Who: Max and Jack What: Post-party fail chatting and a tiny alter-changing event Where: The warehouse When: Recently Warnings/Rating: Some language, some nudity, nothing serious
Max hurt all over, and wasn't this just a great fucking way to break-in Las Vegas' special brand of shit? She left the hotel aching all over, but the pain in her chest was the worst. It was bad enough that she spent the drive back to the warehouse talking to Amanda on the phone, and she even considered calling Brandon. She busied herself with her journal instead, and she tried to ignore how it hurt to take every last breath. She could already tell this place was going to be a pain in her ass. This hadn't been in the brochure.
She paid the cabbie, and she let herself in. Her called out "Jack!" returned nothing, and so she walked up the stairs and filled the tub with hot water.
A beer and a soak later, and she was standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom in a pair of black panties and nothing else, examining the most impressive bruise she'd ever seen. It was over her left breast, and it made her hiss to touch the thing. If she'd gotten that bruise on the job she would have been impressed, but this was ridiculous. She picked up the beer bottle from the counter and she chugged it. There were other bruises too, around her neck and throat, on her face, low on her stomach, but those were nowhere near as impressive.
"Fuck you too, Las Vegas," she said, toasting the empty air, then heading down toward the living room where her smokes had been abandoned on the coffee table where all this began. She needed a smoke.
Jack didn't arrive back until long after Max did. He was tired, so tired, and the night's events hadn't exactly done much for his mood. He vaguely remembered wandering out of the building, and then he was downtown, just off the strip, where he'd been before the night began. He'd considered going to the party willingly simply because Jason seemed convinced there would be trouble there, but he hadn't even made it before the compulsion had kicked in and dragged him the rest of the way.
He examined his nails under the lights. No blood, nothing. He felt like there should still be blood clotted under every edge on his body, and it took another long moment to adjust. No bone, no blades, freedom of movement and no plates growing hard over his skin.
He took a moment just to breathe, and adjust again to having full control of his faculties and body. Jason seemed angry about something, but he was staying quiet. All Jack knew was that he needed to get home, make sure Max was alright, make sure everyone had made it through. There wasn't time to fret over who he'd been. He needed to worry about what he'd done. How many had he killed, over the course of the night? He hadn't even counted. The number had seemed inconsequential.
He found his bike where he'd left it, miraculously, because dealing with a stolen motorcycle on top of the rest of this incredible bullshit was the last thing he needed. He tried not to worry, tried not to let it sink its claws in too deep. He tried Max's phone, but no one answered. Maybe she wasn't home.
He was unlocking the front door not long after she climbed out of the shower. He could see lights on up the stairs, and he climbed to the main floor. "Max?" he tried. He didn't manage to keep the worry out of his voice, and pulled the door open, stepping into the living room and stopping short. He'd been ready to go running through the building calling for her, but there she was, topless from the waist up. His eyes locked on that massive bruise, and his reaction was so sharp as to be physical - immediate anger, and then turning away, embarrassed that it had taken him as long as it did to register that she wasn't wearing anything, the heavy black and blue mark filling his vision long enough to blind him to her almost-nudity completely. "I’m sorry,” he managed. “I wasn't sure you were home. I tried your phone, are you alright?" Obviously not, if the bruise was any indication. The next question, of course, would be about who had hurt her at the party. Maybe they couldn’t be held responsible for their actions, but still, it would be good to keep an eye out for them. A very sharp eye.
Max was cranky, which she thought was pretty normal given the circumstances, and she leaned down and grabbed the pack of cigarettes without any concern or move to cover up. She straightened, lit one of the damn things, then sat down on the arm of the couch and reached for the beer she'd set down. All of it was done without any concern for her lack of clothing, and she actually rolled her eyes at Jack after a swig and an exhale. "Corvus, you've seen naked women before. I know you have. It's not a big deal," she assured him, lifting one bare foot to rest in front of her on the armrest, knee against the unbruised side of her chest. "I'm pissed off, but fine. I've had a lot worse, and so will you once you get in the field," she assured him, holding out the beer to him, in case he needed a sip. "You can look at me, you know. I don't bite, and I won't jump you unless you want me to." It was the adrenaline talking, the same adrenaline that coursed through her veins after a dangerous job. Alright, so maybe she wasn't as nonplussed about dying as she pretended she was, but he didn't need to know that.
Jack turned back to her when she started talking, still a bit embarrassed, now that he had looked so sharply away in the first place, but not turning his eyes to the wall anymore. It still left him uncomfortable to see her so completely bared, like he was a witness to something illicit, bruised and a beer in her hand. It fit her, the image, the amazonian quality she always tried so hard to put out, but it still took him a few seconds get over feeling weird about it. He took the beer from her and took a swallow. "I have already," he said, passing the beer back to her. He'd been shot when they were back in Seattle, more than once. Considering how suicidally he had risked his life in the beginning, he was lucky he was even standing there now. There hadn't been much regard for his own life, when life itself seemed without value.
