She discreetly digs her freshly manicured nails into the flesh of her palms and sets her jaw; the woman at her side still hasn't uttered a syllable- no, the woman hasn't even met her eyes yet. The simple occurrence isn't reinforcing even a fraction of the security she thinks this establishment will present. Reality is a blunt blade slicing tiny cuts into her skin- too little to bleed out, too painful to be nothing.
The hallways are pristine and bustling with moving bodies; all dressed in business attire, all obviously fellow agents. There looks to be a coffee shop in one portion of it, with a newspaper stand to boot. She arches one perfect blonde eyebrow at that, but still doesn't question when Agent Wilkons halts her stride- therefore stopping her too- to stand in the short line at the front of the coffee outlet.
Joan studies the tile and marvels at the fact they could be standing in an airport.
Hesitantly, she clears her throat. "I had assumed we would be going straight to the Domestic Pro-
"Don't say that out loud," the other blonde hisses, and Joan feels a flush creep into the apples of her cheeks. Sighing heavily, Agent Wilkons continues after a terse moment. "Let's get this straight; this agency has multiple levels, multiple departments, and multiple clearance levels. You need to understand that once we pass a certain floor on the elevator you can talk about certain things. This," she motions to the barista and the bystanders, "This is like the lobby. Now, how do you like your coffee? I'm buying. First day on this job is always rough. Your perky self is going to need some GoGo juice."
Pushing her shoulders back, a fire enveloping the pit of her stomach, Joan recalls her father-a stern man; a respected man. She remembers how he liked his coffee.
"Black, strong as you can get it," Joan grits out. The agent orders a latte, but with hawk like perceptibility Joan watches something tug on the edges of the woman's lips. Ambition is demanding its own reprieve. It makes her feel good.
"My name is Megan. I think we are going to be good friends, Joan. Welcome to the agency."
Even if she burns the shit out of her tongue and the bitter swill causes her taste buds to churn in disgust, it makes her feel good.
O
The thing is: she knows Megan. Megan was training with her on The Farm just two months prior. "You don't want to get attached to people when you're just the guppies in a school of fish," Megan explains. "You don't know who's going to last, or who's going to get ravaged by sharks."
They walk and talk with their drinks a few minutes more, winding down numerous parts of the building that she imagines is a labyrinth. She does not know what she will discover, and it makes the blood and sinew sing in her veins because this is all she has ever wanted in her entire life.
Megan gives her the spiel on interagency workings and Joan resists the urge to ask for a piece of paper and pen to take detailed notes. She wants to understand every miniscule detail. She wants to belong here.
Finally, they reach a row of elevators, and Megan turns to her, an expectant expression on her pretty face. "Now, repeat everything I've just told you."
Joan's laughter is melodic and easy, and she's never been more grateful.
"Inter office romance is encouraged. All that 'secrets, secrets, are no fun, secrets will hurt everyone,' saying is a load of bull. Don't sell information because you will be caught and you will face severe charges. Oh, and don't take your parking place. It's the second row by the east entrance, on the far end."
Megan grins at her, but stops just before they enter onto their supposed floor. "One more thing, Joan:"
She inclines her head, ears perking to catch every word.
"Arthur Campbell is our boss. He will sell your kidneys to the highest bidder before you can blink, but he will also grow on you like mold. He has no steed, and you are not his princess. Trust me."
O
Later, she'll try to remember getting that bit of advice, but comes up absolutely blank.
Later than that, she'll decide it's for the best.
O
"Sir," the secretary chimes. "The new recruit is here to see you."
At first glance, Arthur Campbell does not seem like much.
His eyes are as light as the tie he wears, and his suit likely costs more than her entire wardrobe. In sharp contrast is the dark fringe of hair, well groomed and severe eyebrows, mouth a cherry, drawing and versatile. She can see the beginnings of lines at the edges, as well as some around the corners of his eyes. A strong jaw recedes to give way to gleaming teeth.
The man's smile dries her mouth.
That's the primary sign, the ceding warning, that this is a dangerous thing.
