A/N: I am making a little warren for my many FMP plot bunnies to live. Enjoy!
More self-centered drivel about goals and intentions at unkeptsecret (dot) insanejournal (dot) com (slash) 3739
The mission was going exactly as Melissa Mao had expected, which is to say it was absolutely shitty.
Tessa had conceded back on the TDD-1 that it would be 'difficult to obtain the objective', but as she and Kurz ducked into the seedy motel, Melissa felt about ready to hand her young captain the Understatement of the Year Award. Melissa planned to make it herself using nothing but superglue, the bad intel reports that had gotten them into this mess, the bullet casings from the endless rounds fired at them, and her busted laptop, which she had to lug around with her instead of ditching because she couldn't be sure the self-destruct data wipe had actually gone through.
"Aw, man. I just upgraded the processor, too," Melissa muttered to herself as she hustled after her partner up the rusting staircase.
"You bitching again?" Kurz Weber asked over his shoulder.
"Fuck off," she said.
Kurz paused on the top step to let Melissa pass. She side-stepped the puddle of piss on the landing and tried to ram the bent key into the door lock. The twisted bit of metal that they had collected from the greasy maggot of a man working the front desk was so warped that she needed both hands just to get it into the chamber. Melissa shrugged off her duffel bag. The nylon strap caught in the bend of her elbow. Kurz reached over and took it from her with out a word, just like she wanted him to do. Unburdened, she could use her body weight to force the cheap deadbolt to spring. It took longer than it should have, and the landing offered no cover. Melissa could feel Kurz tensing up behind her as she worked.
It was stupid to be so exposed. It was stupid to stop moving. Shit-house motels in unstable nations make lousy safe houses. The entire situation made Melissa's skin crawl, but she and Kurz were out of options.
The mismatched door hinges whined like a sick dog when Melissa finally got the stupid thing to open. The smell hit her right away. She went into the rank darkness first with Kurz following so close behind that he probably beat her shadow across the threshold.
Once inside, he used his boot to knock the door closed behind them. Kurz dropped their bags and drew his Browning BDA in a flurry of silent motion, pushing past her to do a sweep of the room. Melissa ducked down to her duffel and made quick work of reloading her spent weapons. The crummy neon light leaking through the dirty window meant they didn't have to find the switch for the bare overhead bulb that hung on a wire from the water-stained ceiling. Melissa would bet a pack of cigarettes that the filament on the damn thing was blown anyway.
Her hands remembered the right sequence to change her guns' clips even if her sleep-deprived brain couldn't. Messing with her laptop would have to wait. They had been on the move for 48 hours straight while trying to evade a clever enemy, and the strain was showing on both of them.
Kurz finished his sweep with the bathroom. Melissa heard the metallic click as Kurz switched on his weapon's safety and the squeak of the water faucet. He returned to her side still shaking his canteen to dissolve their last chlorine tablet in the tap water. Even after purification, Melissa suspected drinking it would give her the runs for days. The room reeked of raw sewage.
Kurz held out the canteen to her, and she fished out what was left of her last MRE for him from her bag. They made the trade in exhausted silence. It was depressing that they had been down to their last emergency rations together so often that the exchange was a give-in. When there wasn't enough left to bother with sharing, Melissa would rather have the water and Kurz preferred eating.
Kurz plopped down next to her on the floor by the door and tore into his processed meal. Melissa gave him a quick once-over with her eyes to check for injuries while she sipped from the canteen. Kurz liked to play the tough guy when it came to taking a hit. He was favoring his right shoulder, but that was old news. She had already bandaged it up as best she could. Thankfully, Kurz didn't look wounded otherwise, just dirty and tired. His prized yellow hair fell around his drawn face in greasy strings. Melissa wondered if she looked equally as unwashed and beaten down.
"Don't eat so fast. You'll just puke it up again," she said. Too much adrenaline in your system for too long sometimes did that to people. You go on nothing but nerves for a couple days and as soon as you put food in your stomach, boom. Pukesville.
"I'm fine, Sis," he got out between mouthfuls. "By the way, don't touch the bed. It'll give you herpes,"
"How about the bathroom?" Melissa asked.
"Superherpes," Kurz confirmed.
Melissa banged her the back of her head against the wall. "Fuck."
From her position sitting cross-legged on the floor, Melissa spotted rat turds populating the corners of the room and cockroaches scurrying in the shadowed places. She could see a corner of the disheveled bed, which summed up all of the furniture in the room, and the jizz-stained coverlet looked exactly like a broiling hot zone for infectious diseases. She wished that they could have found a better place to crash, but it would be lie to say that this cheap motel room was the worst place that she had ever spent the night during a bad mission. Even so, Melissa would never, never be tired enough to put her face down on any surface in that putrid room.
She gulped down the last of the water and reached out to tap Kurz's knee. Like their ration exchange, Kurz had memorized this part of their 'desperate times, desperate measures' ritual too. He repositioned to align his back flush against the wall and stretched out his legs, which had been tucked up to his chest as a make-shift table for his half-portion of MRE. Melissa dropped sideways down onto the floor with her head cushioned in the bend of his hip. She tucked her hands into the open collar of her jacket to keep all of her exposed skin away from the revolting floor.
Kurz usually had a dirty quip for her at that point. I love it when you use me for my body or something along those lines. The fact that he didn't say anything made her feel better about their decision to take a rest.
