Author's Note: I'm so happy you guys enjoyed the smut! It seemed to take forever to actually get there, so I'm glad it was worth it. ;)
Jane woke to the birds chirruping outside her window, five minutes before her alarm clock was due to go off. For the first time since she'd gotten out of the black site, she'd awoken not in terror, but with a natural sleepiness.
Frowning, she stretched out her aching limbs, then froze as she remembered why she felt like she'd just completed a military assault course.
Weller.
Heat and mortification flooded through her as she remembered everything. The way his eyes had fallen closed as she'd taken hold of his cock for the first time, his Adam's apple shifting beneath the skin as he'd swallowed. The feel of his fingers digging into her hips as he'd guided her up and down on his lap. The growl in his voice as he'd urged her, fuck me harder.
The way she'd pulled his head between her legs, and his complete willingness to stay there until she came. Not that she'd been hard to push over the edge.
Oh, god.
How was she going to look him in the eye today? Never mind that he'd seen her naked body in its entirety in Patterson's scans of her tattoos—now he knew what she sounded like, smelled like, tasted like, felt like. And she knew the same of him.
He'd speak her name and she'd remember how he'd said it when he'd slipped his hand between her legs. He'd watch her at her most composed and know how she looked in the middle of a mind-blowing orgasm. An orgasm that he'd given her.
God, she hoped he wasn't the kind of guy who became insufferably cocky once he'd gotten laid. Not that he seemed the type, but who knew how things would change between them now?
She groaned and burrowed under the covers, trying to hide from her actions the night before. It didn't help, because she hadn't showered before she'd gotten into bed, and she still smelled like Weller, bringing back more provocative memories of everything they'd done.
Sex with Oscar had been great. How could it not have been, with his intimate knowledge of all her idiosyncratic turn-ons and the way her body responded to certain stimuli? He'd known things about her that she hadn't known from her own self-pleasure sessions. But there had been no uncertainty in it for him. No discovery. She had been Jane, but her body's responses were no different than Remi's. To him, she had been Remi.
But sex with Kurt…she didn't know what to think. Not that it had been bad. On a physical level, it had been explosively satisfying, filling a craving she'd felt since the first week she'd met him. Though now that she knew what he felt like against her, inside her, that craving would only grow.
Last night had been so heartbreaking, so filled with emotions she could barely begin to deal with. Sex with Oscar had never been like that. It had been a diversion. But the way Weller had looked at her, spoken to her…the way they'd argued before she'd kissed him…
He didn't remember the awful things he'd said to her the night he'd arrested her. That made her want to scream and throw things, even in light of what else he'd told her last night.
You broke my heart, Weller.
And you broke mine.
I was falling for you, and you stabbed me in the back.
You were the one who made me feel for you.
Fuck me, and remember that every time you put your life at risk, I go out of my mind.
She didn't know how to deal with sex like that. So open, so emotional, so confrontational. Up until she'd distracted him by making him go down on her, putting his mouth to a different use, he'd been determined to make her face the screwed-up nature of their relationship. She hadn't even known people did that during sex. She'd needed release, escape from their argument, and he'd pursued it even while he was inside her.
Weren't men supposed to be incapable of multi-tasking?
She couldn't deal with this. No matter how fantastic the orgasms had been, he'd fucked with her mind as well as her body. There was no way she could let him do that again.
Her alarm went off, and she slapped at it irritably, as annoyed with her own life choices as with the piercing noise. Ignoring the hum of desire that remembering the past night had left her with, she got out of bed and stretched a little, testing her healing gunshot wound and post-surgical shoulder in particular.
The bruises, lacerations and burns Keaton had inflicted on her had just about healed—it had now been over a month since her escape from the black site—but those two injuries still troubled her. Her physical therapist had given her exercises for her arm, which she'd been doing religiously since she'd first had permission to start, but progress was frustratingly slow.
Her lower half was halfway back to decent shape, though. She hadn't allowed herself back into the FBI's training facilities yet—since the punching bag would be staring her in the face and she'd have to resist the temptation to let loose on it—but she'd been going jogging for a couple of weeks now, despite her slight embarrassment at how short a distance she was able to manage compared to before her capture. It wouldn't have bothered her if she'd been alone, but her protective detail had been tailing her every time she went out.
How the mighty have fallen, huh, guys?
When she stepped out of her safehouse in her jogging gear today, her detail was nowhere to be seen. Dimly, she remembered they hadn't been there when she'd gotten back from Sandstorm's wake for Oscar—she assumed because Weller had been there and had sent them home. Maybe he'd decided she didn't need a detail anymore Or maybe he'd been so pissed off by the way she'd left him after they'd had sex, he'd not bothered to reinstate them.
She hoped he didn't make a scene at work. Not that he'd let it interfere with a case, but he hadn't been above talking about personal issues in the locker room or his office before.