He sat down on the other end of the couch, and gestured to the pack of cigarettes beside her. "Can I have one of those?" The fact that he was exhausted helped to blunt the weirdness of the situation considerably. His eyes wandered briefly to the front door, checking to make sure he'd locked it when he walked in, when she offhandedly mentioned what she might do, only if he wanted. Unthinking, his eyes darted back to her, surprised - but she was joking, and he smiled faintly, getting the jab a little too late. He ought to know better than think she was serious about something like that. "What happened? Do you remember who it was?"
"Always so serious, Corvus," she chided, and she reached for the pack and tossed it to him, the toss hard enough to give a hint of the anger-fueled adrenaline she was keeping at bay. She downed her beer, and she leaned forward to set the bottle down on the coffee table with a loud and heavy thunk. All concentration went to her cigarette then, and she exhaled a long stream of smoke over her head. "What does it matter who it was? Or do you disagree with Luke that this was all random fucking happenstance that means nothing?" Because Max was way too old to attribute this shit to chance. "Don't want to wipe it all under the rug like he did and pretend it didn't fucking matter?"
She didn't curse much these days, a result of life with a very precocious child who parroted everything she heard, but today deserved a fuck or two. She turned her body on the arm of the couch, her feet on the cushions in front of her, and she gave him a knowing, smirky thing of a smile. "A whole couch's length away, huh? Aren't I just terrifying?" She took a drag off her smoke, and she tilted her head to the side, brown hair falling over her shoulders and giving him a reprieve as it tangled past her nipples. "So, who's the blonde?"
Jack caught the pack of cigarettes, and grabbed a lighter from the table next to the couch, lighting up. He didn't smoke often, but the night seemed to call for it, the burn in his throat a welcome wake up call. "I don't think I can," he said. He didn't want to fault Luke, but he knew too well why Luke wanted to pretend none of it had any meaning at all. "It was a little too close to home," he said, and he sounded as grim as Max accused him of being, tempered by that frayed edge.
He took a long drag off the cigarette, flicking the ash away. "The mood you're in, if I'd sat close, I think you would have found something wrong with it too." It wasn't as if he hadn't noticed all the balled up energy in her continuous shifting and the lately too-rare cursing. His eyes lingered for a moment on the ends of her hair where they hung just past the curve of her breasts, losing himself for a moment in a flicker of appreciation and the memory of something else entirely. "What blonde?" he asked, looking up, returning to the conversation a little too late to catch up on the topic. "Oh, the blonde. Her name's Tess." He paused, and looked at her askance. "Who told you about her?" That was odd. He'd only seen her twice, after all. Maybe she'd seen the pictures - he'd never even checked to see if they were published anywhere.
He drew from the cigarette, turning the end bright orange with a sharp, instant evaporation of paper and tobacco. "We hooked up a few weeks ago," he said, knowing full well what the next question would be. "And then I met her again more recently when her sister set me up with her on a blind date to make her ex-husband jealous. None of us realized we’d already met until I showed up.” He smiled a little. “Quite the comedy of errors."
"The kid's just making excuses for his own behavior," Max supplied, and though the words were critical, she sounded concerned. "He needs a good look in the mirror one of these days," she added, but there was a frown there too, wondering if Luke could take whatever the reflection showed him. "You talk to him?" she asked, assuming Corvus had. As far as father figures went, Jack wasn't perfect, but he was better than Brandon, at least for a kid like Luke.
"Probably," she agreed about getting pissed off if he sat close. "I'd either punch you or climb on you. I can't tell. I feel like I do after one of those jobs that almost gets me killed, and I usually go find a good bar after those and sweat it off with a lot of beers and a lot of sex." It was blunt, honest, but she'd always been that way. Life with Brandon had softened her edges somewhat, but she was still herself, and there wasn't any shame in working off a bad job. Her smile widened when his gaze dropped, and she laughed a lazy laugh. "What? You lose your embarrassment if I keep my shirt off long enough?"
As for the blonde. "I saw a picture of you tearing each other's clothes off. Asked the kid who she was, but he didn't know. She's cute, genuine smile, and that's always good." She finished off the cigarette with a long suck, and she considered asking him what the deal was with Tess, the blonde, but she left it alone. It wouldn't change anything anyway, and she had a policy about not asking too many questions with fellow agents. Sex? Yeah, sure. Almost dying? On a regular basis. But getting close to someone you might have to off to get out of a place alive was always a bad idea, and Corvus was already too close for comfort in that department. She rolled her shoulders, and she groaned at the popping sound that accompanied pain from the night before.
Jack kept his eyes on Max’s face after that, and tried to pretend he wasn't embarrassed again. "No," he said, with a small smile "I'm sorry, I just got distracted for a second there." His smile was vaguely fond, rueful about some inner thought. "You can't pretend you're not...distracting." He should have been more careful, he knew. He really ought to leave, remove himself from the situation rather than sit there next to the woman he absolutely could not have, half-nude and drinking. It was a little like torture, really, the bittersweet kind. "You know full well I wouldn't be against you climbing on me," he said, well aware that might be crossing a line, naming that fact rather than leaving it as an 'I know that you know' backdrop to the conversation. "Punching, though, I might pass on."
