Fic: Care to Stay (Eleventh Hour)
Pairing: Jacob/Rachel
Rating: light NC-17
Spoilers: through "Containment"
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine.
Notes: Much thanks to unbreakabledawn for mild science consultation.
Summary: “You have your panic button?” asks Rachel, before the sound of breaking glass has entirely faded from the cold metal hallway.
- - -
“You have your panic button?” asks Rachel, before the sound of breaking glass has entirely faded from the cold metal hallway.
It’s not something Rachel has asked, recently. The words feel strange.
“Of course,” Jacob says, automatically, then wonders if he’s telling the truth. He can’t remember if he took it with him, this morning. If he has it at all.
“Good,” and Rachel draws her gun. “Stay here.” Doesn’t quite make eye contact with him as she brushes past, towards the heavy metal doors shielding the makeshift morgue.
“Be careful.” But Jacob is pretty sure his words are lost in the swish; the doors crash closed, Rachel gone inside.
His hand drifts to his pocket, to the reassuring shape of the panic button.
Panic button. It’s a dumb name. Jacob has only ever panicked once, in his entire life.
Jacob glances to the window - streets are empty. Two in the morning, but cops are on duty all the time, aren’t they? How long before she gets some armed backup?
The smash of breaking glass echoes again - then two gunshots, sharp and way, way too loud.
“Rachel!” yells Jacob.
His mind races. The building, the warehouse, is laid out in a rectangle - they’d entered through the front, and Rachel went to the morgue, to the right, but the loading docks are in the back, there’s no way out through the morgue.
Which means -
The wail of a child cuts through his thoughts.
The baby. Oh god, the baby, the Goldberg child, she’s still alive.
Jacob doesn’t think, doesn’t hesitate. He’s never been a real hero, he’s always left that job to whoever’s watching over him this week, this month, but in times like this he has a disturbing tendency to forget concerns over his own safety.
He bursts through the back door of the warehouse.
Doctor Frayn is there - his arms clutched, protectively, around the infant. At Jacob’s entrance, he looks up, face clenched in dread.
“Easy,” says Jacob, his hand outstretched.
“I did the right thing,” says Frayn, frantic.
“You really believe that?” asks Jacob. His heart is still pounding, but it’s steadied, somewhat - Frayn’s the only one out here, he isn’t carrying a gun, and even if he were, the baby would impede any action he could take.
And he’s treating her like she’s made out of glass.
“Yes.” Frayn clutches the girl closer, and she wails again. Pain, of someone too young to have words.
Tay-Sachs must be hard to cope with. Even for an infant with no cognitive context for what she’s experiencing.
“They’re going to die eventually,” pleads Frayn. “All of them. Sooner or later. Would you rather it drag on? Would you rather it consume years of the parent’s life, thousands of dollars -”
Would Jacob rather it drag on? - of course not. He still remembers the way his wife’s voice broke, the closer she was to death. Months, it was. And he greeted her with a smile, every day.
He doesn’t smile much, now.
Frayn’s voice shifts in tone. Subtly.
“Those children died because it was for the best,” he says. He shifts his grip on the baby, and his eyes glance, for just a second, over Jacob’s shoulder.
Shit.
He doesn’t even have a chance to go for his panic button.
~*~
Jacob’s mouth is dry when he awakens. Tongue feels too large for his mouth and he has trouble summoning the strength to open his eyes.
The light stabs through his retinas, slicing through nerves alight with pain, blood vessels throbbing and irritated. He hisses, turning away from fluorescent glow.
“He’s awake.” Voice is cool and smooth, but Jacob’s head hurts all the same.
“Are you serious -”
Frayn, that one has to be Frayn.
“Calm down.”
“We need more of the sedative.”
“You’re a doctor,” says the first voice. “And even I know more would be dangerous in his condition.”
“Who cares about dangerous! He’s already seen enough as it is!”
