Fic: every tool is a weapon -- if you hold it right (Havoc/Hawkeye, Mustang, ensemble; not worksafe)
every tool is a weapon -- if you hold it right
Riza Hawkeye was not a devious woman.
Fullmetal Alchemist anime-verse. Hawkeye/Havoc, Mustang, ensemble. 3400 words.
NC-17/MA/Not Worksafe for explicit sex. Mild spoilers.
Life had been hard as hell in Ishbal, hard and painful both, Riza reflected as she opened the Walshorn report for the sixteenth time -- but it had been simple. Someone fired on you; you returned fire. A conflict began; you assessed the situation, and retreated, or advanced, or held your ground. Orders came down to take a city block; you lead your troops in, did what you could, dealt with the consequences. She still bore the scars and nightmares, but . . . it had been simple.
This wasn't simple.
"If we know what the hell was going on in Surakau," Havoc said, and sighed, and trailed off, all without dislodging the unlit cigarette dangling from his lower lip.
"Yeah, and if I had a pet pig, I could fly to work," Breda shot back, and snickered. Havoc replied with a look that was exactly half oh-what-a-martyr-I-am and half if-we-weren't-in-the-office-I'd-be-showing-you-the-middle finger-right-now. Hawkeye didn't smile, but she wanted to.
Fury, less comfortable with the fraternal snarking, said, "Don't we have anyone in Surakau?"
"We do," Falman said, and let the silence drag a bit, and then finished, "but reports are sketchy." Office code, for 'we-the-Amestrian-army have men in there, but we-who-support-Mustang can't risk trusting them or drawing their attention.'
"Ah," Fury said.
The problem, Riza thought, not really reading the report but scanning it again for something to do -- the problem wasn't, as many thought, that she was only happy with something to shoot at. (Any day in which she fired only on inanimate objects, she counted as a good day.) Nor was it that she was unsubtle or unintelligent: she had graduated near the top of her class, and marksmanship couldn't take the credit for that. She was no stupid woman. But she wasn't devious. She was straightforward, often uncompromising, frequently blunt. She had no native talent for slyness. Hughes was good at it; the way he masked it all behind an affably harmless face made him all the more skillful, and even more so that the affability was unassailable truth, not facade. Armstrong was surprisingly good at it, too, not least because no one could ever tell when to take him seriously anyway. Mustang was excellent at it.
Speaking of the Colonel . . .
"You know," he said, and then trailed off. They waited, with varying degrees of patience. One of the Colonel's boots was propped on one of his desk's lower drawers, giving them all a view of his knee jogging up and down with nervous energy. One hand clicked a pen: open-shut, open-shut, open-shut. The other rested with his fingertips on his lower lip, not quite sucking on the ignition cloth (which couldn't possibly taste good).
"Yes?" she asked, finally, on behalf of his entire restless staff.
Mustang still didn't say anything for a few more moments. (It wasn't that he was stupid, either, or even careless -- it was that his intelligence, quite unlike hers, was associative, holistic, prone to great leaps and strange connections. It was part of why they worked so well together, that she was rigorously logical and he was intuitive, but it did make for frustrating conversations. Like this one.) Finally, he said, "There's a new restaurant open on Greenaere Street."
Silence. Finally, Fury ventured, "Yes . . . .?"
"It's got a waiting list a month long. You can't get in unless you know someone who knows someone."
Riza stared at him. The connection with the problem in Surakau was obvious, but trivially so: if they knew someone who had a finger on the operation at Surakau, who they could trust, they wouldn't be in this dilemma.
Fortunately, or possibly unfortunately, Havoc could be relied upon to take the bait. "And I'm sure you know someone who knows someone." Riza managed to not quite roll her eyes. She had intimate -- ha -- knowledge that he no longer lacked for female company, and yet he still let Mustang irritate him all the time. It beggared the imagination.
Sure enough, Mustang let a slow smirk spread across his face. The smirk was one of his masterstrokes: it could mean that he did have an invite, probably from an attractive woman, to the most desirable hotspot in town -- or it could mean that he didn't, but didn't intend to say so. She knew him well enough to be able to guess at which of those things the smirk meant fairly well. She knew Havoc well enough to predict the way his eyes rolled heavenward and his breath escaped in a long pained sigh. She nudged him under the table (not quite a kick) with the toe of her boot, a silent suggestion that he knock it off.
