A FEW VISITORS
CHAPTER 14
BECKER
Captain Becker awoke to two things.
Firstly, an otherworldly pain in the side of his face, which was lovely and purple and ached like it had been hit by a Mack truck.
Secondly, a bubbly little field coordinator in his kitchen, chipper and sunshiny and making pancakes.
"Ah, good morning! I see somebody's awake. I was beginning to think nobody would be accompanying me to work this morning."
He walked out of his room to find Jess as cheerful as ever.
By the look of her, you would not have said that she'd been in the emergency room with a pretty severe concussion just a couple of nights ago.
When the term 'bright' sprang to his mind, it was quite apt: she was dressed primarily in yellow, with yellow heels, a knee-length yellow skirt, a yellow cardigan and a yellow hair-clip; she wore earrings that were daisies, and a matching daisy necklace sat above the neckline of her white shirt.
It was a surprisingly sunny January morning, and the bright light shining through the kitchen window gave her an aura of jubilance, illuminating her figure and making her hair glow auburn and her eyes shine.
He caught himself staring at her, a goofy smile on his face as she pottered around in his house.
"...Now, I'm making pancakes, really as a start to the thanks I'll be giving you all for looking after me. Jake's having chocolate chips in his, because he just loves chocolate, not unlike—"
She froze on the spot when she spotted him, and her cheery face dropped.
She nearly dropped the bag of chocolate chips she was holding.
"Becker," she gasped. "What happened to your face?"
He realised that she had been asleep when they got home, and had not yet seen his casualty.
"Oh, uh... Well, there was a thing with the Anomaly Locking Mechanism... Connor gave it away, and the guy wouldn't give it back, and he got a bit psycho..."
She hurried over to him, her heels clip-clopping as she did so, and stopped in front of him to get a close-up look at him.
He froze as she gently touched his cheekbone.
"It's not that bad." he said.
"Yes, it is!" she snapped. "Oh, Becker, sit down."
She pulled him towards a stool at the counter, but he resisted.
"No, really, I'm fine, honestly. I can stand, Jess. Jess—"
She shushed him, and instructed him to take a seat, to which he obliged. Turning the stove off for the time being, he heard her rummaging around in the freezer, and then she reemerged in his sight with a makeshift cloth bag of ice in hand.
She put it on the side of his face.
"Jess, it's been this way for six hours, now. I don't think this will help," he said, squinting at the coldness on his face.
"Your body swells when you sleep, you know," she told him. "And you obviously did nothing to treat this before you went to bed."
So there she stood, gently pressing ice to his bruises, tufting every now and then and whisking him when he protested her aid.
"Shouldn't you be in bed?" he asked her after a while.
"Oh, don't be silly. I trust— in fact, I know— you've had concussions before, Captain. It was just a bump on the head, I'm fine now."
He laughed.
"You split your forehead open and you have seven stitches. I think I should be looking after you, Miss. Parker."
He reached up and lightly touched the line of stitches on her head, and their eyes met.
They both realised that they were only inches away from each other's faces now; nose to nose, hazel eyes meeting blue ones, Jess occasionally glancing down at Becker's perfect lips that the smirk had slowly disappeared from.
Then, Becker inhaled sharply, and cleared his throat, breaking the eye contact and making Jess jump.
"So, uh... Any luck with our little quest?" he asked her.
She looked confused for a moment.
My quest to marry you and have lots and lots of sex and babies with you? That one?
"Oh, right, about the year Sid and Nancy were born..." she said, keeping her voice low so as to not be overheard by their housemates. "No. I haven't. And no luck with Jake or Haley's surnames yet, either."
He shrugged, and she went and turned the stove back on.
"Speaking of the devils," he said. "I better get the kids up soon. They're coming to work with us."
"They're coming with us? All of them?"
He sat back down at the counter and watched as she cooked.
"Yes. In case the anomaly opens back up— we have to have them ready to go back through."
Though he wouldn't admit it, he wasn't looking forward to that day.
Jess looked saddened as he said it, but she caught him watching her and put on a smile. Cheerily, she said:
"So— chocolate chips, or not?"
MATT
"So, then what happened?" Emily asked him.
