moved lower now, running my fingertips along Elena’s broad, strong back. I can feel the lazy play of muscle in her shoulders as she shifts lightly to look up at me. Our eyes meet and like I always do I feel myself melting. I lean down and kiss her, long and hard and deep, and when I pull away Elena tugs me to her, holding me closely, her forehead pressed against mine.
“What do you see?” she asks. “What do you see when you look at me like that?”
“You,” I tell her. “I see you, and how beautiful you are. How cute and smart and strong and -“
“Oh, stop,” she giggles. She tickles me and I yelp and try to get away from her but she’s too strong.
“Hey, you asked,” I tell her.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” she adds. “There was a letter from your doctor. Don’t know if it’s important.”
“It is,” I tell her. “Come on.”
We pad out to the kitchen, still naked, Elena’s hand resting possessively on my ass. She keeps trying to catch my gaze but I just shake my head in response to her inquisitive look. Eventually she just comes out and says it. “Is everything okay?”
I bite my lip, then come clean. “I went to the doctor the other day and got myself tested for HIV again.”
“Oh. But the ballast -“
“I just wanted to be sure,” I tell her. “One way or another.”
Her brow is furrowed in concern; I feel a sudden pang of guilt for even telling her, for making her worry, and I reach up, smooth her hair out of her eyes. She looks down at me gravely. “But Roan,” she says, “what if you -“
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Elena, I promise, it’s okay. No matter what the results are, it’s okay. I already made an appointment for next week anyway.”
“I already came so close to losing you,” she says. “I don’t know if I can handle that again.”
“Look at me,” I tell her. “Come on, look at me.”
She offers me a half-hearted smile. “Yeah?”
“I love you,” I tell her. “And I promise I’m going to be here to annoy you for a long, long time.”
“You promise?” she asks, her smile widening by a tooth or two. She sounds amused in spite of herself.
“I promise,” I tell her, and then with only the slightest hesitation I open the envelope, draw out the loose sheet of paper within, and with Elena leaning over my shoulder, begin to read.
THE END