But then he speaks, and most coherent thought vanishes, and any thought to how he, at the looks to be no older than she, has climbed the political ladder so steadily, vanishes with it. Charisma practically oozes from him.
"Arthur Campbell," he greets her warmly, maneuvering around his desk to present himself to her, inches and counting, reaching out to take her hand. He has long fingers; they appear slightly calloused. In that very second, the glint of something gold catches the light just right and-
In horrific slow motion, the coffee lid pops off dramatically, further spilling hot, dark liquid all over her new boss. He swears harshly, but by some miracle she does not flinch. Without warrant, her eyes widen comically and her hands begin vying for a box of Kleenex on his desk.
She has already begun dabbing at the wet spots when the realization hits exactly where her hands are. Stilling immediately, wary gaze flickers up to his beneath a fringe of lashes.
Arthur Campbell just stares at her.
Then, slowly, like the fading of a bruise, something tugs his mouth upward once more. Covered in hot coffee, and he is grinning at her.
She comprehends right there that her new boss is either one nigh upon phenomenal individual or a raving lunatic. Placing the ruined tissue in a nearby trashcan, her hand somehow discovers his own once more, and shakes it properly, twice.
"Joan," Arthur acknowledges for the first time, ignores the way her heart kicks at the sound of it. "If this is any indication as to how our working relationship is going to go, I dare say we are in for a ride."
A hysterical giggle crawls up her throat.
"Just what I need," she teases. Spur of the moment, something clouds over his pleasant features, and he takes a firm step backward, away from her, to sit at his desk again.
Joan clears her throat softly.
He merely bids her a short nod.
"Go on," he motions to the door, and the change in his demeanor makes her face feel tight, her cells too big. She glances at his wedding ring one last time.
"Get to know the office."
She does not tell him goodbye.
(Because it is not.)
O
When she was a little girl, military brat circumstances had reduced her living situation to twice a year school changes, and the constant fight to grow comfortable with a new mattress, new friends, and a new life.
As an adult, Joan has never welcomed the dysfunction more.
Like a thousand tiny insects swarming beneath her skin, a constant tingling in her fingertips- move, move, move. She feels stagnant, almost as if her whole life has transformed into curdled milk at the bottom of a used cereal bowl.
Usually, this ache is tolerable.
She is a liar to admit being an agent for the CIA has not eased this predicament. Arthur understands that about her immediately.
Arthur understands her.
Which is why, two months into the job, it's become a commonplace for her to venture into his office, into his realm, at the bane of a long day. Sometimes when Arthur returns from upper floor meetings with tight sphincters and their secretary counterparts, Arthur shares with her the complimentary fruit trays they give out. He is nothing but cordial, and he only offers her assurance when she asks for it.
Usually.
Then, waves kissing the shoreline no matter how many time they're rejected, things change.
"Eloquently put, bad intelligence sucks."
Palm over his mouth to muffle the guffaws, he shakes his head in wonder. "Yeah," he agrees heartily. "It isn't pleasant."
In an act of pure, unrelenting spontaneity, Joan props her nude Steve Madden pumps up on the edge of his desk, revealing long, toned legs. Regardless of the fact every fiber of her being is telling her this is utterly wrong, she sighs brazenly, a little breathlessly, and takes a bite of the fresh apple in her hand, savoring the mechanical crunching of it.
The sweet juices run down her chin, and she is purposely sluggish to wipe it away.
She is all too aware the air has become wrought with tension, strung as tight as a harp, and Arthur's gaze is burning her skin.
It would be a lie to say she is not dangling a piece of fresh meat in front of the proverbial tiger. Taunting. Teasing.
"You know, the one thing I've learned about this job is…"
She sinks her teeth into the flesh of the fruit, and positions to look straight at him. "It can be hard."
Joan watches him swallow, his Adam's apple bobbing.
Her pulse rushes in her ears, adrenaline pumping in her veins.
The morally sane half of her is screaming at her, thrashing at her to stopthisstopthissstopthis. But the larger half is putting up a white flag and saying go with it. Arthur is still, back ramrod straight.