Jane set off at a steady jog, ignoring the slight pain in her arm as she swung it and the occasional wrench of her side wound when her left foot hit the ground. She only managed ten minutes before instinct told her she was pushing it, and she turned back the way she'd come.
Not like you didn't get a good workout last night, she reminded herself.
That only made her start obsessing again over what Weller's reaction was going to be. She spent the last ten minutes of her jog with a scowl on her face, which only deepened when a passing dog-walker told her she should smile, because 'it might never happen'.
It already happened, you asshole, she thought, rounding the corner onto her street. I was tortured by a government organisation for three months and now I have PTSD. Oh, and before that I was a terrorist who wiped my own memory so I could infiltrate the FBI, lie to everyone there and get close enough to the deputy director to frame her for a murder I watched my ex-fiancé commit, right before he killed her too, and I killed him. Don't tell me to smile!
She let herself back into her safehouse and braced herself for an invasive memory of the night Weller had arrested her. Instead, she heard his voice from the night before.
Being in this room with me hurts you so much? We change that. Make a new memory, here and now. And if that doesn't work, we make another. And another. Until you understand.
Jane kicked off her sneakers and made a beeline for the shower. Understand what, Weller? That you don't remember the terrible things you said? You still said them. You had to mean them, on some level. And I still have to deal with those memories.
She stepped under the spray and began to wash away the exertion of her jog, and of her night with Weller. It wasn't until halfway through her shower that she realised that her sleep—once she'd actually managed to fall asleep, that was—had been undisturbed by nightmares.
Maybe sex with Weller had been good for her mental state, after all.
"Weller?"
"Huh?" Kurt brought his focus back to the present, rubbing a hand across his eyes.
Nas folded her arms and frowned at him. "I said, we need to discuss how to prevent this from becoming a risk further down the line."
Pushing thoughts of Jane's husky moans out of his head, he tried to cool off his thoughts by focusing on his irritation. "No. If your solution is telling Jane that she needs to kill everyone they tell her to kill, we don't need to discuss it. It won't help. If you want her to stay loyal to our side, pushing her over to the way they do things isn't the way."
"So you think I'm at risk of turning?"
When he looked around, Jane was standing just inside the door to Zero Division's annex, as though she'd been walking in as he'd been speaking and had come up short at his words. Her expression was stony, her shoulders high with tension.
"No one said that," Nas said, her tone conciliatory. "We're just…"
"I'm going to get coffee." Jane retreated the way she'd come, not looking at either of them.
Nas sighed and sat down opposite Kurt. "She's in a good mood today," she murmured with mild sarcasm.
"Can you blame her? She's on a knife edge all the time, and we haven't exactly been the most supportive handlers over the past couple of days." Weller sighed. "I'll talk to her. But you need to understand something, Nas. When her memory got wiped, Remi ceased to exist. You heard about the story Roman told about her pet rabbit. Jane doesn't have that kind of cruelty in her."
"Was it cruelty? Or did she instinctively understand, even as a child, that the rabbit would suffer more if she didn't follow the caregiver's instructions? The way Roman's rabbit did?" Nas leaned forward. "She formed a bond with that rabbit, and she wanted to spare it unnecessary suffering. She killed it out of compassion and out of practicality, but I'm sure she felt terrible about it. Jane possesses both of those qualities, and so did Alice. I'm not sure we can draw a line between Alice and Remi in the same concrete way we can for Jane and Remi."
"What's your point?" Weller asked.
"Jane has done things that hurt this team because she thought that in the long run, it would help them. That's not so different from the rabbit situation, is it? Did Remi cease to exist? Maybe consciously. But Jane still has many of Remi's personality traits, and we can't just apply moral standards as though they're inflexible. We have to think about the big picture. If Jane doesn't snap the necks of a few rabbits now, they and all the rabbits within a ten-mile radius might die in excruciating pain later."
"Remi would kill the rabbits. Jane would rather find a different way to keep them from a painful death. That's the difference between them. If I'd treated Jane like a killer, like a suspect, when she'd come out of that bag, what's to say she wouldn't have turned out more like Remi? And if we tell her to act more like Remi while she's undercover, that could damage her trust in us and the values we're supposed to be upholding. That trust is shaky to start with because of what the CIA did to her. We need to tread carefully if we want her to keep viewing us as the good guys."
Nas took a long, slow breath, thinking. "You have a point. My only concern is that while we keep the moral high ground, Jane gets exposed and killed, and we're no closer to learning Sandstorm's plans."
Kurt shook his head, standing up. "She has to be able to follow her instincts, Nas. Or we'll lose her. Her family obviously loved Remi. Jane has never had that family connection before. Did you see the way she looked when she said Shepherd and Roman hugged her?"