To her moderate surprise, Havoc twisted his foot adeptly so that his calf and ankle rubbed against hers. For such limited contact, and through their clothes, it was shockingly affecting; she had to swallow to hide her indrawn breath. She was suddenly very physically aware of him, not three feet away across the meeting-room table, and his slouch couldn't quite hide the breadth of his shoulders . . . damn it. She tried to give him a warning glare, and failed utterly. She did manage, at least, not to grin like an idiot at him.
She had gotten somewhat off the point. Dragging her attention back to the other four men at the table, she said dryly, to Mustang, "If I had an invitation, I wouldn't stay at home."
The Colonel smiled, rapped his knuckles on the table. "I think we're done here," he said. "Think about it overnight. I expect brilliance in the morning."
***
She knew perfectly well that Jean's offer to cook dinner at her place that night -- ostensibly to make it up to her for teasing her at the office -- was self-serving, and she was perfectly okay with that. Just as she was okay when he offered to rub her shoulders, which was a perfect excuse to take her shirt and bra off, although to his credit he did give her a very nice backrub before they got . . . distracted.
"Mmm," she said, tangling her fingers in his shock of unruly hair, "Jean, that's -- " And she failed to finish the thought, because that was his mouth closed around her nipple, his tongue sweeping delicate and yet rough over the tip. He had propped himself over her on one elbow, and his other hand cupped her other breast, which fit perfectly in his broad, warm palm, so that his callused fingertips could stroke the sensitive sides . . . . Jean loved breasts with a dreamy intensity that was the butt of many jokes in the office, but at moments like this it seemed like the best kind of mutual advantage.
Jean finally dragged his mouth away from her nipple, cupped her breasts together and nuzzled her cleavage, which tickled and made her laugh, and which also made her squirm impatiently against him. "Hey," she said, tugging gently on his hair, "hey, up here, handsome." That earned her a brilliant smile for the few seconds it took him to lean up, his bare chest warm and furry against her wet nipples, to kiss her. His mouth was as warm against hers as it had been against her breast, and she purred into the kiss, the warmth of affection melting the edges of frustration a little. But only a little. She spread her knees and rocked her hips up in what had to be unmistakeable invitation, and he groaned against her mouth. He broke the kiss to pant against her shoulder, rubbing his erection on her hip.
"Like this?" he asked, breathless, peppering her shoulder with kisses.
"Sounds good to me," she said, raking one hand through his hair, the other sliding down to rest encouragingingly on the small of his back. She was swimmingly wet, so much so that her labia felt swollen, frictionless. "I want it hard, and this is as good a position for that as any." He moaned again at that, as she knew he would, and she smiled against his cheek.
Despite his obvious urgency -- both of their obvious urgency -- he took the time to slide his hand down over her belly to between her legs, and she heard his breath catch in his throat when his fingertips slid into her. The tip of his finger circled her clit (he had the familiar trigger callus, almost but not quite rough, almost but not quite enough) and she cried out, arched, felt his erection pulsing against her thigh, exactly what she wanted just now. He hissed in response and reached for the condoms in the bedside table in such haste that it took him two tries to get the drawer open. "Enough teasing," she said, and wrapped her hand around his cock.
"Yes," he agreed, and she tilted her hips and drew up her knees, her calves brushing his hips and thighs as he positioned himself over her and slid in. Riza arched her back at the stretch as her body opened up to the head, the easier long slide of the shaft as he sank all the way deep. She flexed her legs, curling her toes, and then bent her knees so that she could brace her feet flat to the bed. She rolled her hips to match his rhythm, hungry for pleasure to distract her from the day's frustrations, hungry for the hard steady pulse of sex, in its way as simple as her life wasn't. Hungry for Jean, who braced himself over her on his forearms, watching her, himself, like, her not stupid, but wonderfully simple. Easy to please. Eager to please her. Beautiful, as his muscles flexed with his quickening pace inside her, as hard and deep as she could want.