Jacob flinches away from Frayn’s raised voice. He lifts his head - neck is sore, he must have been unconscious for hours.
A callused hand cups Jacob’s chin.
He’s getting adjusted to the light, now. Blinks away involuntary tears, and tries to focus on the figure in front of him.
“Doctor Hood isn’t going to give us any trouble,” says the man. “He doesn’t even know what it is we’re doing. It was your own damn idiocy that let him follow you back to the warehouse and catch you with the kid.”
Consciousness slips - Jacob clings to the waking world with a tenacity that surprises him.
“We should kill him.” Frayn, again.
“No,” Jacob tries to say, but the word doesn’t seem to catch his vocal chords. It’s more of a whisper, a rasp.
He tries to reach for the pocket of his jacket, the panic button, but his wrists stop short. Handcuffed, to a chair.
“Sure,” says the man. “If you want to head straight for the death penalty.”
“What are you going to do, then?”
“Since when do I consult with you on my course of action?” Clipped, irritated. “You were supposed to get us the kids, no questions asked. You overstepped your authority, and now you’re paying for it.”
Rachel, thinks Jacob. Rachel.
~*~
He dreams, this time. Or maybe he just forgot what he dreamed the first time. The specter of his dead wife followed him, everywhere, but she claimed (in her voice, the tinny, choked voice of her last month) that it was Tay-Sachs, adult onset.
“You can’t leave me,” she says, with Frayn’s voice. “You can’t.”
Later, she shoots Jacob in the chest, but he doesn’t remember that.
~*~
Jacob wakes up gasping, twisting, unconsciously, away from the memories barely dimmed with two years time.
The room is dim, this time. A machine beeps, softly, and he’s reclined back, on a bed.
A silhouette turns towards him, against the horizontal lines from half-closed shades.
“Welcome back.”
Rachel. Jacob’s breath goes unsteady; the machine beeps a warning.
“Hey, calm down,” says Rachel, stepping closer. Her arm is in a sling. “You’re safe.”
“What happened?” he asks. Roughly.
“You tell me,” returns Rachel. He can’t see her expression, but he thinks he knows how it would go - mouth pressed into a line, worried and angry and tense. He can see it better if he closes his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says, soft. “Your arm?”
“Sprained.”
He nods.
“Next time you stay where I say,” she tells him, but there’s something in her voice that indicates she doesn’t believe what she says now will make any difference. “Good thing the panic button has a GPS, and Frayn was too much of an idiot to throw it out.”
“Frayn,” manages Jacob.
“Dead,” says Rachel. “The baby girl, too.”
“And the other man?”
“You should get back to sleep.”
“What about the other man?”
Rachel shakes her head. “There was no one else.”
“There was,” insists Jacob.
“I’m getting a nurse,” says Rachel, and that’s that.
~*~
He tries to pull out the IV, next time he wakes up. Rachel stops him. Smacks his hand away, actually.
“The case isn’t over.” He levels his gaze on her. “There was another man there, and I’m convinced that Frayn wasn’t just kidnapping the children for mercy killings.”
“The case is over,” says Rachel, “and even if it wasn’t, it’s not your problem anymore.”
Something about the way she says that -
Jacob presses on. “If he was just putting them out of their misery, he could have done it at their respective hospitals. It doesn’t make sense. And we need to find out who the other man was.”
“I don’t care, Hood.”
“Rachel, they talked in front of me. In front of me.”
She rounds on him. “What makes you think that they would say anything important in front of you? You were drugged half out of your mind, how can I trust your memories?”
How can I trust you, Jacob hears.
“I don’t care,” she repeats.
Jacob sits back. He knows she’s lying.
~*~
She’s always there. Never leaves the room, never opens the blinds, just paces back and forth.
“You can go get some rest,” says Jacob.
Rachel shoots him a look.
“It wasn’t your fault,” says Jacob, “it was mine.”
She checks her watch. “In a few days, the FBI’ll send someone else,” she tells him.
