Disclaimer: I do not own Red Eye.
.-.-.-.-.
Three twenty-three. Three twenty-four. Three twenty-five.
Lisa had woken, none-too-gently reminded of the flaws of sleeping in a room that hadn't changed. There was one spring in the mattress that had been put in at an odd angle, and it always seemed to dig right into her hip no matter how she turned. The moon shone right into her window, bright as a street light. It also seemed that her father had never fixed the faucet in the bathroom, and the steady drip, drip, drip of water alone was maddening enough to keep her awake.
Three twenty-six. Three twenty-seven.
She tried to turn away from the clock, but the spring jabbed her worse on that side. Under normal circumstances, she might have gotten up to get some comfort food, but no amount of exhaustion could make her forget that she had company sleeping downstairs.
Three twenty-eight. Three twenty-nine.
"Screw it," she said, kicking the blanket off her legs. It was her house, wasn't it? And she had already vowed not to let Jackson's presence rule her decisions. She found a pair of slippers from her closet and pulled on a thin cotton robe, determined to allow herself something normal in the highly abnormal mess her life had become.
When she reached the stairs, rubbing her eyes, she could see the light still on in the living room. Cautiously, silently, she made her way down, hoping not to disturb Jackson. She had no desire to speak to him, not until she'd worked out what game he was playing.
A brief scan of the open room revealed him sprawled on the too-short couch, pillow under his head and the blanket half-falling off his legs. He was still in the clothes he'd worn all day, suit pants and green shirt looking uncharacteristically rumpled. The jacket had been draped over the back of the couch, presumably within reach of his hand should he wake and need the hidden gun. On his chest, the file of photos lay open and forgotten in sleep; the glasses she recognized from the funeral were loosely grasped in his hand, resting almost protectively on the file. He must have drifted off while reading it. The lamp was on its lowest setting, but had never been switched off.
Lisa breathed a soft sigh. With luck, he'd stay that way until she was done. She went to the kitchen and opened a lower cabinet as quietly as she could. The pan she wanted was thankfully right on top. Though she hated to admit it, she was glad Jackson had thought about food for the next day, and even more glad that he had bought a dozen eggs. She found butter in the fridge, grabbed the eggs and the milk, and lit the burner.
She checked an upper cabinet to see if the mugs were still up there; they were, so she chose a large one she remembered buying in high school and put it on the counter. Next she located a fork, a spatula, some salt and pepper. Deftly, she cracked two eggs together with one hand, let the yolks and the clear whites drain into the mug, tossed the shells into the sink. She added milk, stirred the mixture with the fork, and set it aside.
The flame steadied on the burner, so she dropped a pat of butter into the pan and set it on the heat. As she watched it melt, gently tilting the pan to coat the whole bottom, she felt an almost meditative calm slip over her. How many times had she done this, over how many years? Not every night, of course, but whenever she was stressed, angry, upset, afraid, depressed—this was her ritual, her quiet way of coping with sleepless nights and bad dreams.
It had been Joe's fault, really, and though she looked more like her mother, her father had been the one Lisa most took after in personality. He had started giving her eggs when she had come down as a little girl, sniffling after some nightmare to find her insomniac parent enjoying a late night (or early morning, depending on how one looked at it) snack. He would set her up at the table, a finger to his lips as if to say, 'don't tell mom' as he went through the same preparations she now did. They would eat in silence, sharing a conspiratorial grin, then Lisa would be sent up to bed while Joe cleaned up to hide their tracks.
She smiled a little to herself. It hadn't been until much later that she figured out that of course her mother must have known; where else would the eggs be disappearing to so quickly? At the time, though, it had been a wonderful secret, something only she and her father knew, and it had followed her through high school, college, her first apartment on her own…through the recovery from the horror of her rape, and then after meeting Jackson, to Annapolis, and to…now.
Swallowing, she fluffed the eggs in the mug and prepared to dump them into the pan when a quiet voice spoke behind her. "Scrambled eggs at this hour, Leese?"
Her hand froze, gripped the mug in place, eggs unpoured. First, she counted to ten, then ten again, then she slowly turned.
Jackson leaned a hip against the island, yawning. He still held the glasses in one hand, propping the other up to rub his face. "I wondered if I'd see this bit of predictability tonight, or if you'd avoid it just to spite me."
It took another count before she could answer him. "Shut up, Jackson," she growled with more vehemence than either of them expected, "Just shut the hell up."
Surprisingly, he backed off instead of coming back with some witty retort. They went through another of their now-common silences, then Lisa turned back to the stove and finished dumping the eggs into the pan. She pushed them around a little, ignoring the man across the room as she worked.
He cleared his throat. "So, ah…how many are you making?"
Lisa stopped stirring. Without looking at him, she said, "Jackson."
"Yes?"
"Do you want eggs, too?"
"Yes…?"
Another count to ten, then she reached into the carton and pulled out three more. "Then ask outright next time," she muttered, cracking them into the mug.
Jackson said nothing else while she worked, which was as much a blessing as it was a distraction. She could feel him watching her, studying the movements she made as she prepared enough eggs for both of them. She knew she should feel more upset that her ritual was being observed by an outsider, but there was a strange sense of comfort in knowing there was someone else there.
Even if it was someone who continually pissed her off.