"Touch yourself?" he breathed, plaintive and unsteady, in her ear. "I can't -- " And she knew immediately what he meant, that he had to brace himself on his forearms to thrust as hard as they both wanted, so his hands weren't free. She nodded, and the sob that came out of her mouth surprised her as she reached down -- her clit swollen and obvious beneath her fingertips, and she brushed lower, where his cock slid into her, gathering moisture on her fingertips and smoothing it up . . . . She whimpered, gritted her teeth, the sudden counterpoint of the very different pleasures (flashpoint-bright when she stroked her clit, deep hot pressure where he pushed into her) brought her to the edge almost immediately. She bit her lip, released it in a gasp, said, "Oh god oh god Jean."
He sounded desperate as he said, "Yes, Riza, come, please," and she did, her knees drawing up tighter as the muscles in her legs contracted, her body holding itself hard and still for an endless moment before the ripples of her orgasm sent her jerking and shuddering beneath and around him. She keened, heard herself as if distantly -- she couldn't have kept quiet if she'd tried, and she didn't try -- and raked her nails down his back without intending to. He stuttered on a groan, still thrusting deep, still hard and quick and good, and said, "God, Riza, you're so -- " and then choked off.
It was okay. She knew what he meant.
He didn't let go right away, and when her mind settled enough that she could look up into his face, she saw the tension that meant he was still holding back. Ahh. Another thing to appreciate about Jean: he really liked that, once she'd had one orgasm, she could often have several more with relative ease. (She suspected it wasn't so much that she was unusual as that most of the women he had known were less sure of what they wanted, or less willing to ask for it directly.) Well, if he wanted to wait for her, she certainly had no complaints . . . . She stretched, feeling less desperate, more langorous, her body soaked and sated with orgasm; stretched and canted her hips and tightened slowly around him as he withdrew, eliciting a grunt of pleasure and a kiss dropped on her mouth. There. She found the right angle, exactly right to rub the head of his cock over the spot with each hard stroke, caught her breath and said, "Oh, yes . . . ."
"That's good?" Jean asked, ever attentive. She liked that, too. "Like that?"
She smiled up at him, feeling sultry in a way that she never did except with him, except in bed, stripped of restraint but not of dignity. (That was what she appreciated most about Jean, if she was being honest: the way he made her feel as though letting go of reserve did not mean letting go of honor or self. He never asked her to be other than what she was.) "Just like that," she said. "Oh, Jean, that's good."
"Yes," he said, against her shoulder, "yes, yes," and she could feel him faltering, so she took pity and pressed her feet flat to the bed again to rub hard against him in counterpoint to his thrusts, and the second orgasm rolled over her -- not fast, like the first, one, but slow, starting with stuttering pulses in her cunt and radiating outward, her thighs warm and shaking, her belly rippling, her limbs tensing and then relaxing like water, until her whole body was limp and shaking and completely useless with pleasure.
She wasn't going to manage another orgasm, which was just fine: so as Jean moaned her name and finally, finally, began to let go, she had the luxury of just lying back and watching him. He was braced over her, so close he could lean in and kiss her, so close she could see the way his pupils had expanded, just a rim of brilliant blue around black. He was exquisitely muscled -- in excellent shape, despite his three-pack-a-day habit -- and she enjoyed that, enjoyed watching the flex of the muscles in his thighs as he thrust hard and hungry into her, the way the muscles rippled in his flat stomach, his chest, his biceps. And his face was flushed, his lips parted, focused in a way that she rarely saw him, but flushed, too, and beautiful for it. She watched the sweat form on his brow and the angles of his cheekbones, and leaned up not to kiss him but to bite at the line of his jaw and make him moan, wonderfully. There: finally, the way his eyes closed and then opened again with impending orgasm, the look on his face, both intent and vulnerable, and he drew a ragged breath and said, "Ah, ah, yes, yes," and then stilled and shuddered and came.
