Author's Note: Wow guys! Honestly, I did not expect a response like this. I mean, it's a Sill fic. I didn't think there would be so many interested. I'm just glad you're all enjoying it.
Unfortunately, I don't know what happened, but this chapter turned out a little more serious than I intended. Oddly enough, the third chapter is shaping up to be even more serious than this. Damn, Sill can warp your brain.
Big, major thanks goes to Wepdiggy for his help on this chapter. Without him, I probably would have never thought of half the stuff in here.
She stepped into Jill's hotel room and let out a breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding.
So this was the lair of the beast? It didn't seem so bad. It was a fairly normal hotel room for what was supposed to be the succubus from Hell. Where was the fire? The brimstone? The lifeless, soulless bodies nailed to the walls? Damn, she had been watching too many movies with Chuck.
Jill walked over to a table and fixed herself a glass of ice water. "Would you like something to drink," she asked.
Actually, she was feeling a bit parched. Her mouth had gone progressively dry ever since Jill had opened the door. "Yes, thank you," she said stiffly. It was still hard to talk to the woman normally. Like an actual person.
Chuck had said she was a robot. Maybe it would just be better if she were one now.
Why would she even want to talk to Jill like a human being? She knew why, intellectually, but it was just hard to get past the fact that this woman was trying to ruin her life. Did she have any idea how miserable it felt to watch the man you cared for very much slowly fall in love with another person?
What really bothered her, though, wasn't the fact that Chuck was falling for Jill again. No. What bothered her, what kept her up at night and assaulted her dreams when she managed to sleep, was the implication that Chuck had never stopped loving Jill and that all their time together, everything they had been through together, all the furtive looks, the heartfelt pleas, the kiss on the docks, the sheer heartbreaking longing they felt—she felt—had been nothing more than a distraction, a placeholder, until Jill could come back into Chuck's life.
That's what made her want to bash Jill's head into a wall. That's what made her entire body hum with barely controlled passion, made her blood boil with hate, made her eyes stay fixed on Jill's surprisingly controlled, graceful movements. She wanted to break this woman, crush her until there was nothing left.
She wanted to consume her.
Jill poured her a glass of water. The sound of the water cascading into the glass roused her from her thoughts and she focused on the woman in front of her.
There was nothing stronger? Like an entire bottle of scotch?
Jill handed her the glass and she ended up sliding her long fingers against Jill's slightly smaller ones as she took the glass from her hand. She slowly drank from her glass and the two of them stared at each other.
Jill kind of smirked, the right side of her mouth curling upward. It made her look smarmy and yet there was something about it that tugged at her stomach.
Carina liked to smirk. Maybe that was it. Come to think of it, Bryce had always had a kind of arrogant smirk as well, but on him it had seemed sexy, kind of mischievous. Of course, with Carina, anytime she smirked it was usually a precursor to her doing something inappropriate and wrong, like that one time she had slammed her against that wall in Kabul and then…
She blinked and stared at the glass of water in her hand. Focus, God damn it.
What was she thinking about? Jill! Right. Stupid smirk. She hated the look instantly and wanted to smack it right off the shorter woman.
"So was there anything I could help you with?"
Stay away from Chuck, you interloping skank. At least that's what she wanted to say. At least that's what she was thinking. He's mine, you undeserving trollop. You cheating bitch. She just kept reciting the things she'd like to say over and over in her head. Out loud, she said, "I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot earlier." There, that was suitably innocuous.
Jill frowned slightly and looked at her with half-lidded eyes. "We did?"
"Yes." Wow, she was still as articulate as ever. Not even Chuck made her this reticent to speak. Not even Chuck could make her this flummoxed. What was wrong with her?
Jill pulled out a chair from a desk below a mirror. She sat on the chair and faced her. Jill didn't even offer her a seat. Bitch.
"I'm not sure I understand."
"You like Chuck, don't you?"
Damn, she hadn't meant to be that upfront about things. Oh well, damage done. She walked over and sat on the edge of Jill's bed. She was not about to let Jill have a stronger power position.
She could do this. She was smooth. She was in control. She had talked furious Russian mob bosses out of trying to kill her. She had managed to deftly avoid confessing her feelings for Chuck to Chuck for the better part of a year. She could handle Jill Roberts.
"I don't really see how that's any of your business," Jill said.
She scoffed and had to literally bite her tongue from lashing out verbally at the woman. I'm his girlfriend, you moron, how is it not my business? Cover girlfriend, idiot, the voices in her head added helpfully. If Chuck were really your boyfriend, dumbass, you probably would have gotten laid at least once this last millennium. It hadn't been that long! It hadn't. She didn't know why her mind was choosing now of all times to rebel against her.
She tried to clue Jill into how things were going to be without tipping her hand. "Chuck and I have a…arrangement. I'm his girlfriend. It's very important to our work here that we're able to maintain that cover."
Yes! Very good. Couch it in terms of your job. Be professional. That was the smart way to go. If she got too personal, she'd probably lose her mind and start acting like those inbred morons had that one time she had ever watched Jerry Springer. She doubted Chuck would appreciate her tackling Jill to the ground, pulling her hair, ripping her clothes, and trying to claw her eyes out.