His pupils are blown, and she'd bet hers are too.
She bites her lip to feign seductiveness, but in reality it's trembling too hard to let live. "But," Joan murmurs, voice all honey and husk and valiantly freed want.
"I like it rough."
Surreptitious, she moves to her feet lithely, depositing the half eaten oral fixation in the trash, without a backward glance as she leaves.
When she opens the door to her shoddy apartment that night, she slams it with a sharp cry and slides down against it.
That was the first night she cries over Arthur Campbell, and she hates him for evoking it.
O
New light spins things a different way.
He beckons for her to follow him into his office the moment she arrives that next morning. The sun that filters in through his blinds is warm and rejeuvenating on her skin. She basks in it, and keeps her head held high.
"Last night," he begins, but she finishes.
"-was a mistake. I apologize for that."
His wedding ring is a bright pachyderm sitting on her chest, forcing the breath from her with every heave. Arthur does not stop her from flitting off to her desk, to Megan and normalcy and operations she can lose herself in.
O
Joan would truly adore claiming that the affair began innocently enough.
The truth is it takes him three long weeks after her proposition for him to do anything about it. She could lie, pretend it wasn't her fault, but the fact is undeniable and rogue that three weeks after she hiked her dress up her legs in his office, something came inexplicably undone.
A cut was sewn up just beneath her ribcage, two inches to the right and she could have hemorrhaged and died. He knows this.
He ordered the tactical team to get her out.
He's her boss, but he's not, because-
The second he gets her alone in his office, white shutters drawn tight and mute to the world, he creeps so close she barely has any space for herself, tangles his fingers in her blonde hair, and slams his mouth against hers hard.
His fingers shove up her thin blouse to expose her lean stomach, and he strokes the pads of his fingers there, caring none to how he sets her ablaze in just that miniscule movement. Somehow, she ends up sitting partially on the desk, legs wrapped around his waist, holding him as tight as she can with clothing still present, sighing into his mouth and sucking his tongue as if that was her god given ability.
It's coming home after a long journey.
It's messy, and perfect, and everything she hadn't expected, which ends up amounting to something that's pretty amazing.
O
Illicit dinners are a drag.
It's the teasing, fingers dipping beneath the table to graze on thighs and soothe belt buckles, eyes alight with mirth and wanton lust that's the real part that counts. Arthur orders steak and she sips her wine like she has a secret.
They slip away to the bathroom and his pliable self control withers.
He takes her in public as if she's never been anyone else's
For days after, all she can wear to Langley is turtlenecks and scarves.
O
Sometimes Arthur pulls her into his office to steal kisses.
These stolen kisses are as sacred as ancient relics, and she cherishes them as fine china.
She's never been touched the way he touches her, never even been gazed at with the same adornment. After making love, he'll bury himself in her neck and kiss her again and again, passion and bending and delight.
He wants her. He wants her. He wants her.
She doesn't think about the wife thing; she just doesn't.
O
But every ending is not happy, and their lovely bubble of sex and peace eventually draws to a looming crest.
When it does, the bubble becomes fractured in so many places there is no putting it back together, piece by piece. It is as demolished as it is dead.
O
The inside of the Campbell's home is regally gorgeous.
She studies an oil based mural on a far wall that depicts a scenic meadow with a stream painted a startling azure. The wine, a chills zinfandel, settles on her tongue, warming her comfortably. She's slipped away from the party, from Megan and a few other female agents who chat animatedly with Gina.
Obviously, Joan does not care for Gina very much.
A part of her thinks it is not the other woman's fault. Gina is just married to the man she is irrevocably in love with. No harm was intentional.
The mascara stained pillow on Joan's bed begs to differ.
Soft footsteps behind her alert her of his presence. Suddenly her dress, a wrapping black, feels even more constricting.
She is a weak insect in humanities grip, squeezed until her insides are raw and exposed.
"This painting was my grandmother's," he rumbles, flaying every piece of her she thinks she has such a handle on. "Given to her by my grandfather during their courtship. She said it symbolizes their love."
He is at her elbow; his breathing is unsteady in her ear.