She lay tangled with him for a few long minutes, feeling very satisfied -- not just physically, but with her mind cleared as few things besides good sex could clear it -- before, reluctantly, she let go to allow him to roll free and get rid of the condom. She rolled over, languidly, to prop her chin on her folded arms, basking in the warm, limp feeling that came from relieved frustration and exertion. After a moment Jean stretched out against her, one arm warm and heavy across the small of her back, his shoulder overlapping hers. She smiled, turned her head to kiss him. No need for words for a little while. They rested in companionable silence.
One of the other nice things about Jean was that he didn't object to her talking shop in bed -- and he was one of only maybe six people in the world to whom she could talk shop, period. Which was good, because she did a lot of her best thinking when she was relaxed and her body was well-worked. After a little while, she said, "We need someone on the inside at Surakau," she said.
"Tricky," Jean replied, his voice low and rumbling, himself well-sated. His hand settled on her back, his thumb rubbing up and down her spine as though counting her vertebrae. "We could get a trustworthy mole from Hughes, but putting him in position is no small thing, and it'd still be months before he was in deep enough to give any useful information."
"Mmm," she said, and sighed. "True."
"The damnable thing about it," he said, leaning in to kiss her hair, "is that we have people in there. All the information is there. We just can't afford to risk letting someone we don't trust know that we need it."
"Just out of reach," she agreed. "And the Colonel insists on his restaurant metaphors . . . ."
"Hah," Jean said. He wrapped his arms around her, rolling her toward him. She laughed and went with him until she was spooned against him, her head leaning back on his shoulder as he kissed the line of her throat, ticklish and playful. "I don't suppose you can get me a reservation there, can you?"
She laughed. "Do I look like a social mover-and-shaker? And I certainly don't have a girl to get me an invite." He laughed and she kissed him, warm and long -- and then sat bolt upright as a thought struck her. "Wait -- "
"You mean you do have a girlfriend? Damn, you should tell me these things," he said, his eyes crinkling with mirth. She laid a fingertip on his lips.
"No," she said, "except, sort of, yes. I don't have a girlfriend, but -- I do have a girl" pause "friend."
"And?"
"And she's not obviously connected with Mustang at all." Riza felt the effervescent pleasure of a problem solved beginning to bubble up in her chest and tried to tell herself, firmly, that the problem was not solved, she just had an idea. But between the sex and Jean's smile and the warm arm around her waist -- and the plan unfolding in her head -- she couldn't quite restrain her glee. "Lieutenant Maria Ross. She's connected with Armstrong, if anything, no visible ties to the Colonel at all."
"But you know her well enough to trust her?"
"She was a first-year cadet when I was in my last year at the Academy," Riza said, settling back into Jean's arms. He ran his hands idly up and down her upper arms. "I was her mentor. They liked to pair women with women, where possible." And even though the joke went that 'mentor' was short for 'tormentor,' it could be quite a strong bond . . . . "We keep in touch. There are a lot of elements of the government she doesn't agree with . . . and I don't think she'd betray me."
"So she could request the information without turning any heads, without any line of culpability going back to Mustang, and then feed it to you."
"Exactly."
She rolled over and kissed Jean, feeling triumphant. He ran a hand through her hair, kissed her for a very long time, and then pulled back far enough to trace her lower lip with the tip of his tongue and say, "Wanna go again?"
She grinned at him, giddy, and reached down to cup his still-soft penis. "Even you don't recover that fast," she said, and stroked him, teasing.
"Keep doing that and it won't be long," he said, and his eyelids fluttered shut. She obliged.
***
"Maria Ross," Mustang said musingly. "You trust her?"
"Yes," Riza said simply. She could try to justify that trust, but -- well, it was a result of a lot of little things, a thousand coffee breaks, the bond of being military women together.
"If you vouch for her, Hawkeye, then I will trust her as well," he said. "And we need that information. Good work." He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, his eyes glittering. "Why don't you take off early today? You've earned it. Buy a bottle of wine. Celebrate." His mouth tugged into a smirk. "Pour a glass for Havoc, with my compliments."
It was as close to 'isn't sex great for problem-solving?' as he was likely to say while they were both actually in the office. She didn't smile, but it was a close thing. "Thank you, sir," she said.