"I think tearing each other's clothes off is going a little far," Jack said. "She's nice. And attractive. And she doesn't know anything about me." And that was the extent of it, and the crux of the conflict. Tess was a nice girl. She deserved to end up with an equally nice guy, and Jack's baggage went well beyond the usual bad girlfriend or two. The skeletons in his closet could get someone like her killed, and then some. He took another pull from the cigarette, tapping the ashes into his palm this time, and watched Max roll the kinks out of her body, leaning back against the couch.
"Corvus, I'm going to break you of that if it's the last thing I do," she said of his very very obvious attempts at pretending not to be embarrassed. She intentionally pushed her hair back over her shoulders, and she gave him a challenging look, one that dared him to have the balls not to look away. "A woman likes being distracting, and she liked it more and more the older she gets," she informed him without any shame. She wasn't in her twenties anymore, and she had to work hard at keeping gravity at bay. No point in denying it. "That was always the problem. You expected me to climb on you." So she was teasing, so she was all pent up adrenaline with no outlet, so this was probably dangerous territory, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She was always careless after a brush with death.
"Ringing endorsement," she said of his description of Tess, because that sounded about as thrilling as church on Sunday. "Where's the 'I want to tear her clothes off' part of that description, because she sounds like she could be a blood relative, Corvus." He was way too calm, especially after the night before, and it made her want to shake him. "So what did you do last night that brought out all this zen?" She should introduce him to Silver. They'd love each other.
Jack knew any explanation of why he was trying to avoid staring, avoid objectifying her, was just going to make her laugh and try again to make him look, so he kept his reasons to himself. "That's fair," he said. He knew too well that even if Max hadn't been head over heels for Thomas when they were in Seattle, he wasn't exactly her type. Sexual aggression had always been much too charged with negative memories for him to make the first move, too afraid of the off chance he might make overtures where they weren't wanted. It had kept him from having any chance of something with her then, and he didn’t expect that to change, even if he had finally started making steps toward being less cautious.
"I didn't realize you wanted to hear that part," he said, with the same small smile. "I don't know what else to tell you. I like her. She's beautiful. But like I said, I barely know her." Did he want to tear anyone's clothes off, really? "The last time I wanted to tear anyone's clothes off I was so drunk that it was sheer luck I even managed to make it that far," he said. That wasn't romantic. It wasn't particularly poetic, either, but it had been a very long night, and he was in the mood to be truthful.
He rested his head against the back of the couch. "I killed quite a few people," he said, and took a long drag from his cigarette. He paused a moment, then spread his free hand, and shrugged. There it was. "I was kind of trying to forget about it."
"You're shit for a woman's self-esteem," Max said, but there was a smile in the words. She'd gotten over basing her self-worth on the opinion of a person with a dick five years ago, and she wasn't about to look back now. And it wasn't like she didn't know Corvus' hang ups, even if she was a little disappointed he wasn't going to help with her adrenaline problem. No matter. She knew an agent or two, and she slid off the arm of the couch and slid the beer and cigarettes further into the center of the coffee table as her feet touched the floor.
"So get to know her, and see if you want to tear her clothes off while she's sober too," she suggested, and said something about how well she knew the man in front of her that she didn't flinch at the idea of him killing a bunch of people. "You're allowed to forget, Corvus. We're old enough that we already know all the things that are wrong with us. The kid needs the blinking neon arrow, but we don't."
"Now, I'm going to get dressed and sweat this off. You alright? Not feeling weird or insane or anything that the kid is going to get on my case about not asking after?"
Jack watched Max slide off the edge of the couch, thought about saying something more, and then didn't. It wouldn't matter. It wasn't as if anything he did was going to change that way she felt about him - he'd learned that a long time ago. "No, I guess we don't."
There wasn't much left to the cigarette, so he took a last pull from it and shook his head. "Fine," he said. "For now, anyway." His exciting plans had to do almost exclusively with trying to sleep, maybe, finally, though that hadn’t come so easily lately. Max would do whatever she needed to in order to feel better, he couldn’t fault her on that. "You're covered."
She gave him a lingering look, one that said hey, I tried, and she left the living room behind. Her feet on the stairs were silent as she disappeared up the incline, a hint at her level of training, and she didn't look back once. She'd begged for Brandon once, and those days were long over. Other fish in the sea, and she had Amanda's upcoming visit to worry about, and whether or not she was going to have her daughter stay with Luke or not. Not to mention all this insanity. And it wasn't precisely an epiphany; more like a yeah, I've made it, moment. Gone was the insecure woman of her youth, and she liked that.
She didn't notice when things shifted around in her mind, because it was subtle, like something quiet clicking and moving around. And it wasn't like she paid attention to the fairy tale princess in her head anyway, not in the slightest, so the sudden absence of her went without notice.
She was out the fire escape and at her truck within minutes. Time to burn off some adrenaline.