"It's beautiful," she assents.
"You are."
Joan pointedly does not look at him.
"We can't," she pleads lowly; weakly.
Arthur bobs his head, a doting puppy. "I know. I know that, Joan." He swipes a hand over his jaw, expression one of torment. "Forgive me."
Something inside her chest shrivels.
"There's nothing to forgive, Arthur," is all she manages before the sound of heels clacking on tile cause them to straighten up, although not necessarily straighten out the tremulous emotional atmosphere.
"Darling," Gina sounds, grasping his elbow, lips a startling maroon as they pull back over a primitive thing that could be a smile. Her eyes are icily sharp. "Showing Joan around the house?"
"I was just being nosy, actually," she protests, injecting as much nonchalance into the words as she can, although every organ within her is decidedly lodged upward.
"Have you seen the bedroom?" Gina questions sweetly.
Joan thinks she might need a trashcan.
Arthur looks sick too.
Like a skittish animal, she attempts to flee, materializing an excuse of some stature. Gina stops her a few steps out.
"Arthur was right, Joan," the brunette smarts sharply. "You do look beautiful tonight."
She acts like she hasn't heard Gina, and ignores the way her hands shake and shake and shake.
O
"I deserve more than being your dirty little whore," Joan cries out. "I don't have to disrespect myself like this!"
The sheets are too warm on her bare breasts. Arthur's blue eyes are too soft, too vulnerable. All that is between them is pricey hotel air and lies.
"Then why do you keep coming back?" he asks her.
Joan falls back against the headboard and exhales, exhausted. She closes her eyes to keep the moisture that threatens to seep from them at bay. It's no use; a single tear runs down her cheek. A rough thumb wipes it away, and when he kisses her he tastes of salt and steak and expensive scotch.
She asks herself for the hundredth time what the hell she's doing.
She does not have an answer for him.
"You're not a whore," he chants against her slick, naked body. "You are not a whore."
O
A lead on a high valued terrorist comes into Langley the following day.
Joan is on the next redeye to Nairobi.
O
Mouth steel wool, hand tightened painfully around the chilled, dangerous metal of the pistol in her coat, neatly tucked away for no one in metropolitan Nairobi to discover, she waits.
Broken heart weighs slight when considering the fatal methods Makalan Abasi proves to bring to bear.
Joan reminisces on being five years old, all dreams as wide as Manhattan and blooming, rosy cheeks, doting behind her sisters and asking for more, more, more. Thinking back to that, the reality is simple and stark against the fact this mission is her most dangerous yet. If she has a hand in the capture of Abasi, or better yet, turns him, her name, her legacy will be the only thing traveling around the halls of the CIA for weeks. It could be enough for a promotion. A transfer, at least a few floors up.
Ambition is heady in her veins.
Static buzzes in her ear.
"Joan," her technical operations guru crackles in her ear. "Joan, you're being instructed by the boss to get out of there now. You're too green, and the political fallout could be messy. There's a failsafe two streets over. A bus is waiting for you, to take you to the nearest airport. Be on it."
She isn't a doting little girl anymore.
"No."
Then, she tears her earpiece out, allows it fall to the dirt, and crushes it beneath her heel until the remnants of the device are only mangled plastic pieces. For a moment, she thinks of Arthur- but only long enough to think of Gina Campbell- thinks of everything they could have had, wasted as the plastic at her feet. They have horrible timing. That will not change whether she is named the next national hero or not.
Joan pushes one blonde curl behind her ear, and moves.
O
Here's the thing:
Years after Nairobi, she thinks it when Annie waltzes through the door after Russia, fire in her eyes, façade that of one who is entirely unscathed.
She thinks it, but does not say it out loud.
The deepest scars are invisible to the naked eye.
O
And, for all intents and purposes, Annie is stronger than she was in Nairobi by a mile and a million.
O
Later, they tell her she nailed Abasi to the wall.
They tell her she has saved thousands of American lives, and that the intelligence they gathered in return from the government as penance prevented multiple terrorist attacks over the course of nearly four years.