Jacob sits up. “I don’t want someone else.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she says. “I didn’t do my job.”
“I screwed up, Rachel,” he insists. “They caught me by surprise.”
“They shouldn’t have caught me by surprise,” she says. With surprising bitterness.
“I don’t want someone else.”
The vulnerability in his voice is insane - there’s nothing special about Rachel. She’s another FBI agent, another bodyguard, just like the six or seven before her. A career woman, one who didn’t show any particular regard towards him.
Nothing, nothing except the way she looked at him when she thought she was infected, though a layer of plastic. The last time she told him he had to find someone else.
“I asked for a transfer,” says Rachel, and she turns away.
~*~
“Get me out of here,” he says, on the third day, after Rachel’s sling is removed.
Rachel rolls her eyes.
“It was a concussion,” says Jacob, “I’m fine.”
“It was also a near-overdose on animal tranquilizer,” Rachel points out.
“I’m fine. If I had an income under a hundred thousand, this bed would already be someone else’s.” He catches her arm. “Please, Rachel.”
“I have to protect you.”
“You can protect me in a hotel.”
She lets out a sigh, and tugs free of his arm.
~*~
Rachel rents them a suite, a block away from the hospital. And Jacob tries to ignore how dizzy he actually is when he stands - he’s fine, really, he’s fine.
“So,” he says, as she shuts the door behind them. “Where are you staying?”
“Here,” she says.
“I know. But what room?”
“This room,” she tells him, finishing her sweep of the suite. “If you think I’m letting you out of my sight now, you have another think coming. We’re clear,” referring to the room. “Get in bed or get on the couch.”
Jacob lets a smile flit across his face -
“Before you keel over,” Rachel snaps. “Now.”
“Are you a doctor now?” but he settles down on the couch. “When are we going to solve the case?”
“The case is done,” says Rachel.
“No, it’s not.”
“I shot the kidnapper twice - once in the stomach, once in the head - as he was trying to inject you with a lethal dose of tranquilizer,” says Rachel. “We know who did it, Hood. Let it go.”
Jacob is silent, for a moment.
Rachel sighs. “What?”
“You didn’t say that there is no ‘we’,” says Jacob.
“Were you expecting me to?”
“Yes,” he admits.
“There is no ‘we’,” she tells him.
Jacob tilts his head. “Thank you for saving my life.”
It derails Rachel; she can’t find a response. “You’re welcome,” is what she settles on. She leaves him alone.
~*~
He wakes up on the couch, a couple hours later, his head pounding. Truly frightened. Bone-deep frightened, like he was every time there was a chance his wife could be cured.
“Rachel,” he blurts, before he has any idea what he’s saying.
She’s there immediately - one hand touching his forehead, checking for fever. “What is it?” she asks, meeting his eyes.
He catches her hand. “Nightmare,” he says.
Rachel’s mouth twists. “Anything happen I should know about?”
“They didn’t hurt me,” says Jacob. “Besides the obvious,” indicating the blow on the back of his head. “I don’t remember much.” - Like he doesn’t remember her killing Frayn. Or how he got to the hospital bed.
“Is that good or bad?” asks Rachel.
“Both,” says Jacob.
Rachel turns away, sitting down so she rests back against the couch. “Normal people lie a lot,” she says. “Every few minutes, on average. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you lie.”
“I don’t usually see a reason to,” says Jacob.
“It’s a social construct. Lying makes life easier.”
“Sometimes it just makes it harder.” He shifts onto his side. “Do you still plan to transfer?”
“Have any reason I shouldn’t?”
Yes, thinks Jacob.
“You’ve been through a half-dozen bodyguards,” Rachel continues. “What makes me different?”
“Nothing,” says Jacob.
“Liar,” says Rachel. She cranes her neck up, to look at him. “I can read you like a book, Hood.”
“Can you?” asks Jacob, a little more breathlessly than he’d anticipated.