Although, come to think of it, maybe he would? Didn't most men like that thing? She couldn't even count the number of times she had been pressured by a mark to partake in a little two-on-one action. She ran an appraising eye over Jill. She could do worse than Jill Roberts. She was sort of cute, in a bookish, naughty librarian way, she could admit that now, but that would just be awkward.
Knowing Chuck, it would be just like him to be freaked out instead of turned on. A more confusing man she had never met.
"Chuck already explained to me about your cover," Jill said. She smiled haughtily and her body language just screamed 'I won'. "He made sure to emphasize the fact that it WAS just a cover and that there was nothing going on between you."
It was official, she was going to murder Chuck Bartowski. Of course, first she would cut his balls off, because…yeah… How could he do that to her? Didn't she mean anything to him? Didn't he care about her? How could he just cast her aside like that for somebody who broke his heart, who nearly ruined his life, who didn't even deserve him?
It was true, there was no justice in this world. Where was her karma? Sure she had murdered, lied, stole, and betrayed her whole life, but wasn't that balanced out by all the sacrifices she had made? All the lives she had saved? She saved the world every fucking day and this is what it got her?
Fuck that shit.
"He lied," she heard herself saying. Whoops.
Jill's eyes widened and then narrowed into little slits. She stared hard. "I don't believe you."
She jutted out her bottom lip in a kind of pout. "It's true," she said stubbornly. "Just the other night, I slept over at his place."
Jill relaxed slightly and rolled her eyes. She brought a hand up and brushed her hair back behind an ear. "Yeah, for your cover."
Why the hell did she keep putting so much emphasis on that word!? It was really damn annoying.
"I doubt Ellie and Awesome would think that, considering they had to knock on the door to ask us to keep it down." Ha! Take that! Who's smug now?
Okay, so technically she was only half-lying. They had asked them to keep it down, but that was only because Chuck's music had been on too loud while she had been reading one of his comic books. How pathetic was that, honestly? The man she desperately wanted had been sitting not more than two feet from her, on a bed, and she had just sat there. Reading a comic book. About the last man alive on a planet full of women. Seriously? Like did she need a bigger sign than that?
She was pretty sure that when you joined the CIA, you signed away your brain along with your soul.
Jill's face had fallen and she actually looked worried and a bit pissed off.
She figured she was pretty safe with her lie. There was no way Jill was ever going to confront Ellie about whether or not she had told the truth. She was pretty sure Ellie wanted to hurt Jill even more than she did. God she loved Ellie. If she had had Ellie growing up she was fairly confident that she and Chuck would already be in a relationship and she'd actually be getting laid two or three times a day. At minimum.
Damn, she really needed to stop thinking about sex. She no longer had Carina around to take the edge off and Bryce, well, Bryce was a complication her life seriously didn't need right now. Not that she even knew where the hell he was.
She knew Chuck wouldn't understand that. Although why she cared what Chuck thought at the moment was beyond her. If she got really desperate, she could probably go to some bar and find somebody for a night, but that wasn't really her style. Besides that wasn't a challenge. She liked challenges.
Of course, the simple solution was to finally give into Chuck, but then what? She couldn't bear the idea of finally being with Chuck and then that was it. Because as long as she was his handler, that was sooooo not a good idea. She would never be able to give herself completely to Chuck until the Intersect was gone and they could live a normal life. After all, isn't that what he wanted?
"He said that you two were just friends," Jill protested and she stood up. She started to pace up and down in front of her chair.
She frowned as she watched Jill walk back and forth. Her eyes caught on the way Jill's low-slung jeans hugged her hips and suddenly found the way she moved very fascinating.
"Huh?" she said dumbly. Her eyes had kind of unfocused and her mind had been drifting. "Did you say something?"
Jill stopped and spun around to face her, hands on her hips and a fierce glare on her face. "He said you were just friends!"
What? Of course Chuck and her were friends. Hell, Chuck was the closest thing she'd had to a best friend in probably her whole life. If nothing else happened between them, she would do everything in her power to make sure at least that level of connection existed between them. She couldn't lose Chuck as a friend. It was why she refused to leave him, no matter how miserable she got. Losing Chuck from her life was simply unfathomable to her.
"We are," she said.
Jill's tank top had risen about an inch in her agitation and she found herself zeroing in on the small sliver of skin that had been exposed.
She still didn't get it. How could Chuck possibly think Jill was a better match than her? What made her so God damn special?
"But you just said that you were sleeping together!"
"We are," she said slowly, like she was speaking to an incredibly big idiot. "What? Friends can't have sex?"
She watched with some amusement as Jill got incredibly flustered. "What? No! Well, I mean, I guess, but that's not what he said!"
"Like I said, he lied."
She wasn't exactly comfortable with impugning Chuck's character so much, but all was fair in love and war. And she was at the point where she was willing to do just about anything if it meant making Jill Roberts lose interest in Chuck and go away.
She leaned back onto the bed and watched her words tear Jill's cool, aloof calmness to shreds.
She smiled in satisfaction.
So still entertaining? Let me know what you think!