She split the eggs onto two plates and set them on the island, one in front of Jackson and one on her side. Forks followed, and the salt and pepper shakers. He picked up his fork and dug right in, but Lisa hesitated. Somehow, sharing this with him was in many ways more intimate than kissing him had been. She felt the sudden need to stamp it as her own, to keep it something she had shared with her father and not with her former tormentor.
The fork had hovered by her mouth for nearly a minute when she remembered one thing, something that even Jackson, who thought he knew everything about her, wouldn't see coming.
"Something wrong?" he asked between bites. He frowned as she began rifling through the refrigerator. "What are you looking for?"
"This," she said, withdrawing with her prize. "Eggs just aren't complete without it."
"You have got to be kidding me." Jackson put his fork down. "Real funny, Leese."
She smirked and unscrewed the lid, scooping out a forkful and letting the purple mass drop into the middle of her plate. With a satisfied little sound, she mixed it in, then tasted it.
Perfect.
Jackson looked a little green—matching, incidentally, the color her eggs had become. "You didn't just put grape jelly on scrambled eggs."
"And here I was under the impression that you'd studied my every preference," she taunted. "Guess I'm not so predictable as you'd like to think."
He watched her in disbelief as she finished the rest, obviously in bliss. "Guess not."
Something in his tone made her look up sharply. She finished the last forkful, all traces of humor gone, then picked up the plates and put them in the sink. Instead of saying more, she busied herself with cleaning up the mess she'd made while she gathered her thoughts.
As she put the food away, she saw him out of the corner of her eye, putting the dishes in the sink and wiping down the counter. She wouldn't have much time to avoid talking to him, and he seemed to want to say something.
She was right. "I've been going through the file," he began, but she interrupted him again.
"Why did you do it?" The question was hard enough to ask; she watched the door of the fridge, her hands, anything but him.
Silence, then, "Do what?"
She rounded on him then. "I'll say it if you want to be coy," she hissed. "Why did you kiss me, Jackson? Why the hell did you do that? What purpose did it serve?"
His expression had sobered, hardened. "Did it have to have a purpose?" He snorted. "This isn't a fairy tale, Leese. I don't know what you thought I meant, but you might want to forget your little fantasy about it being anything more than a distraction. I told you you were easy."
Her hand flew toward his face for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, only this time he was ready. He caught it easily, twisted it behind her back, leaned in close. Lisa couldn't get free without hurting herself, though she pulled her face away from his as much as possible. "Let go of me," she said tightly, furious, humiliated.
"What did you think it meant?" he asked, breath fanning over her ear. He tightened his hold on her, stopping her struggles. "What did you imagine about me, Leese?"
"I thought," Lisa replied through clenched teeth, "That you were human. Just for a moment." She saw the barb hit home in the way the muscle of his jaw flexed. She drove it deeper by mirroring her earlier words. "Guess I was wrong."
He stilled, then she found herself released all at once. She staggered back, putting distance between them as they caught their breaths. Then he snatched his glasses up from the island countertop. "Guess so."
The tension was back, and with it, her headache. Lisa closed her eyes, defeated. "It's four o'clock in the morning. I'm going back to bed. We can discuss our 'plans' tomorrow, when we can be civil."
"Sure." He was already on his way back to the living room without a backward glance.
Lisa sighed deeply and went back up to her room.
.-.-.-.-.
She knew it was a dream, was completely aware of its complete surreality and the sheer improbability of it ever actually happening. It still didn't change the fact that she was dreaming about a lean form that hovered over hers, about full lips that captured hers, about a voice that crooned her name in a broken tone. She knew there was no way the warm arms that wound around her were real, and certainly the legs that twined with hers never actually would. It would take more trust—and naturally more emotion than Lisa believed they had time to fathom in the rest of their lives—before she would consider making Jackson the first man she'd slept with in the five years since before she'd received the scar on her chest.
She knew it was a dream, but then, there was nothing wrong with dreaming. She let her mind unfold the images one by one. All at once, the dream changed; he was arching his body against hers, crying out her name, over and over and over…
"Leese! Hey, Leese!"
Her eyes snapped open to see the ceiling of her old room. Sunlight flooded through the open shade, and she moaned, throwing an arm over her eyes as she turned over.
"Lisa!"
The hell. "What?" she whined loud enough for him to hear, actually whined and didn't care. His voice was coming from downstairs; if he wanted to wake her up, there had to be better ways. "Let me sleep."
"Lisa," his tone changed, sounded a little edgier than normal, even muffled by the door, "I really think you should come down here now."
Collecting the tattered remains of her pleasant dream-version of her houseguest was out of the question now. She flung the covers back and grabbed the robe before stalking to the bedroom door and down the stairs. "You'd better have a damn good reason, Jackso—oh—"
Rounding the corner, she found herself confronted by the sight of Jackson in the hall, surrounded by five men in black suits; his hands were clasped on the top of his head, and all five had weapons trained on him. They all looked up at her, waiting.
"I'm sorry, Leese," Jackson said softly, sincerely.
Something moved in her peripheral vision. Lisa spun to face her attacker, but the other had the benefit of suprise. Pain exploded at the back of her head, made stars float momentarily before her eyes, and then she was falling, suddenly too heavy to stand against the pull of gravity that pulled her down, down, down.
The last thing she heard was Jackson shouting her name from a thousand miles away, over and over and over.