Rachel pauses - and they’re so close, so close -
She stands. “I’m going to get something for dinner. You’ll stay here, right?”
“Yes,” says Jacob.
“I mean it,” she says. “I - listen, I mean it, okay?”
He nods. “I know. I’ll be here.”
~*~
“They said that a replacement will be assigned within the next two weeks,” says Rachel, over takeout Chinese.
“So you have two weeks to take it back.”
“So this will be over soon,” concludes Rachel. “Lo mein?”
~*~
The water rushes in a thousand needle-pricks; Jacob remembers, as he does every week, how much he hates hotel showerheads.
~*~
“Do you think the child’s death was your fault?” asks Rachel. “The Goldberg girl.”
“Of course it was,” says Jacob, reflexively.
“Then how can you say that your kidnapping wasn’t mine?”
Jacob has no coherent rejoinder to that. He adjusts the sash of the hotel bathrobe. “I,” he begins -
“You feel it’s necessary to take responsibility yourself,” she says. “Because you nursed your wife as she died, because you’re the person in charge, blah, blah, blah.”
Jacob is affronted. He imagines he probably looks pretty affronted.
“Don’t give me that,” says Rachel. “You’re probably only so attracted to me because I’m not afraid of you.”
“I’m,” and Jacob pauses. “I’m attracted to you?”
“Yes,” says Rachel. “Do you trust me?”
“Of course,” he says.
“Then come on.” She gives him a little shove, towards the bed.
Jacob hesitates. “Rachel.”
“Shut up, Hood.”
~*~
Rachel threads the handcuffs through the bars of the headboard. Nods for Jacob to lie down.
“You have the keys for these, right?” he asks, a tad nervously.
“Do as I say,” Rachel tells him.
He eases underneath her; she seals one cuff, then the other. Tight, but not too tight. Places the key carefully on the table next to the bed - far enough out of reach.
Jacob tightens his jaw - there’s a rush, an immediate rush, arousal like he’s never felt before. He can barely breathe.
Rachel straddles him, a little awkwardly. Unused to the position, and she moves like she hasn’t had sex in a while. That’s okay, though, neither has Jacob.
She kisses him - not teasing, like Jacob half-expects, but deep, and ever-so-thorough. Like there’s nothing dividing her attention, nothing she’d rather be doing. Complete focus.
“I didn’t know you were so kinky,” he manages to say, when she moves to his jaw, his neck.
Her hand slips up through the gap in his robe, closing over his erection. “I could say the same about you,” she murmurs, against his skin.
Jacob barely stifles the hiss; he’s sure, though, that she feels the way he jerks, at the touch. He feels raw, ripped open, and he’s not sure how she knew how to take him apart, without even asking.
“Sssh.” She never stops touching. Comfort and sensuality all in one, and while it lacks the lazy familiarity of Jacob’s marriage, there’s something exposed and natural about it, all the same.
Jacob’s breathing catches, badly, and his fist clenches - he can’t, he can’t do this.
“Calm down,” says Rachel. “It’s just me.”
But her words don’t make a difference -
She kisses him, long, until he can think again, until he remembers he gave up his ability to fight her, realizes that she needs a situation where she’s in control, where she knows he’s safe.
Jacob shudders, the fear twisting its way out of him, wringing him dry. She sits back, trailing fingertips down his chest. “Tell me you’re okay,” she says.
“I’m fine,” and he shifts, restlessly. “Rachel,” with a desire he can’t fully express. He’s lost words, since his wife’s death. Lost the ability to communicate, sometimes.
“Yeah,” she says, “yeah, I know.”
~*~
The bed is empty, when he wakes up. Rachel’s voice is audible, from the other room -
“We have reason to believe that the case might not end with Dr. Frayn. It may have been a way to acquire subjects for some kind of experimental treatment.” A pause. “I’m confident I can carry out my duty,” she says. “I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.” Then, “we’ve reached an understanding.”
