The Mind is Willing
fleeterberry
Spoilers: Through Dead Reckoning
Disclaimer: Not Mine
She glared at the door from her perch on the couch. The week had been absolute hell, both mentally and physically and the absolute last thing she felt like was whatever had the audacity to knock on her door. As she shifted her leg out from under the heating pad and her shoulder out from under the ice pack, she resolved to kill whoever it was. Even a damn girl scout was going to get a bullet between the eyes.
Limping across the room, she twisted the knob to open the door.
And there he was, looking good enough to eat as always, albeit slightly more bruised and battered than she was. Rather than the cocky, slightly amused expression she was used to, he looked worried.
She really hated it when he looked worried. Her stomach flipped inside out and her face fell. "What's wrong?" He looked past her into the apartment, causing her to turn herself. "What?"
His pained look was almost a wince when he met her eyes again. "Am I interrupting something?"
She opened the door wider to allow him to see the coffee table, littered with the ice packs and bandages and an ibuprofen bottle. "Just a normal night in the geriatric ward."
Finally, his familiar smirk appeared, if only fleetingly. "You're alone?"
She almost laughed at the question before she remembered. She had gone on a date with a man who happily flirted with her at every meeting. John probably expected that a night without her son at home would be a good time for her to have Cal over. With a sigh, she nodded. "Cal isn't here, if that's what you're asking."
It only occurred to her after she saw his obvious relief that he might actually be jealous. Of what, she hadn't a clue. Cal was fine, a decent guy with ok looks who clearly liked her, but hell, he wasn't John. John could have his pick of women anywhere, any time, and besides the flirting he used as his preferred method of communication with her, she'd never thought there was any real interest. Apparently, she was wrong.
Suddenly her heart was racing with the thought.
This unexpected friendship of theirs, this bond that had developed in an instant and grown by leaps and bounds every day, was taking on a life of its own.
And she was quite tempted to flat out tell John that he had nothing to worry about with Cal. Except she was rather drawn to the idea of seeing a jealous John Reese competing for her attention.
John's eyebrows raised as though he was able to listen to her thoughts as easily as her conversations. "No Taylor either?"
Her eyes narrowed as she thought about it. He'd been worried about Cal, but not her son. She leaned her head to the side and raised her eyebrow back. "No, Taylor won movie tickets from some contest he didn't remember entering, but I'm guessing you already knew that."
John tried to hide his grin as she allowed him entrance, but she saw the reflection in the mirror. "Now how would I know that?"
"Gee, I have no idea." She rolled her eyes and followed him to the couch. "But thank you. I really didn't feel like an inquisition about why I'm all bruised."
He glanced at her and smiled, confirming her idea that he'd been the one to get her the night off.
Before she sat down, knowing how much work it would be to get back to her feet, she nodded toward the kitchen. "Want something to drink?"
His eyes moved back to hers as he took far longer to analyze the question than he needed. Finally he nodded. "Anything is fine. Thanks."
Damn him, she thought as she stared into the refrigerator. He could have asked for a beer or a soda or water; instead he left it up to her. He was the one who'd arranged for her to be alone and dropped by. He should give her a clue what he wanted. With a sigh she grabbed two bottles of water and started to close the fridge, but then she stopped. "Screw it," she muttered and replaced the water, opting for two beers.
She saw his smile when she handed him the beer and wanted to pat herself on the back for having made the right call. She settled beside him, propped her leg up on the coffee table and replaced the heating pad on her knee. She wanted to ask what he was doing there, why he'd sent her son out, why he'd been worried about Cal being with her. But she said nothing. It was up to him to say it, to give her some idea, to stick his neck out. God knew she'd stuck hers out enough times for him.
It was only after he'd opened his beer and taken a few sips that he settled back, wincing as his shoulder made contact with the couch. A physical toll had been extracted from him as well, she knew, but it was rare he let her see it. She passed him the ice pack, unable to resist the urge to grin when he took it only long enough to place it back on her sore shoulder. She hadn't said a word about the injuries she'd suffered in the crash, but he'd known, even before she'd let him see the medical supplies. That damn all-seeing gaze of his had caught her weakness. Rather than affronted like she normally felt when she faced how much he knew about her, often through less than fair methods, this time she felt flattered. Not only had he noticed, but he wanted her to know. It shouldn't mean so much to her, yet it did.
