I didn't ask for two

Episode 6

POV: Kim



The council reconvened at full volume.

THAT, Panic said, was ASSAULT. I have the statute. I have the case number. I have precedent.

It was a single— Voice of Reason started.

A SINGLE WHAT. A SINGLE ACT OF BATTERY. A SINGLE INCIDENT OF— Panic searched for the legal framing. UNAUTHORIZED CORPORAL CONTACT.

It wasn't— I started.

I HAVE A BRUISE. I HAVE EVIDENCE.

You don't have a bruise, Voice of Reason said.

I HAVE AN EMOTIONAL BRUISE. THOSE COUNT NOW.

I was sitting on the bed with my knees pulled to my chest, staring at the wall, which was a very neutral surface and therefore currently my favorite thing in the room.

Meanwhile, Adventurer said, with the energy of someone who had been waiting politely for a gap and had decided the gap was now. Did anyone else notice the way Jake looked at us when Frank was carrying us through the dining room?

Nobody else noticed because we were BEING CARRIED, Panic said.

I noticed, Adventurer said. I kept notes. She paused. His expression was— I want to use a precise word here— interesting.

Interesting, Voice of Reason repeated.

In a proprietary way, Adventurer said. Like watching someone pick up something you thought was yours.

There was a brief silence.

IRRELEVANT TO THE LAWSUIT, Panic said. But she said it quieter than usual.

The Femme Fatale said nothing. But she had stopped folding in on herself. She was sitting at the edge of where she usually sat, and she was facing forward, and she was listening.

I noticed that.

I didn't say anything about it.

And the heat, said Voice of Reason, very carefully, as if approaching something that might startle. On the— the residual warmth. I've been running some models. Physiologically, the duration and intensity of the thermal response is not consistent with a standard—

I told you to stop, I said.

I know, she said. I'm raising it anyway because I think it's important and because—

The door opened.

Jake appeared in my doorway at seven with the energy of someone who'd decided this was happening and hadn't particularly consulted the relevant parties.

"Dinner," he said.

"I'm not—"

"You haven't eaten since lunch." He held the door open. "Frank's orders."

I went, because the alternative was arguing with the door.

* * *

The dining room was quieter in the evening — fewer people, lower light, the same wrong-cold temperature that I was beginning to suspect was a permanent feature of the building. Jake steered us toward a corner table with the ease of someone who always knew which table he wanted and expected it to be available.

It was available.

We were three steps into the room when the doors at the far end opened.

They came in like weather — five of them, leather and noise and the specific energy of men who'd been drinking since early afternoon and had decided somewhere along the way that this looked like an interesting stop. The one in front said something to the room in general. It wasn't a question.

Oh, Adventurer breathed. Oh, this is going to be excellent.

Frank was already moving. Not fast — he didn't need fast, he had the kind of purpose that made fast irrelevant — crossing the room toward the doors with the expression of a man handling a scheduling conflict.

FRONT ROW SEATS, Adventurer said. WE HAVE FRONT ROW SEATS—

Jake's hand closed around my wrist.

"Not a spectator sport," he said, and pulled.

No— Adventurer started, but we were already moving, Jake steering us sideways and behind the bar as the first table went over behind us with a crash I felt in my back teeth.

He positioned himself so his back was to the room and I was between him and the wall. His body blocked everything — the fight, the noise, Frank somewhere in the middle of it, the entire spectacle that Adventurer was making extremely pointed comments about.

Move, she said. Just slightly. To the left. I just want to see—

"Stop craning," Jake said, without turning around.

I wasn't craning. I was attempting to see around six feet of inconveniently placed person.

He has eyes in the back of his head, Adventurer said, impressed despite herself.

Something shattered on the far side of the room. A voice rose and cut off. Frank, I assumed, handling the scheduling conflict.

"Is he—"

"He's fine," Jake said. "He does that."

* * *

It happened fast.

Jake's arm came around me — no warning, no preamble — and he shoved us both sideways along the bar, his body turning to take the wall as a bottle came spinning out of the chaos and exploded against the woodwork exactly where we'd been standing.

The silence after it was total.

And then I was against the wall, and Jake was against me, and neither of us had moved again.

His hands went to the wall on either side of my head. His body came forward — not crashing, measured, deliberate, exactly enough. A shield made of warm mass and intention that had just, incidentally, saved us from a bottle to the face.

His thigh was between mine. I was aware of this the way you're aware of gravity — not thought, just fact, weight and heat and there.

His chest was close enough that when he exhaled I felt it on my collarbone. When I inhaled I got dark earth and hot metal and ozone and something my nervous system had been cataloguing since the window two days ago and hadn't stopped since.

The sounds from the dining room were getting quieter.

Neither of us moved.

His head dropped. Just slightly. His breath was on my lips — warm, steady, too close — and my brain made a last-ditch attempt at functioning and produced absolutely nothing useful.

His hand left the wall.

I felt it before I tracked it — sliding under the hem of my shirt from below, palm against my stomach, moving up. His palm was startlingly hot against my skin — that unnatural, furnace-like heat I'd noticed before, now radiating directly into my core. His hand covered my breast, the heel of his palm through the fabric of my bra, and he went still there — not moving, just present, just the weight and warmth of it — and then his thumb moved. Once. Slow. Deliberate.

I forgot to breathe.

It wasn't a choice. The instruction simply didn't make it from my brain to my lungs.

His lips were a millimeter from mine. The space between them was warm. I could feel the heat of his mouth without contact, which should not have been a thing that was possible, but my body had been operating outside its usual parameters since he'd put his hands on the window frame two days ago.

I opened my mouth.

I didn't mean to. It just — happened. The way breathing was supposed to happen and wasn't.

Jake went still.

His eyes dropped to my lips, and stayed there, and the look in them was something I didn't have a category for yet — heated and careful at once, like a man who'd started something and was only now calculating the full weight of it.

He leaned in.

* * *

The air in the room changed.

Not cooled — grew heavy. The kind of heavy that precedes a storm. A shift in atmospheric pressure that made the fine hairs on my arms stand up, that arrived before any sound, before any visible reason.

"Brother."

Frank's voice came from somewhere behind us. Low. Even. Two syllables with no inflection, which somehow carried more weight than the entire fight that had preceded it.

"Step back."

A pause.

"Now."

Jake didn't move.

Not immediately. His gaze stayed on my lips for one more second — two — and something passed through his expression that was too complicated to name and gone before I could try.

Then he straightened. Took one step back. Put his hands in his pockets.

The air between us was cold without him in it.

From the bottom of the stairs, Frank said nothing else. I heard his footsteps — unhurried, even — move away down the corridor below.

Jake looked at me.

His expression had the grin back. Almost. Not quite. Like the frame was there but the painting was different.

"You okay?" he said.

My mouth was still open.

I closed it.

No, said all four voices, simultaneously, in perfect consensus for the second time in recorded history.