Jacob closes his eyes, and smiles.
Rating: light NC-17
Spoilers: through "Containment"
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine.
Notes: Much thanks to unbreakabledawn for mild science consultation.
Summary: “You have your panic button?” asks Rachel, before the sound of breaking glass has entirely faded from the cold metal hallway.
- - -
“You have your panic button?” asks Rachel, before the sound of breaking glass has entirely faded from the cold metal hallway.
It’s not something Rachel has asked, recently. The words feel strange.
“Of course,” Jacob says, automatically, then wonders if he’s telling the truth. He can’t remember if he took it with him, this morning. If he has it at all.
“Good,” and Rachel draws her gun. “Stay here.” Doesn’t quite make eye contact with him as she brushes past, towards the heavy metal doors shielding the makeshift morgue.
“Be careful.” But Jacob is pretty sure his words are lost in the swish; the doors crash closed, Rachel gone inside.
His hand drifts to his pocket, to the reassuring shape of the panic button.
Panic button. It’s a dumb name. Jacob has only ever panicked once, in his entire life.
Jacob glances to the window - streets are empty. Two in the morning, but cops are on duty all the time, aren’t they? How long before she gets some armed backup?
The smash of breaking glass echoes again - then two gunshots, sharp and way, way too loud.
“Rachel!” yells Jacob.
His mind races. The building, the warehouse, is laid out in a rectangle - they’d entered through the front, and Rachel went to the morgue, to the right, but the loading docks are in the back, there’s no way out through the morgue.
Which means -
The wail of a child cuts through his thoughts.
The baby. Oh god, the baby, the Goldberg child, she’s still alive.
Jacob doesn’t think, doesn’t hesitate. He’s never been a real hero, he’s always left that job to whoever’s watching over him this week, this month, but in times like this he has a disturbing tendency to forget concerns over his own safety.
He bursts through the back door of the warehouse.
Doctor Frayn is there - his arms clutched, protectively, around the infant. At Jacob’s entrance, he looks up, face clenched in dread.
“Easy,” says Jacob, his hand outstretched.
“I did the right thing,” says Frayn, frantic.
“You really believe that?” asks Jacob. His heart is still pounding, but it’s steadied, somewhat - Frayn’s the only one out here, he isn’t carrying a gun, and even if he were, the baby would impede any action he could take.
And he’s treating her like she’s made out of glass.
“Yes.” Frayn clutches the girl closer, and she wails again. Pain, of someone too young to have words.
Tay-Sachs must be hard to cope with. Even for an infant with no cognitive context for what she’s experiencing.
“They’re going to die eventually,” pleads Frayn. “All of them. Sooner or later. Would you rather it drag on? Would you rather it consume years of the parent’s life, thousands of dollars -”
Would Jacob rather it drag on? - of course not. He still remembers the way his wife’s voice broke, the closer she was to death. Months, it was. And he greeted her with a smile, every day.
He doesn’t smile much, now.
Frayn’s voice shifts in tone. Subtly.
“Those children died because it was for the best,” he says. He shifts his grip on the baby, and his eyes glance, for just a second, over Jacob’s shoulder.
Shit.
He doesn’t even have a chance to go for his panic button.
~*~
Jacob’s mouth is dry when he awakens. Tongue feels too large for his mouth and he has trouble summoning the strength to open his eyes.
The light stabs through his retinas, slicing through nerves alight with pain, blood vessels throbbing and irritated. He hisses, turning away from fluorescent glow.
“He’s awake.” Voice is cool and smooth, but Jacob’s head hurts all the same.
“Are you serious -”
Frayn, that one has to be Frayn.
“Calm down.”
“We need more of the sedative.”
“You’re a doctor,” says the first voice. “And even I know more would be dangerous in his condition.”
“Who cares about dangerous! He’s already seen enough as it is!”
Jacob flinches away from Frayn’s raised voice. He lifts his head - neck is sore, he must have been unconscious for hours.