Still, he remained stubbornly quiet, driving her crazy. She wanted to ask, but she refused to bend. It was her house, her couch, her turf. He was there; he needed to say why. She'd only taken a few sips of her beer, but her eyes were drooping, the lure of a decent night's sleep for the first time in forever almost too strong to resist.
She hadn't even realized that she'd actually drifted off to sleep until she jerked awake at the feeling of his hand on hers.
"Sorry," he smiled at her. He was gently unfolding her fingers from her beer, taking the bottle from her lest she drop it. "Didn't mean to wake you."
She blushed. "Didn't mean to fall asleep on you."
He scooted forward, setting his mostly empty beer beside her full one on the table. "I should go. You're exhausted."
And then suddenly, she wasn't that tired. At least, not tired enough that she wanted him to go. She sat forward, letting the ice pack slip off her shoulder as she reached for his forearm. "No, stay, it's fine."
He hesitated, a hopeful expression in his eyes. "You sure?"
Nodding, she continued to hold his arm until he sat back. "Yeah, it's nice, you being here when you're not having some crisis going on." She waited a beat, a smirk curling her lips. "There's no crisis going on, is there?"
He grinned as he shifted closer, catching her hand when she started to pull it away, folding his long fingers around hers. "You asked me a question."
She rolled her eyes. "I've asked you a lot of questions."
"Well, this is one I want to answer."
It took all of her concentration to remain calm while his hand stayed in contact with hers. Her heart was racing, both at the contact and at the idea that he actually intended to tell her something he apparently didn't have to. Both were novel experiences. She turned toward him, noticing after he did that she was worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.
"It's not anything bad, I swear." He smiled after he dragged his eyes up from her mouth. "Before Donnelly caught us, you asked me if anything I'd said was true. During the interrogation."
Her racing heart skipped a beat. She hadn't expected an answer, not even at the time. She'd expected some evasive smart-ass remark. But after everything that had happened in the last day, she barely remembered asking the question.
And yet that was the one he wanted to answer.
He shrugged uncomfortably before he met her eyes again. "Obviously some of it was bullshit, you know I went back in the Army, you know I'm not really a banker, but-" He looked away. "The rest of it was true."
"Like your business trip to Mexico last May?" She wanted to put him at ease again, to show him he could relax in her presence, but she suspected that opening up was really that hard for him.
Nodding, his hand tightened around hers. "Names, locations, those were lies, but I figured you knew that."
She had known. And despite having asked, she'd known most of what he'd told her had been true too. She wondered how the hell she knew the man so well considering how little he usually said. It was instinct. The same instinct that had drawn her inexorably toward him in the first place. The same instinct, she hoped, that seemed to drawn him toward her as well.
"He wanted me to press you on the Serb. Even he knew that was real." She hated even mentioning it, knowing that had been a terribly painful experience for the man who had a list of them a mile long.
"So you didn't."
She shifted over, leaning her head against his shoulder, needing more than words between them. "So I didn't."
He moved too, letting go of her hand, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her closer. "Thank you." His words fell into her hair, his lips pressing a kiss against her forehead.
"I've never been so nervous in my life as when I walked in that room. I didn't know how we were going to get through it without going insane or giving ourselves away." She shivered at the thought and pressed herself into his embrace. "And you still managed to make me smile."
He chuckled, recalling the flirtatious way he'd countered her question about his living arrangements. "Sorry, couldn't help it. I, uh," he trailed off, his body tensing.
She reached up, slipping her hand across his shirt. "Come on, tell me."
"I like making you smile."
An awkward stillness fell over him, his whole body frozen and tight as soon as he spoke. He was nervous. He wasn't nervous with a bomb strapped to his chest, but giving her something personal that he didn't have to scared the shit out of him.
Looking up without lifting her head, she offered him the smile he wanted. "You're awfully good at it, much to my chagrin at times."
He was slowly relaxing, his body calming and once again welcoming. "You're beautiful when you smile." His hand slipped up into her hair. "Hell, you're beautiful when you don't smile."
Realizing he needed something back from her or this soft side of him would close up and never let her back in, she reached up, running her hand along his scruff, pulling his face to look at her. "So are you."
He stared at her for a moment as if to decide if she really meant it, finally grinning self-consciously. Then he winked. "You should see me when I'm not all beat up."
"Maybe you should stop getting your ass kicked so I can." She loved the way his eyes twinkled at her response, the way his face softened with the newfound intimacy, the way he transitioned them so smoothly from their veiled flirting to… this. Whatever this was. Flirting while he was holding her certainly meant more than smirking in her rearview mirror.