They tell her she is hero, yet-
What she remembers is a different story.
Joan remembers hearing a high pitched grind like nails on a chalkboard that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. A horrible shaking- an earthquake, she had thought- and then the world went red and fell in her eyes.
Joan remembers screams. She remembers a piece of coarse fabric being thrown over her head, being thrust into a tumbling abyss. Down the rabbit whole, body too large, lights too bright.
Death, she remembers thinking, should not be so terrible.
Joan remembers being unmade.
Yet-
They tell her she is a survivor, and a hero.
O
The first thing that happens when the plane lands back in D.C. is the debriefing, so he is not the first person she sees. She can't think of the last time she slept soundly, but there is a pressure behind her skull that sings every time she goes to rest. Nightmares reap.
Her left arm is in a cast, and her delicate skin mottled with harsh lacerations. Lip busted, stitches in her scalp.
Every time something twinges, a few white pills are chucked into the soft pallet of her mouth, and she swallows them dry.
This is her reckoning.
O
If they were platonic, he would have given her a broad berth and told her to go home and get some rest. Instead, he wraps her in his arms and holds her as if he's a man wishing on borrowed time, and she's a ghost, already dead.
His lips are at her temple. "I love you."
Dead to the world.
She finds it within herself to say it back, and then louder, and then louder. She doesn't remember when he let go. She doesn't remember for a long time.
She likes that he makes her forget.
O
The next morning, Gina stands outside her doorstep with a thick slew of papers in her hands, and her sentiment is not kind.
"I will end his career. I will do it, swear to God."
The world is too bright, and she squints, a newborn to this new feeling.
Dread.
"Why?"
"In bed last night, he-," Gina covers her mouth with her free hand, and then let's out a sound Joan can only ever recall hearing from a bird. Suddenly, with the sharp click of time, Joan looks at Gina as if she's never seen her before.
It is apparent, then, that Gina is only a woman.
A woman who loves the same man she does.
It's not Gina's fault, and so even though it's not her heart that's breaking, she feels it too when the other woman says, voice barely audible,
"He said your name when we were in bed together. I have hotel receipts. It's over. It's all over."
O
Barely an hour later, entering his office in an identical fashion to the way she has since the first day she waltzed into the DPD. The look on his face when she puts her transfer papers on the oak makes her feel like she's ripping her stitches, one by one, in the most devastating way possible.
She feels like she's bleeding in front of him, but he isn't seeing anything.
He doesn't even fight her, and that's what kills her.
He doesn't even try.
When she leaves she takes her dignity with her, and leaves her heart behind.
The little white pills are utopia, Atlantis, undiscovered and uninhibited. She has made room within her for him to fit, stretch her wide, so when the last of that flame is quieted all she is left with is empty space and cold bed sheets and bottles and bottles of little white pills.
O
Megan tells her it's an addiction.
She tells Megan it is life. And also to please fuck off.
When Joan transfers, she meets Seth Newman.
Seth looks at her like she's made of glass, which is silly considering she holds herself with the assurance of most men. He takes her out after cut throat operations, and makes sure she eats on a normal schedule. Her eldest sister has family reunion, but Joan chooses not to go. She and Seth watch movies on her couch while eating a bowl of Chex Mix instead.
When she's with Seth, she feels ten years younger. Fresher. Easier.
They ignore one another's flaws.
(Because the fact of the matter is: she takes handfuls of prescription medication every chance she gets, and Seth tips the bottle a little too often to be considered healthy.)
She has not seen Arthur in two months, and she makes sure to keep her head down and her tone light when she's anywhere below a certain floor.
O
Seth overdoes it a little one night, and sticks his fingers in a pie that tastes of hot metal and dead leaves. He doesn't mean to, he really doesn't- but he's too inebriated to stop himself.
"Is it true that you fucked Arthur Campbell?"
Whiplash is relevant with how swiftly her attention catches his. Although these past few months, these past operations, seem like an underwater life, too tired to wake up, the words are dry ice in her bloodstream, being doused with frigid water in the middle of winter. "What?" all but a hiss.