"And because they love her, they'll be slower to kill her. As we've seen by Roman covering for her in this instance." Nas pulled earbuds out of her pocket and motioned towards the door. "You should go talk to her. I'll see what else I can think up."
Kurt found Jane in the break area closest to Zero Division, staring into a cup of coffee as though it had mortally offended her. She stiffened at the sound of his footsteps, but didn't turn to face him.
"I don't think you're at risk of turning, Jane."
"When I hear people talking about me when they don't think I'm in the room, I generally take what they say at face value."
Kurt poured his own cup of coffee and sat down next to her. "Do you really think I would have kissed you back last night if I'd thought you were about to betray us?"
"Yes. Because sex clouds people's minds and then they make bad judgements."
He wondered if she was talking about Oscar or him, but decided he'd rather not know. "I don't regret last night. But that isn't a conversation we should be having here."
Jane sipped her coffee and said nothing, her eyes on the tabletop in front of her.
Kurt changed tack. "With the bombings yesterday, we didn't get a chance to talk about Roman's story about the rabbits."
"What's to say?" She smiled bitterly into her drink. "I was turned into a killer at a very young age. I did terrible things as an adult, too. Now Nas wants me to be that person again, and you want to make sure I don't enjoy it so much I go back to Sandstorm."
"That's not what I said." He sighed. "You think I don't have to handle Nas just as much as I handle anyone else on the team? Just because this is a joint taskforce, that doesn't make us of one mind. She doesn't know you the way I know you. She's not going to believe me when I say that you're not Remi, so I have to lay things out for her in a way she'll understand."
Jane was silent, but he sensed he was getting through to her, and continued, "Nas deals in data. She knows Remi has killed a lot of people, so in her mind, your cover necessitates that you do the same thing. She's used to handling career criminals, terrorists, people who are only doing good because she's found dirt on them and backed them into a corner. She doesn't see that that's not you."
"What if it is me?" Jane asked quietly. "This corner looks pretty inescapable. And you know what I've done when I've been backed into corners before. Now Mayfair is dead."
Last night, just after Jane had gone to meet with Roman, the team had held a small, unofficial wake for Mayfair in the office that had once been hers. They'd shared memories of her and drunk scotch, and at one point or another they'd all shed a tear. Hearing Jane mention Mayfair so soon after that made Kurt flinch. He needed a few days for her memory to settle again.
"This is the other way around. Last time, Oscar had a hold on you and you framed Mayfair, trying to save us. Now Nas has something you need and if members of Sandstorm die, no one's going to hold it against you. It's the collateral damage we have to worry about."
"I don't think Nas cares about collateral damage."
"Nas has her own baggage that she brings to her work. Everyone does. I'm trying to keep her in line. Hopefully she can do the same for me." He reached across the table for Jane's hand. "Do you still think I have so little faith in you?" After everything I told you last night? He bit back the final words.
She allowed him to lace his fingers through hers, watching their joined hands instead of his face. "I know you're on my side. I just don't know if you should be."
Kurt didn't bother to dignify that concern with an answer. As far as he was concerned, if she was second-guessing herself, she wasn't in danger of becoming a threat. Her own conscience would keep her on the right path.
"How's your arm this morning? Your gunshot wound?" He knew work was the wrong place to talk about their night together, but he needed to make sure she wasn't hurt. God knew he hadn't been in any state to worry about her bullet wound when he'd been on top of her last night, with her heels pressing against his ass and her nails leaving red furrows down his back.
Jane pulled her hand away, as if she couldn't touch him and think about the things they'd done at the same time. At least you don't have to worry about getting a hard-on in front of the team, he thought wryly, but kept his mouth shut.
"I went jogging this morning. No problems, though I didn't get as far as I would have liked." She seemed to remember something. "Did you pull my detail?"
He nodded. "When I got there last night. Seemed pretty pointless having agents watching you at home, when the real danger is out there with Roman and Shepherd. That okay?"
Jane snorted. "You know I hate having a protective detail."
"Yeah, but they've been waking you up from your nightmares. You said you preferred to be woken than left to sleep through them." A belated thought occurred to him. "Did you wake yourself up last night?"
"Actually, I didn't dream last night," Jane admitted, still unable to meet his gaze.
Kurt's spirits lifted at that information. He wasn't arrogant enough to think he'd cured her PTSD with sex and a stern talking-to—just genuinely happy she'd had a nightmare-free night. "I'm glad."
Before Jane could reply, both of their phones buzzed—Jane's first, then his. Kurt glanced at the display. "Patterson?"
"She's solved my honeycomb tattoo." Jane held up her hand, the honeycomb pattern on the back of it facing him.
He cocked his head in the direction of the lab. "Let's go see what she's got."
Jane flashed him a small smile as they headed out. It seemed they were at a truce—for now.