***
Author's Note: Title comes from Ani DiFranco's My IQ.
Riza Hawkeye was not a devious woman.
Fullmetal Alchemist anime-verse. Hawkeye/Havoc, Mustang, ensemble. 3400 words.
NC-17/MA/Not Worksafe for explicit sex. Mild spoilers.
Life had been hard as hell in Ishbal, hard and painful both, Riza reflected as she opened the Walshorn report for the sixteenth time -- but it had been simple. Someone fired on you; you returned fire. A conflict began; you assessed the situation, and retreated, or advanced, or held your ground. Orders came down to take a city block; you lead your troops in, did what you could, dealt with the consequences. She still bore the scars and nightmares, but . . . it had been simple.
This wasn't simple.
"If we know what the hell was going on in Surakau," Havoc said, and sighed, and trailed off, all without dislodging the unlit cigarette dangling from his lower lip.
"Yeah, and if I had a pet pig, I could fly to work," Breda shot back, and snickered. Havoc replied with a look that was exactly half oh-what-a-martyr-I-am and half if-we-weren't-in-the-office-I'd-be-showing-you-the-middle finger-right-now. Hawkeye didn't smile, but she wanted to.
Fury, less comfortable with the fraternal snarking, said, "Don't we have anyone in Surakau?"
"We do," Falman said, and let the silence drag a bit, and then finished, "but reports are sketchy." Office code, for 'we-the-Amestrian-army have men in there, but we-who-support-Mustang can't risk trusting them or drawing their attention.'
"Ah," Fury said.
The problem, Riza thought, not really reading the report but scanning it again for something to do -- the problem wasn't, as many thought, that she was only happy with something to shoot at. (Any day in which she fired only on inanimate objects, she counted as a good day.) Nor was it that she was unsubtle or unintelligent: she had graduated near the top of her class, and marksmanship couldn't take the credit for that. She was no stupid woman. But she wasn't devious. She was straightforward, often uncompromising, frequently blunt. She had no native talent for slyness. Hughes was good at it; the way he masked it all behind an affably harmless face made him all the more skillful, and even more so that the affability was unassailable truth, not facade. Armstrong was surprisingly good at it, too, not least because no one could ever tell when to take him seriously anyway. Mustang was excellent at it.
Speaking of the Colonel . . .
"You know," he said, and then trailed off. They waited, with varying degrees of patience. One of the Colonel's boots was propped on one of his desk's lower drawers, giving them all a view of his knee jogging up and down with nervous energy. One hand clicked a pen: open-shut, open-shut, open-shut. The other rested with his fingertips on his lower lip, not quite sucking on the ignition cloth (which couldn't possibly taste good).
"Yes?" she asked, finally, on behalf of his entire restless staff.
Mustang still didn't say anything for a few more moments. (It wasn't that he was stupid, either, or even careless -- it was that his intelligence, quite unlike hers, was associative, holistic, prone to great leaps and strange connections. It was part of why they worked so well together, that she was rigorously logical and he was intuitive, but it did make for frustrating conversations. Like this one.) Finally, he said, "There's a new restaurant open on Greenaere Street."
Silence. Finally, Fury ventured, "Yes . . . .?"
"It's got a waiting list a month long. You can't get in unless you know someone who knows someone."
Riza stared at him. The connection with the problem in Surakau was obvious, but trivially so: if they knew someone who had a finger on the operation at Surakau, who they could trust, they wouldn't be in this dilemma.
Fortunately, or possibly unfortunately, Havoc could be relied upon to take the bait. "And I'm sure you know someone who knows someone." Riza managed to not quite roll her eyes. She had intimate -- ha -- knowledge that he no longer lacked for female company, and yet he still let Mustang irritate him all the time. It beggared the imagination.
Sure enough, Mustang let a slow smirk spread across his face. The smirk was one of his masterstrokes: it could mean that he did have an invite, probably from an attractive woman, to the most desirable hotspot in town -- or it could mean that he didn't, but didn't intend to say so. She knew him well enough to be able to guess at which of those things the smirk meant fairly well. She knew Havoc well enough to predict the way his eyes rolled heavenward and his breath escaped in a long pained sigh. She nudged him under the table (not quite a kick) with the toe of her boot, a silent suggestion that he knock it off.