Seth grins boyishly.
"You know. You and Campbell. Everyone in the office knew. Is it true you, him, and his wife- Serena or something- had a- uh-an- arrangement?"
His laughter is too loud in her apartment, booming and booming.
She stares at him, and calmly steps closer to his lanky frame.
Then, with as much force as she's ever thought she was capable of, Joan decks him for all she's worth.
She doesn't apologize to him, even when his nose has gone a nasty grey and he's had a chance to sober up. She can't find it within herself.
O
Seth moves out a week later, and his going is what wakes her up a bit. Cold turkey is difficult- but cutting back is a given.
O
She trades a handful for two or three at a time.
It seems an improvement.
O
Between missions and hectic lives, she eventually invites Megan out to have a few drinks with her. It strikes her as odd that she's known this woman for a year and a half. It's a long time, when garnering the amount she's kept most friends.
Megan is weary.
"Joanie," she says, taking a fresh swig of beer. "Joanie, you don't look alright, but I'm going to take your word for it. You did a hell of a job in Nairobi."
"I don't think any of us are alright. We do this job, we give our whole selves to it, and it takes a lot from us."
"Listen, I had wanted to ask you about something."
Joan inclines her head, eyebrows rising slightly.
"Remember when I said Arthur Campbell was not something to screw with?"
Joan closes her eyes, protest at her lips.
"I really don't care," Megan tells her in a tone which promptly stops any comeback she's procured. "But you are my friend. Don't let that wear you. If it makes you feel any better, he's not in much better shape. Rumor mill isn't kind, and he's always been a hard ass, but apparently his wife is giving him the pink slip. I also know that he is up for keeps on the actual DCS position. Something about Wilcox retiring in a few years. At the end of the day…you've got to bury your dead."
When Joan departs that night, she thinks this might be the first step to healing. Just the very first step.
O
Speak of the bastard, and the bastard shall appear.
O
A knock resounds at about three in the morning; she's a light sleeper. She rubs her eyes and ties a robe, and muses mentally that if it's some assailant that's arrived to kill her then she's lead a pretty good life.
He takes her breath away.
His hair is disheveled; he wears a pair of nice fitting jeans and a black cardigan that's pushed up to his elbows like he's been working on something strenuous. Eyes are bloodshot, mouth in a pucker. It takes her twenty six seconds to get herself together.
"Do you know what time it is?" Joan asks dumbly, although not one bit of her is even a little asleep. He turns every last nerve ending she has into a live wire, trembling energy, four shots of espresso and counting.
Arthur slides his hands into his pocket as if he's a boy being reprimanded by his mother. She tries not to giggle, because she knows it will come out hysterically and inappropriate.
His honesty is brutal.
"Actually, I have no idea what time it is, Joan."
She lets him in anyway, so it never really mattered to begin with.
O
His sturdy hands are blissfully vacant of any jewelry.
They congregate by her sofa, a coffee table between them, always something between them, but they do not sit. Joan drinks in the sight of him.
"What," her vocal chords are rubble, shaky. "What are you doing here?"
The right questions, the right time.
Their timing was never good before.
He juts one hand out, palm encasing her cheek. It grows warm where it meets her flesh. She's had to deal with cold extremities since she saw him last, so this is a welcome change. Arthur Campbell is the sun, warm and forgiving.
He's her failsafe.
His voice is as broken as she feels.
"I cannot stay away."
They don't make it to the bedroom.
O
Her golden locks tickle his nose, his arms encasing her in a cocoon of blithe. He watches her eyelids flutter as the day makes itself known through the small openings in her blinds. It can't be past seven.
They'll have to go in soon.
When she finally comes to, he coaxes her awake by trailing his fingers along her spine and the expanse of her neck. A lazy grin graces her beautiful face.
"I just want to stay like this," she whines softly.
He knows- she knows- the world knows- that their coexistence can be detrimental. You can't have just the job, he decides.
"I think," he proclaims, sounding every bit as foolish and profound as he thinks he sounds. This is all he needs.
"I think that we're better like this, Joan."
O
Fin.