A callused hand cups Jacob’s chin.
He’s getting adjusted to the light, now. Blinks away involuntary tears, and tries to focus on the figure in front of him.
“Doctor Hood isn’t going to give us any trouble,” says the man. “He doesn’t even know what it is we’re doing. It was your own damn idiocy that let him follow you back to the warehouse and catch you with the kid.”
Consciousness slips - Jacob clings to the waking world with a tenacity that surprises him.
“We should kill him.” Frayn, again.
“No,” Jacob tries to say, but the word doesn’t seem to catch his vocal chords. It’s more of a whisper, a rasp.
He tries to reach for the pocket of his jacket, the panic button, but his wrists stop short. Handcuffed, to a chair.
“Sure,” says the man. “If you want to head straight for the death penalty.”
“What are you going to do, then?”
“Since when do I consult with you on my course of action?” Clipped, irritated. “You were supposed to get us the kids, no questions asked. You overstepped your authority, and now you’re paying for it.”
Rachel, thinks Jacob. Rachel.
~*~
He dreams, this time. Or maybe he just forgot what he dreamed the first time. The specter of his dead wife followed him, everywhere, but she claimed (in her voice, the tinny, choked voice of her last month) that it was Tay-Sachs, adult onset.
“You can’t leave me,” she says, with Frayn’s voice. “You can’t.”
Later, she shoots Jacob in the chest, but he doesn’t remember that.
~*~
Jacob wakes up gasping, twisting, unconsciously, away from the memories barely dimmed with two years time.
The room is dim, this time. A machine beeps, softly, and he’s reclined back, on a bed.
A silhouette turns towards him, against the horizontal lines from half-closed shades.
“Welcome back.”
Rachel. Jacob’s breath goes unsteady; the machine beeps a warning.
“Hey, calm down,” says Rachel, stepping closer. Her arm is in a sling. “You’re safe.”
“What happened?” he asks. Roughly.
“You tell me,” returns Rachel. He can’t see her expression, but he thinks he knows how it would go - mouth pressed into a line, worried and angry and tense. He can see it better if he closes his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says, soft. “Your arm?”
“Sprained.”
He nods.
“Next time you stay where I say,” she tells him, but there’s something in her voice that indicates she doesn’t believe what she says now will make any difference. “Good thing the panic button has a GPS, and Frayn was too much of an idiot to throw it out.”
“Frayn,” manages Jacob.
“Dead,” says Rachel. “The baby girl, too.”
“And the other man?”
“You should get back to sleep.”
“What about the other man?”
Rachel shakes her head. “There was no one else.”
“There was,” insists Jacob.
“I’m getting a nurse,” says Rachel, and that’s that.
~*~
He tries to pull out the IV, next time he wakes up. Rachel stops him. Smacks his hand away, actually.
“The case isn’t over.” He levels his gaze on her. “There was another man there, and I’m convinced that Frayn wasn’t just kidnapping the children for mercy killings.”
“The case is over,” says Rachel, “and even if it wasn’t, it’s not your problem anymore.”
Something about the way she says that -
Jacob presses on. “If he was just putting them out of their misery, he could have done it at their respective hospitals. It doesn’t make sense. And we need to find out who the other man was.”
“I don’t care, Hood.”
“Rachel, they talked in front of me. In front of me.”
She rounds on him. “What makes you think that they would say anything important in front of you? You were drugged half out of your mind, how can I trust your memories?”
How can I trust you, Jacob hears.
“I don’t care,” she repeats.
Jacob sits back. He knows she’s lying.
~*~
She’s always there. Never leaves the room, never opens the blinds, just paces back and forth.
“You can go get some rest,” says Jacob.
Rachel shoots him a look.
“It wasn’t your fault,” says Jacob, “it was mine.”
She checks her watch. “In a few days, the FBI’ll send someone else,” she tells him.