To her moderate surprise, Havoc twisted his foot adeptly so that his calf and ankle rubbed against hers. For such limited contact, and through their clothes, it was shockingly affecting; she had to swallow to hide her indrawn breath. She was suddenly very physically aware of him, not three feet away across the meeting-room table, and his slouch couldn't quite hide the breadth of his shoulders . . . damn it. She tried to give him a warning glare, and failed utterly. She did manage, at least, not to grin like an idiot at him.
She had gotten somewhat off the point. Dragging her attention back to the other four men at the table, she said dryly, to Mustang, "If I had an invitation, I wouldn't stay at home."
The Colonel smiled, rapped his knuckles on the table. "I think we're done here," he said. "Think about it overnight. I expect brilliance in the morning."
***
She knew perfectly well that Jean's offer to cook dinner at her place that night -- ostensibly to make it up to her for teasing her at the office -- was self-serving, and she was perfectly okay with that. Just as she was okay when he offered to rub her shoulders, which was a perfect excuse to take her shirt and bra off, although to his credit he did give her a very nice backrub before they got . . . distracted.
"Mmm," she said, tangling her fingers in his shock of unruly hair, "Jean, that's -- " And she failed to finish the thought, because that was his mouth closed around her nipple, his tongue sweeping delicate and yet rough over the tip. He had propped himself over her on one elbow, and his other hand cupped her other breast, which fit perfectly in his broad, warm palm, so that his callused fingertips could stroke the sensitive sides . . . . Jean loved breasts with a dreamy intensity that was the butt of many jokes in the office, but at moments like this it seemed like the best kind of mutual advantage.
Jean finally dragged his mouth away from her nipple, cupped her breasts together and nuzzled her cleavage, which tickled and made her laugh, and which also made her squirm impatiently against him. "Hey," she said, tugging gently on his hair, "hey, up here, handsome." That earned her a brilliant smile for the few seconds it took him to lean up, his bare chest warm and furry against her wet nipples, to kiss her. His mouth was as warm against hers as it had been against her breast, and she purred into the kiss, the warmth of affection melting the edges of frustration a little. But only a little. She spread her knees and rocked her hips up in what had to be unmistakeable invitation, and he groaned against her mouth. He broke the kiss to pant against her shoulder, rubbing his erection on her hip.
"Like this?" he asked, breathless, peppering her shoulder with kisses.
"Sounds good to me," she said, raking one hand through his hair, the other sliding down to rest encouragingingly on the small of his back. She was swimmingly wet, so much so that her labia felt swollen, frictionless. "I want it hard, and this is as good a position for that as any." He moaned again at that, as she knew he would, and she smiled against his cheek.
Despite his obvious urgency -- both of their obvious urgency -- he took the time to slide his hand down over her belly to between her legs, and she heard his breath catch in his throat when his fingertips slid into her. The tip of his finger circled her clit (he had the familiar trigger callus, almost but not quite rough, almost but not quite enough) and she cried out, arched, felt his erection pulsing against her thigh, exactly what she wanted just now. He hissed in response and reached for the condoms in the bedside table in such haste that it took him two tries to get the drawer open. "Enough teasing," she said, and wrapped her hand around his cock.
"Yes," he agreed, and she tilted her hips and drew up her knees, her calves brushing his hips and thighs as he positioned himself over her and slid in. Riza arched her back at the stretch as her body opened up to the head, the easier long slide of the shaft as he sank all the way deep. She flexed her legs, curling her toes, and then bent her knees so that she could brace her feet flat to the bed. She rolled her hips to match his rhythm, hungry for pleasure to distract her from the day's frustrations, hungry for the hard steady pulse of sex, in its way as simple as her life wasn't. Hungry for Jean, who braced himself over her on his forearms, watching her, himself, like, her not stupid, but wonderfully simple. Easy to please. Eager to please her. Beautiful, as his muscles flexed with his quickening pace inside her, as hard and deep as she could want.