"He didn't wake up. We found the machine in his loft and took off."
"Oh."
Matt was going about pouring them each a cup of tea when Emily had began asking him about his misadventures the previous evening.
"You know, I was pretty worried when you didn't come home until after midnight." she said.
She was following him around the kitchen like a puppy, which he secretly found funny but kept to himself.
"You were worried about old me, were you?"
She hummed and stood behind him, tracing shapes on his back with her fingers.
"Yes. I was worried you had found taken a shine to another woman."
He laughed, and began to stir their drinks.
"Emily, I value my life, so I don't think that's gonna be happening any time soon. God, if I had messed around with some woman, and you found out... Well, it'd be like world war three, wouldn't it?"
He turned around and placed his hands on her waist, but she slipped away and began walking towards the bedroom.
"Speaking of which, I need to find your encyclopaedia and look up these 'world wars' people keep talking about..."
He walked after her as she strode down the hall, keeping up with her purposeful speed.
"By the way, I've been meaning to ask you about something." he said.
"What?"
"You know the other night..."
"When everyone got drunk?"
She stopped by a shelf in his room and pulled an encyclopaedia off of it. She opened it and began to flick through the pages.
"Yeah. Well, everyone was talking about these kids, remember?" he asked.
She hummed again. He continued.
"Well, I said that I thought Molly was... Ours."
She looked up from the book.
"...And?"
He took the book off her, closed it, and put it back on the shelf. They looked at one another seriously. He took a breath.
"Well. What do you think about that? About us having... a kid? One day?"
She blinked, and tried to figure out what he himself was feeling. But this was Matt Anderson— there was no telling what the man's emotions were.
"I don't know. There was a time when I wanted children, but with everything happening in my life, and our lives, it sort of... Escaped my mind." she said. "But if the time came... And we were ready. And you wanted it, too... Then, that would be..."
He awaited her answer.
"Perfection."
A grin spread across his face, and he chuckled.
"Good. Because I think I feel the same way."
She smiled at him, and they kissed. Gently at first, but they ended up falling back onto the bed, locked in a series of passionate, never-ending kisses.
Matt's lips moved down to her neck; she moaned as sucked on her flesh and began to one-handedly unbitten her shirt.
"Matt," she breathed. They had to be at work soon— he of all people knew that.
But her sentence dissolved when her blouse was open, and he was kissing the fair skin of her belly, and his hand was tugging on her skirt impatiently, and when he moved back up to kiss her on the lips she could feel how hard he was through his jeans.
Then Lady Emily Merchant, in a not so ladylike manner, was the one struggling to unzip his pants.
As quickly as her skirt came off came the rest of their clothes, until only Matt's boxer shorts remained.
"We're gonna be late for work," she breathed as he made short work of them.
"I don't give a flying fuck." was his response.
He climbed on top of her and began kissing her neck again; she gasped as he slid into her, and before she knew it, they were well in the middle of having amazing hot sex on Matt's bed.
HALEY
Haley was not having a particularly pleasant day.
Yes, the pancakes were nice.
Yes, she was glad Jess was feeling better.
Yes, she was glad that Becker had 'forgotten' about punishing her for stealing his car.
But she was not happy with the clothes she was wearing.
Normally, she was in uniform. Combat trousers, military clothes, A.R.C. security t-shirts; she rarely wore anything that was colourful or too casual.
But she had no wardrobe here, no closet to her liking, and she happened to be staying with Jessica Parker, who saw this an opportunity to make Haley her personal Barbie doll.
The jeans were bad enough: they were... snug, to say the least, but Haley could only thank god she hadn't been wrestled into a skirt.
She got to wear her combat boots, which eased the pain, and the leather jacket Jess leant her wasn't half bad.
But the blouse. Oh, the blouse.
It was a pink thing, very Jess. White polkadots made it all the more girly, and the pink bow that tied at the front was just her worst nightmare.
If my soldiers saw me wearing this, I'd be put to death by firing squad, she thought.
She was already feeling like a character from Gossip Girl.
Derek certainly liked it, but she told him not to get used to the feminine style.
This look was reserved for Victoria, her diva of a fourteen-year-old sister, and her mother, who had always been so disappointed that she didn't share her enthusiasm for vibrant fashionable outfits.