Jacob sits up. “I don’t want someone else.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she says. “I didn’t do my job.”
“I screwed up, Rachel,” he insists. “They caught me by surprise.”
“They shouldn’t have caught me by surprise,” she says. With surprising bitterness.
“I don’t want someone else.”
The vulnerability in his voice is insane - there’s nothing special about Rachel. She’s another FBI agent, another bodyguard, just like the six or seven before her. A career woman, one who didn’t show any particular regard towards him.
Nothing, nothing except the way she looked at him when she thought she was infected, though a layer of plastic. The last time she told him he had to find someone else.
“I asked for a transfer,” says Rachel, and she turns away.
~*~
“Get me out of here,” he says, on the third day, after Rachel’s sling is removed.
Rachel rolls her eyes.
“It was a concussion,” says Jacob, “I’m fine.”
“It was also a near-overdose on animal tranquilizer,” Rachel points out.
“I’m fine. If I had an income under a hundred thousand, this bed would already be someone else’s.” He catches her arm. “Please, Rachel.”
“I have to protect you.”
“You can protect me in a hotel.”
She lets out a sigh, and tugs free of his arm.
~*~
Rachel rents them a suite, a block away from the hospital. And Jacob tries to ignore how dizzy he actually is when he stands - he’s fine, really, he’s fine.
“So,” he says, as she shuts the door behind them. “Where are you staying?”
“Here,” she says.
“I know. But what room?”
“This room,” she tells him, finishing her sweep of the suite. “If you think I’m letting you out of my sight now, you have another think coming. We’re clear,” referring to the room. “Get in bed or get on the couch.”
Jacob lets a smile flit across his face -
“Before you keel over,” Rachel snaps. “Now.”
“Are you a doctor now?” but he settles down on the couch. “When are we going to solve the case?”
“The case is done,” says Rachel.
“No, it’s not.”
“I shot the kidnapper twice - once in the stomach, once in the head - as he was trying to inject you with a lethal dose of tranquilizer,” says Rachel. “We know who did it, Hood. Let it go.”
Jacob is silent, for a moment.
Rachel sighs. “What?”
“You didn’t say that there is no ‘we’,” says Jacob.
“Were you expecting me to?”
“Yes,” he admits.
“There is no ‘we’,” she tells him.
Jacob tilts his head. “Thank you for saving my life.”
It derails Rachel; she can’t find a response. “You’re welcome,” is what she settles on. She leaves him alone.
~*~
He wakes up on the couch, a couple hours later, his head pounding. Truly frightened. Bone-deep frightened, like he was every time there was a chance his wife could be cured.
“Rachel,” he blurts, before he has any idea what he’s saying.
She’s there immediately - one hand touching his forehead, checking for fever. “What is it?” she asks, meeting his eyes.
He catches her hand. “Nightmare,” he says.
Rachel’s mouth twists. “Anything happen I should know about?”
“They didn’t hurt me,” says Jacob. “Besides the obvious,” indicating the blow on the back of his head. “I don’t remember much.” - Like he doesn’t remember her killing Frayn. Or how he got to the hospital bed.
“Is that good or bad?” asks Rachel.
“Both,” says Jacob.
Rachel turns away, sitting down so she rests back against the couch. “Normal people lie a lot,” she says. “Every few minutes, on average. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you lie.”
“I don’t usually see a reason to,” says Jacob.
“It’s a social construct. Lying makes life easier.”
“Sometimes it just makes it harder.” He shifts onto his side. “Do you still plan to transfer?”
“Have any reason I shouldn’t?”
Yes, thinks Jacob.
“You’ve been through a half-dozen bodyguards,” Rachel continues. “What makes me different?”
“Nothing,” says Jacob.
“Liar,” says Rachel. She cranes her neck up, to look at him. “I can read you like a book, Hood.”
“Can you?” asks Jacob, a little more breathlessly than he’d anticipated.