His eyes were drifting between hers and where his hand was playing with her hair. "You never seem to be around when I actually win a fight, do you?"
"Because you only call me when you need backup." The feel of his fingers against her scalp would have put her back to sleep on any other day, but there was no longer any chance of sleeping, not with the way her heart was pounding at his touch. And not just at his touch. The look in his eyes was setting her pulse racing as well. With good reason, she thought, if she was reading into the situation correctly.
When his other hand came up to cup her cheek and his eyes darted ever so briefly to her lips, she knew she was. He met her eyes again, his grin gone, his face the picture of concentration. "Would you mind if I called when I didn't need backup?"
It was then that she was suddenly faced with a fact she absolutely knew was true. No matter how much he wanted to, and that was clearly quite a lot, John Reese was never going to make a move on her. She'd heard his self-deprecating bullshit before. She'd heard his conviction when he blamed his own actions for Jessica's death. She knew he wasn't faking it. He truly didn't believe he deserved anything as normal as a relationship, a woman who loved him.
She wanted to scoff and ask him just how the hell he thought anyone could do better than him. A true gentleman, loyal and giving, with morals. He was fucking perfect.
And apparently, it was up to her to tell him that.
She moved swiftly, partially because she didn't want to lose her nerve, mostly because, quite frankly, she couldn't stand to wait any longer. She noted the way he jerked away at her movement, pulling his arms back to his sides as though he'd been chastised, but she didn't have time to set him straight. Besides, she expected that her actions would show him must faster than her words could.
She twisted sideways, pressing her left knee into the couch cushions while she swung the right up to the far side of him, straddling him, but she didn't settle down into his lap, despite the pain of leaning on her bruised knee. Instead, she stayed up on her knees, grinning at his startled, wide-eyed look, pushing her hips into his chest, pressing him back against the couch. Her hands moved up, her arms caging his head as she fell forward.
Enjoying the upper hand, she let her eyes caress his face, slowly taking their time, memorizing every detail up close, trying to burn this moment into her memory. He was completely at her mercy for once. Her hands inched closer, her fingers slowly making their way onto his skin, lighting over his neck, his throat, his jaw, his cheeks.
"I won't be mad if you call, John," she whispered in a husky voice, "in fact, if you don't, I'll be really, really pissed." She didn't wait for a response, knowing coherent language was beyond her prey at the moment. She leaned in, doing what she knew he wouldn't, what she knew he was waiting for, what she'd wanted for a very long time.
Her lips met his hungrily, parting almost before she'd made contact. His lips were soft and full and actively participating, his teeth nipping at her lower lip as if she might deny him the access she'd already offered. She didn't wait for him, taking his hesitance as an invitation, probing his mouth with her tongue. His hands fisted in her hair, pulling a growl from her as he took his turn, delving into her mouth to explore the newly available territory.
So wrapped up with the kiss, she almost missed his feral reaction to her body, at least until his hand gripped her waist and pulled her down fully into his lap. The feel of his erection, rock hard underneath of her, was almost too much. It had been so long and she was so attracted to John that the sensation caught her off guard. Her head fell back, John's lips moving seamlessly to her throat, adding to her already overwhelmed senses, and she ground her hips down onto him.
He groaned, his hips thrusting up, his hands gripping her waist and holding her in place.
She reached for his shirt, trying to remind herself that she was the instigator here and therefore ought to remain conscious, no matter how much her body wanted to shut down and simply revel in how unbelievable just being near the man made her feel. But there was so much more she wanted to feel, to explore, to share. Focusing her attention on his shirt, she worked the buttons quickly and shoved it back on his shoulders. Nearly furious at the sight of his white tee-shirt underneath, she grabbed at the hem, yanking at it until he got the message that it too needed to go.
He only let go of her for a moment, just long enough to lift his arms and pull his shirts off, but it was too long for her. She missed the warmth of his hands and so pressed her palms against his chest, letting the heat radiating from his body seep into her hands. His hands came down hard, grabbing her shoulders, pulling her closer.
At least, he tried.
She hissed in pain and jerked her left shoulder away from his hand. "Ow!"
He winced and pulled back. "Are you ok?"
"It's cut from the glass." The man didn't have x-ray vision after all and couldn't see through her shirt.
"Sorry." He reached down, touching the hem of her shirt, meeting her eyes, looking for permission. She nodded and slowly lifted her arms to allow him to remove her shirt. His eyes fell on the problem, the tear in her skin along the front and side of her shoulder. This time, his touch was gentle, his fingers skimming across the skin around the angry red area so lightly she could barely feel them. He leaned toward her, pressing his lips just above it.