"Just so we're clear," she yawned. "We're doing a straight-up three/three/flee. I'll see what I can do about the laptop during my watch. I'm hoping we can leave it here. We should be able to ditch everything else to pick up speed."
"You got it, babe. You sleep, I sleep, and then we both run like hell for Pick-up Point Shit-If-I-Know," Kurz grumbled.
"Point G," Melissa prompted.
"Yeah, yeah. G as in 'Gee, let's hope this one works because points A through F almost got us blown up'," Kurz sighed.
Melissa closed her eyes, too tired to say anything else. Kurz's khaki pants smelled strongly of days-old sweat and diesel smoke. He stank, but it was a familiar stink. It sure beat the open toilet aroma of the room. His hand felt warm resting on her shoulder.
Melissa let go and disappeared under the black waters of sleep.
She came back into consciousness, all at once, sometime later. It could have been five minutes or a few hours. Her internal clock was shot to hell because of her jacked up sleep cycles, so she couldn't even guess at how long she had been down. All she knew was that when she opened her eyes, she was still lying along the wall with her head on Kurz's leg and his hand on her shoulder. The room still reeked. The neon sign outside still hummed. The cockroaches still scurried.
But something had to have changed. Melissa knew that there was no way that her body would go two full days without sleep and then pop up in under three hours for no reason. She stayed awake for a few minutes trying to place what had reached her through the velvet curtain of deep sleep but gave up when she realized that she could be resting instead. When you only have three hours, it pays to make it all count. Besides, Kurz would let her know if anything was wrong.
Melissa had let her eyes drift closed again when she heard Kurz begin to speak in a voice that was less than a whisper, like he was doing little more than mouthing the words. Melissa strained to catch all of what he said.
"Ok, here's the deal. Someone just pushed something under the door, so there's a decent chance Sis and I are totally busted here. I need to check it out before I wake her up, but there's some things I should say before the firefight gets going again. First of all, I'm sorry about what happened yesterday. I wasn't on my game, and I made a couple of the guys hurt a lot because I was too scared to risk a clean head shot. I went for the chest, and they suffered more because of that. That's not right."
Kurz paused. Melissa heard his breath move in and out slowly before he continued.
"I'm sorry about taking down that kid. We were running while firing, and I got careless. I never should have tried a trick shot like that with a handgun in a public place. That poor bastard had nothing to do with any of this, but he's dead just the same. I really do feel like shit about it."
Kurz paused again. Melissa half-wished that he was done because she knew that she shouldn't be listening to any of this. The Kurz Weber she loved to hate would never talk this openly about regret-- not with her, not with Sousuke, not with anyone. Hearing to his confession felt like a betrayal of trust. She should be asleep, not eavesdropping. She should be telling him she was awake.
His hand tightened ever so slightly on Melissa's shoulder. She felt frozen in place by his words and his touch. She tried not to listen but heard every word just the same.
"If the bad guys have caught up to us, then I know that I'm going make a lot more mistakes before it's over and done. I stopped being able to see straight about two hours ago, so my aim isn't worth shit right now. But please understand that I'm going to do whatever it takes to make sure that she doesn't die in a place like this."
Melissa felt her heart start to rush. She fought to keep her breathing low and even to sustain the illusion of sleep.
"I'd get it if it's my time to go and all that jazz," Kurz went on. "I'd understand. But don't come for her just yet. Not here. Please. Amen."
Under her head, Kurz's leg muscles tensed and shifted. He was leaning over to pick up something by the door. With her eyes closed, Melissa heard the swish of paper on cracked linoleum followed by a crinkle when his hand closed on it.
The moment stretched into thin, cold nothingness. Melissa found it hard to keep still.
Suddenly, Kurz's mouth smashed against her upturned cheek.
"Ugh!" she cried out instinctively and bolted up to a sitting position to break away from his drooling mockery of a kiss. "What the hell was that for?"
Kurz grinned at her. "What? I thought the only way to wake up a sleeping princess was with a kiss."
"You're so gross," she complained. Melissa narrowed her eyes at Kurz, who was still sporting a shit-eating grin, and used her sleeve to mop up the trail of slobber he had left on her skin. She tried to act grumpy, like he had just startled her out of a good dream. "What's with the paper?"
Kurz held up the four-color flyer in his hand. "You want to order some take-out? It looks almost edible."
"I hate it when they come by to put that crap under the door. It always freaks me out," Melissa said.
Kurz shrugged. "People gotta make money somehow. By the way, you look awful. I guess three hours isn't enough to qualify as beauty sleep."
"Check a mirror yourself, Greasy McGee." Melissa stretched, yawned, and put her back to the wall. As soon as she could get her legs out in front of her, Kurz had his head pillowed on her thigh.
"Make sure I'm down for a full three hours, mmkay?" Kurz mumbled as his eyes fluttered closed. "I need to complete a whole sleep cycle or I'll be worthless to you."
"Too late for that," Melissa said, unable to resist an opening that easy.
"Bitch," he murmured.
Before she could stop them, the fingertips of her right hand were tracing the rolling line of his peaceful face and dropping down to that striking jaw. They followed the fluttering pulse of his jugular down to broad shoulders before settling over his arm.
"Hmmm, feels nice." Kurz smiled as sleep took him.
Melissa knew that she needed to get started on the laptop, but it could wait for another minute. She wanted to stare at her friend and partner, his features slack yet still undeniably handsome even in sleep, and wonder, Could it be...?