Rachel pauses - and they’re so close, so close -
She stands. “I’m going to get something for dinner. You’ll stay here, right?”
“Yes,” says Jacob.
“I mean it,” she says. “I - listen, I mean it, okay?”
He nods. “I know. I’ll be here.”
~*~
“They said that a replacement will be assigned within the next two weeks,” says Rachel, over takeout Chinese.
“So you have two weeks to take it back.”
“So this will be over soon,” concludes Rachel. “Lo mein?”
~*~
The water rushes in a thousand needle-pricks; Jacob remembers, as he does every week, how much he hates hotel showerheads.
~*~
“Do you think the child’s death was your fault?” asks Rachel. “The Goldberg girl.”
“Of course it was,” says Jacob, reflexively.
“Then how can you say that your kidnapping wasn’t mine?”
Jacob has no coherent rejoinder to that. He adjusts the sash of the hotel bathrobe. “I,” he begins -
“You feel it’s necessary to take responsibility yourself,” she says. “Because you nursed your wife as she died, because you’re the person in charge, blah, blah, blah.”
Jacob is affronted. He imagines he probably looks pretty affronted.
“Don’t give me that,” says Rachel. “You’re probably only so attracted to me because I’m not afraid of you.”
“I’m,” and Jacob pauses. “I’m attracted to you?”
“Yes,” says Rachel. “Do you trust me?”
“Of course,” he says.
“Then come on.” She gives him a little shove, towards the bed.
Jacob hesitates. “Rachel.”
“Shut up, Hood.”
~*~
Rachel threads the handcuffs through the bars of the headboard. Nods for Jacob to lie down.
“You have the keys for these, right?” he asks, a tad nervously.
“Do as I say,” Rachel tells him.
He eases underneath her; she seals one cuff, then the other. Tight, but not too tight. Places the key carefully on the table next to the bed - far enough out of reach.
Jacob tightens his jaw - there’s a rush, an immediate rush, arousal like he’s never felt before. He can barely breathe.
Rachel straddles him, a little awkwardly. Unused to the position, and she moves like she hasn’t had sex in a while. That’s okay, though, neither has Jacob.
She kisses him - not teasing, like Jacob half-expects, but deep, and ever-so-thorough. Like there’s nothing dividing her attention, nothing she’d rather be doing. Complete focus.
“I didn’t know you were so kinky,” he manages to say, when she moves to his jaw, his neck.
Her hand slips up through the gap in his robe, closing over his erection. “I could say the same about you,” she murmurs, against his skin.
Jacob barely stifles the hiss; he’s sure, though, that she feels the way he jerks, at the touch. He feels raw, ripped open, and he’s not sure how she knew how to take him apart, without even asking.
“Sssh.” She never stops touching. Comfort and sensuality all in one, and while it lacks the lazy familiarity of Jacob’s marriage, there’s something exposed and natural about it, all the same.
Jacob’s breathing catches, badly, and his fist clenches - he can’t, he can’t do this.
“Calm down,” says Rachel. “It’s just me.”
But her words don’t make a difference -
She kisses him, long, until he can think again, until he remembers he gave up his ability to fight her, realizes that she needs a situation where she’s in control, where she knows he’s safe.
Jacob shudders, the fear twisting its way out of him, wringing him dry. She sits back, trailing fingertips down his chest. “Tell me you’re okay,” she says.
“I’m fine,” and he shifts, restlessly. “Rachel,” with a desire he can’t fully express. He’s lost words, since his wife’s death. Lost the ability to communicate, sometimes.
“Yeah,” she says, “yeah, I know.”
~*~
The bed is empty, when he wakes up. Rachel’s voice is audible, from the other room -
“We have reason to believe that the case might not end with Dr. Frayn. It may have been a way to acquire subjects for some kind of experimental treatment.” A pause. “I’m confident I can carry out my duty,” she says. “I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.” Then, “we’ve reached an understanding.”
Jacob closes his eyes, and smiles.