Her head fell forward this time, her nails digging into his skin, her moan uncontrollable.
And then it was his turn to yelp in pain.
"Damn, Carter, I said I was sorry."
Lifting her head, she looked down, realizing that her nails had dug into a swollen purple mark on his chest. She winced. "That was an accident, I swear."
His hands moved up, fingers curling around the back of her head, pulling her face toward his once again. "I really don't care." And then his mouth claimed hers again, his tongue staking its claim, his hands fisting in her hair.
Desperate to do something besides sit there and be rendered senseless by the man, as tempting as that was, she reached down, sliding her palm over the bulge in his pants, laughing happily when his head fell back and his hips thrust upwards. He was just as easily driven crazy by her, she realized, quite pleased to know that they had equal power over each other. It made perfect sense, of course, because it had been that way from the beginning.
He moved his hands to her hips, tugging her harder into him, his fingers finding another sore spot, forcing her to recoil yet again. His lips pressed into her forehead as he apologized again, lightening his touch as his fingers smoothed over her back. "Maybe we should move this somewhere less painful."
"Good idea," she purred into his ear as she wrapped her arms around his neck. There was no chance of her being coordinated enough to get up and walk to her bedroom, certainly not after having knelt on her stiff knee for so long. Besides, John was more than strong enough to carry her to the bed and, she figured, such a chivalrous thing was exactly up his alley.
John obediently scooted forward, allowing her to fold her legs around his hips while he stood, stumbling when she bit down on his ear. "Jesus, Carter," he growled.
Thoroughly amused with how easy it was to distract John's normal razor-sharp focus, she did it again, this time sucking his earlobe between her lips.
He responded by shoving her into the wall and grinding his hips into hers. "Right here seems just fine to me."
She squirmed against the hand on the back of her thigh, uncomfortable with the pressure of his hand on another sore spot. "Um, not really. The back of my thigh is kind of…" His hand shifted, finding a spot so tender that it brought tears to her eyes. "Ow, shit!"
"Ok, ok, I'm going."
When they finally made it to her bed, he dropped both of them quite unceremoniously across it, his unexpected weight taking her breath for a moment as she tried to decide which part of her body hurt the most. She stayed completely still, hoping the various pains would ease as soon as John lifted any part of himself off of her.
But he didn't move. He remained painfully still, his face pressed into the mattress over her shoulder. He didn't speak either.
Finally, on the verge of tears from her knee and her hip and her shoulder and pretty much every other part of her, she ventured a query. "John?"
"Mmmph." Whatever his answer, it was lost into the comforter on her bed. Ever so slowly, he turned his head, his face drawn in agony. "I think I threw out my back." He paused to draw in a breath that sounded painful. "Or I'm dying."
She wanted to laugh. She did. But she hurt too much. "Everything hurts, John, can you move at all?"
"Not really." He tried anyway, groaning as he pushed himself up slightly on his elbow, giving her a tiny bit of space to finagle her body out from under him. The moment she was free, he flopped back down with a grunt. "Shit, Carter, I'm sorry."
He looked beyond uncomfortable, flopped halfway on the bed, his arms awkwardly out to the sides, his face screwed up in pain.
She curled onto her side, pulling the blanket away from the pillows to drape over them, trying to carefully arrange her limbs in such a way as to limit the amount of pain she was in. "I'm sorry, John, I was the one who started it and I should have known you weren't any better off than I was." Having found a somewhat comfortable position, she wrapped her arms around one of his and pressed a kiss onto the back of his shoulder.
He opened his eyes, offering her a tiny smile. "I'm glad you started it." His fingers tangled with hers, apparently the only parts he could move without pain. His eyes dropped to her mouth for a moment, then climbed back to meet hers. "So, uh, can I get a raincheck or was this a one-time deal?"
Forcing herself to shift on her sore shoulder in order to touch her lips to his, she smiled back. "I might hold you prisoner here until we finish what we started."
His smile turned into a devilish grin until it reflected in his twinkling eyes. "I'll be a very well-behaved prisoner, Carter. I promise." He winked at her.
Her insides fluttered at the small gesture, the same way they did every time he did it. "A well-behaved prisoner?" She cocked her eyebrow. "You'd better not be!"
He smiled and held her eyes for a long time, until they eventually slipped shut in sleep. And finally, hers did too.
~end~