"That's a nice, uh, look, Haley." Sid giggled as he walked past her.
"Shut the fuck up or I'll break your jaw."
"Okay."
Everybody in the A.R.C. seemed to have their own duty to go about, even the 'newer additions' to the team.
Sid and Abby were in the menagerie; Jake and Jess were at the A.D.D; Nancy hung around with Connor, and pointed out basic design flaws in the systems; Derek bugged Lester relentlessly, to the point where Lester had accidentally called him 'Danny'.
Molly was left to her own devices, and she had disappeared about an hour ago, not yet to be found again.
Haley, on the other hand, had nothing to do.
On a normal day at the A.R.C. she was used to, she had more jobs than anybody else. One day, she'd be head of security.
But here, it was... old fashioned. As was the attitude of Captain Hilary Becker.
"Captain," she said to him, jogging to his side as he entered the hub.
He rolled his eyes, having been desperately trying to avoid her all morning.
"What, Haley?" he asked her.
"I am, to be frank, no attribution to you or anyone else just standing round. Everybody here has a job except me, and I would appreciate it if you gave me some sort of duty." she said quickly.
He continued walking, a pile of papers in his hand that he needed to give to Jess.
"No. You don't work here." he replied, bluntly. "You are not a part of my team, and you are not a soldier."
She stopped in front of him, forcing him to come to a halt, and looked him dead in the eye.
"I am a soldier. I completed my Phase 1 training at AFC Harrogate and my Phase 2 at AFC Harrogate. I start my Phase 3 training at Infantry Battle School in Brecon next month, which will last for fourteen weeks."
This caught Becker's attention. He raised an eyebrow.
"Is that so?"
Haley pursed her lips.
"Yes. I'll have you know I am also trained in fieldcraft, skill at arms, first aid, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defence, and—"
"That's all very good, Haley, but education's one thing and experience is another. You said it yourself— I'm a well respected soldier with Special Ops training, and you're still in training at Sandhurst."
He walked off again, leaving Haley bitterly glaring after him.
"Experience?" she snapped. "You want to talk to me about experience?!"
Becker rolled his eyes.
"Yes, I do. Where have you been stationed before?"
"Nowhere, for the time being. But forget your military sense for a second and consider the fact that I survived in the Jurassic for a year when I was fifteen, I've singlehandedly taken down a Giganotosaurus, and I stopped Big Ben from being destroyed by a fifty-foot-tall Spinosaurus, among other things."
Becker stopped and turned to face her.
"Fine." he said. "I'll let you work for me."
She smiled smugly to herself, and he mirrored the expression when he thrust the pile of papers at her chest.
"You can start by delivering these profiles to Jess and then picking up the surveillance reports from room 15B and getting them to Lester, preferably before he throws a temper tantrum."
Haley scowled as Captain Becker strode back in the direction he came, hands folded behind his back as usual.
"Haley," Jess casually began her as she approached the A.D.D. "Can I ask you something?"
Haley sighed, and dropped the pile of profiles on the desktop.
"Yeah."
"Well, I'm filling in these records, and I was wondering— what is the name of your father?"
Haley blinked.
"No."
Jess tried again.
"Okay, what is the name of Jake's father?"
"We have the same father."
"Interesting," Jess mused. "And are your parents divorced, unhappy, or happily married with lots of babies?"
Haley gave Jess a sardonic look.
"I cant tell you anything else, Miss. Parker, so I suggest you stop asking." she said. "But it's the third one, unfortunately."
Jess smiled to herself, delighted at the answer, and was about to say something else when the alarms went off.
"Anomaly," Jess and Haley said at the same time.
Jess spun around to face the A.D.D.— Haley wasn't her concern now, it was go-time, action stations. Her voice rang out through the intercom.
"We have an anomaly detection at the Fairton Hotel in west London, I repeat, the Fairton Hotel in west London..."
Haley chucked the pile of Lester's precious surveillance reports onto Jess' desk and took off in a sprint, heading straight for the garage. She knew where she was going, and it was ritzy-sounding hotel in west London.
She was looking forward to seeing twenty-seven year-old Hilary Becker ignoring her for much longer.