"Touch yourself?" he breathed, plaintive and unsteady, in her ear. "I can't -- " And she knew immediately what he meant, that he had to brace himself on his forearms to thrust as hard as they both wanted, so his hands weren't free. She nodded, and the sob that came out of her mouth surprised her as she reached down -- her clit swollen and obvious beneath her fingertips, and she brushed lower, where his cock slid into her, gathering moisture on her fingertips and smoothing it up . . . . She whimpered, gritted her teeth, the sudden counterpoint of the very different pleasures (flashpoint-bright when she stroked her clit, deep hot pressure where he pushed into her) brought her to the edge almost immediately. She bit her lip, released it in a gasp, said, "Oh god oh god Jean."
He sounded desperate as he said, "Yes, Riza, come, please," and she did, her knees drawing up tighter as the muscles in her legs contracted, her body holding itself hard and still for an endless moment before the ripples of her orgasm sent her jerking and shuddering beneath and around him. She keened, heard herself as if distantly -- she couldn't have kept quiet if she'd tried, and she didn't try -- and raked her nails down his back without intending to. He stuttered on a groan, still thrusting deep, still hard and quick and good, and said, "God, Riza, you're so -- " and then choked off.
It was okay. She knew what he meant.
He didn't let go right away, and when her mind settled enough that she could look up into his face, she saw the tension that meant he was still holding back. Ahh. Another thing to appreciate about Jean: he really liked that, once she'd had one orgasm, she could often have several more with relative ease. (She suspected it wasn't so much that she was unusual as that most of the women he had known were less sure of what they wanted, or less willing to ask for it directly.) Well, if he wanted to wait for her, she certainly had no complaints . . . . She stretched, feeling less desperate, more langorous, her body soaked and sated with orgasm; stretched and canted her hips and tightened slowly around him as he withdrew, eliciting a grunt of pleasure and a kiss dropped on her mouth. There. She found the right angle, exactly right to rub the head of his cock over the spot with each hard stroke, caught her breath and said, "Oh, yes . . . ."
"That's good?" Jean asked, ever attentive. She liked that, too. "Like that?"
She smiled up at him, feeling sultry in a way that she never did except with him, except in bed, stripped of restraint but not of dignity. (That was what she appreciated most about Jean, if she was being honest: the way he made her feel as though letting go of reserve did not mean letting go of honor or self. He never asked her to be other than what she was.) "Just like that," she said. "Oh, Jean, that's good."
"Yes," he said, against her shoulder, "yes, yes," and she could feel him faltering, so she took pity and pressed her feet flat to the bed again to rub hard against him in counterpoint to his thrusts, and the second orgasm rolled over her -- not fast, like the first, one, but slow, starting with stuttering pulses in her cunt and radiating outward, her thighs warm and shaking, her belly rippling, her limbs tensing and then relaxing like water, until her whole body was limp and shaking and completely useless with pleasure.
She wasn't going to manage another orgasm, which was just fine: so as Jean moaned her name and finally, finally, began to let go, she had the luxury of just lying back and watching him. He was braced over her, so close he could lean in and kiss her, so close she could see the way his pupils had expanded, just a rim of brilliant blue around black. He was exquisitely muscled -- in excellent shape, despite his three-pack-a-day habit -- and she enjoyed that, enjoyed watching the flex of the muscles in his thighs as he thrust hard and hungry into her, the way the muscles rippled in his flat stomach, his chest, his biceps. And his face was flushed, his lips parted, focused in a way that she rarely saw him, but flushed, too, and beautiful for it. She watched the sweat form on his brow and the angles of his cheekbones, and leaned up not to kiss him but to bite at the line of his jaw and make him moan, wonderfully. There: finally, the way his eyes closed and then opened again with impending orgasm, the look on his face, both intent and vulnerable, and he drew a ragged breath and said, "Ah, ah, yes, yes," and then stilled and shuddered and came.
She lay tangled with him for a few long minutes, feeling very satisfied -- not just physically, but with her mind cleared as few things besides good sex could clear it -- before, reluctantly, she let go to allow him to roll free and get rid of the condom. She rolled over, languidly, to prop her chin on her folded arms, basking in the warm, limp feeling that came from relieved frustration and exertion. After a moment Jean stretched out against her, one arm warm and heavy across the small of her back, his shoulder overlapping hers. She smiled, turned her head to kiss him. No need for words for a little while. They rested in companionable silence.
One of the other nice things about Jean was that he didn't object to her talking shop in bed -- and he was one of only maybe six people in the world to whom she could talk shop, period. Which was good, because she did a lot of her best thinking when she was relaxed and her body was well-worked. After a little while, she said, "We need someone on the inside at Surakau," she said.
"Tricky," Jean replied, his voice low and rumbling, himself well-sated. His hand settled on her back, his thumb rubbing up and down her spine as though counting her vertebrae. "We could get a trustworthy mole from Hughes, but putting him in position is no small thing, and it'd still be months before he was in deep enough to give any useful information."
"Mmm," she said, and sighed. "True."
"The damnable thing about it," he said, leaning in to kiss her hair, "is that we have people in there. All the information is there. We just can't afford to risk letting someone we don't trust know that we need it."
"Just out of reach," she agreed. "And the Colonel insists on his restaurant metaphors . . . ."
"Hah," Jean said. He wrapped his arms around her, rolling her toward him. She laughed and went with him until she was spooned against him, her head leaning back on his shoulder as he kissed the line of her throat, ticklish and playful. "I don't suppose you can get me a reservation there, can you?"
She laughed. "Do I look like a social mover-and-shaker? And I certainly don't have a girl to get me an invite." He laughed and she kissed him, warm and long -- and then sat bolt upright as a thought struck her. "Wait -- "
"You mean you do have a girlfriend? Damn, you should tell me these things," he said, his eyes crinkling with mirth. She laid a fingertip on his lips.
"No," she said, "except, sort of, yes. I don't have a girlfriend, but -- I do have a girl" pause "friend."
"And?"
"And she's not obviously connected with Mustang at all." Riza felt the effervescent pleasure of a problem solved beginning to bubble up in her chest and tried to tell herself, firmly, that the problem was not solved, she just had an idea. But between the sex and Jean's smile and the warm arm around her waist -- and the plan unfolding in her head -- she couldn't quite restrain her glee. "Lieutenant Maria Ross. She's connected with Armstrong, if anything, no visible ties to the Colonel at all."
"But you know her well enough to trust her?"
"She was a first-year cadet when I was in my last year at the Academy," Riza said, settling back into Jean's arms. He ran his hands idly up and down her upper arms. "I was her mentor. They liked to pair women with women, where possible." And even though the joke went that 'mentor' was short for 'tormentor,' it could be quite a strong bond . . . . "We keep in touch. There are a lot of elements of the government she doesn't agree with . . . and I don't think she'd betray me."
"So she could request the information without turning any heads, without any line of culpability going back to Mustang, and then feed it to you."
"Exactly."
She rolled over and kissed Jean, feeling triumphant. He ran a hand through her hair, kissed her for a very long time, and then pulled back far enough to trace her lower lip with the tip of his tongue and say, "Wanna go again?"
She grinned at him, giddy, and reached down to cup his still-soft penis. "Even you don't recover that fast," she said, and stroked him, teasing.
"Keep doing that and it won't be long," he said, and his eyelids fluttered shut. She obliged.
***
"Maria Ross," Mustang said musingly. "You trust her?"
"Yes," Riza said simply. She could try to justify that trust, but -- well, it was a result of a lot of little things, a thousand coffee breaks, the bond of being military women together.
"If you vouch for her, Hawkeye, then I will trust her as well," he said. "And we need that information. Good work." He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, his eyes glittering. "Why don't you take off early today? You've earned it. Buy a bottle of wine. Celebrate." His mouth tugged into a smirk. "Pour a glass for Havoc, with my compliments."
It was as close to 'isn't sex great for problem-solving?' as he was likely to say while they were both actually in the office. She didn't smile, but it was a close thing. "Thank you, sir," she said.
***
Author's Note: Title comes from Ani DiFranco's My IQ.