She watches in silence from out in the hallway. The thermal readings on her visor show the warm bundle on the bed thrashing slightly before sitting up suddenly. The figure's body temperature spikes, then drops. She smiles, and creeps forward. It's not difficult to slip inside, to pad invisible and silent across the rugs. The figure on the bed lays back, and she watches as it traces a finger along its stomach, its legs.
She knows where those fingers touch. Knows the scars as well as their keeper. Knows the thoughts that run through the mind of their owner. Knows how to stop those thoughts from taking over.
Kasumi knows Jack much too well, if she is being honest with herself. She hadn't planned on falling for the convict. Hadn't planned on finding herself drawn to the lithe woman. Hadn't planned on any of it, really.
She refuses to acknowledge the feelings she has; knows that Jack refuses the same. It's easier that way. What would Keiji think if he knew the way her body reacted to the former criminal? What would he think if he knew that there are times when she is with Jack that she doesn't think of him? That there are times when she honestly thinks that she could live without his gray box - could live without him - as long as she is with Jack.
She certainly hadn't expected it. She doesn't accept it now. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, she convinces herself with every step toward the bedroom that Jack means nothing to her. That she is simply a means to an end. She doesn't like women, not like that. She most certainly is not in love with one. There is no possible way that she is in love with one like Jack.
She grins as Jack pauses briefly.
She knows that Jack thinks that she is unaware that the biotics teacher knows exactly when she enters a room, cloaked or not. She lets her continue to think that. It's easier that way. If she let on, Jack wouldn't try so hard to get her to reveal herself. She enjoys watching her. More than she will admit, even to herself.
She doesn't love Jack.
She is using her.
Sometimes she believes it.
The first time she went to visit Jack in her little hole in the bowels of the ship it was simply because that is what she does. There was a thrill to following people who don't know she is there. To watching them. She knew eventually she'd have to give up the game, but for the moment it allowed her a modicum of entertainment. As she told Shepard just that morning: there isn't much need for thievery aboard a ship.
She crept down the stairs, intrigued by the woman laying on the bed. She had only been on a single mission with her, and knew almost nothing about her. The scantily dressed, tattooed woman on the bed was a mystery. The only thing Kasumi liked better than a difficult heist was a mystery. Or a romance.
She moved closer. Most people she could get right up to and they wouldn't know. She could breathe down their necks and the most they would do is shiver and make comments about people walking on their graves. She made her way toward the table that dominated the small area, but she had barely rounded the corner when the daydreaming woman was suddenly on her feet.
Kasumi stopped dead, her back pressed against the wall. That was unexpected, to say the least. She watched Jack scan the room, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. It excited her, that someone knew she was there. She grinned, and followed Jack as she made her way up the stairs. Jack went into the engine room, her hands clenched in fists.
Kasumi chuckled, and went to see how close she could get to their newest recruit.
She wondered if the assassin was as attuned as Jack.
Kasumi drops the thermal vision, and lets her eyes adjust. There is just enough moonlight from the window to make out the tattooed form on the bed. Just enough light to see Jack fighting a smile. More than enough light to watch as her hands make their slow decent down her body. She's no longer tracing scars, no longer sinking into bad memories. Her intentions are very different, and very clear. Kasumi just barely catches the gasp that threatens to escape as Jack's fingers play along her stomach, idly toying with her bellybutton. Kasumi remembers that first time they were together, the first time she'd ever...
She shakes her head, trying to focus on the present. The present involves a warm heat between her legs, and an inability to drag her eyes away from Jack's hand as her fingers dance over her sex. She's working herself up, and she's working Kasumi right along with her.
Kasumi runs her hand over her stomach, wishing she'd worn her armor instead of this lighter material. She'd had no intention of getting into combat when she left to watch Jack sleep, but now she wishes she couldn't feel her own fingers through the fabric. It isn't helping to keep her mind focused.
She will resist, she tells herself.
She knows it is a losing battle, but she doesn't care.
She resisted falling into Jack's bed once, she can do it again.
Pragia was hell. For over an hour after returning to the ship, Kasumi could do nothing but stand at her window, staring out at the enumerable stars that passed by. She'd considered walking out, asking Shepard to drop her off at the first inhabited planet they came to. She couldn't wrap her conscience around the fact that her current employer could do what they had. To children! The tables in the medical room turned her stomach. The reports they'd seen made her see red.
She'd picked up the doll to sell it. The tiny chip in its body was undamaged and worth more than everything she'd stolen in the past four years combined. She didn't want for money, but when her scans had picked it up, she'd been unable to resist.
It hadn't taken her long to come to terms with the fact that one person needed it more than she needed the money.
Jack hadn't been in her room when she'd gone down there. She rearranged some crates and settled herself atop them, the doll placed pride of place on Jack's cot. She'd brought the gray box. She hadn't consciously decided to reveal herself to Jack, after so many weeks of watching her from the shadows, but the fact that she'd brought the casing told her she'd planned it even if she didn't know it.
Planned it the same way she'd sometimes just show up in the crawlspace under engineering. The same way she'd suddenly feel hungry when she heard Jack leave the elevator .
There was something about this woman, something she couldn't place, that made her do things without thinking. It would get her killed, she was sure. Or outed to the press. Neither would be good for her career.
When Jack finally showed up, her whole body shaking with a raging anger, Kasumi felt herself smile. She watched Keiji's memories with half an eye, and watched Jack the same, unsure which caused the tears to seep from the corner of her eyes. Watched her stalk across the room. Ignored the way the sight of her body tensing as she punched the bulkhead caused her to shift uncomfortably on the crates. Just barely pulled her legs out of the way to prevent them from feeling the hard points of Jack's boots.
Jack slips a finger inside herself, a small moan escaping her lips and Kasumi can't stop herself. She surges forward, eyes never leaving Jack's hand. Watching the way it sinks inside her, and pulls out. She's not quite teasing herself.
She wants it to be her hand between Jack's legs. She wants to be drawing the soft, delicate moans – sounds no one would ever believe possible from the foul-mouthed biotic – from Jack's lips. She wants to feel her fluttering around her fingers, feel her tense around her hand.
She shakes her head, standing over the woman now. No, she doesn't want these things. It is simply a reaction to missing Keiji. To discovering that Jacob is some other woman's baby daddy. It is not Jack she wants.
Deny it though she tries, the truth is she can barely contain herself from slipping between Jack's thighs and tasting her. Can hardly stop herself from whispering endearments in the other woman's ear. She can deny it all she likes to herself, but she wants this. Wants Jack.
And only Jack.
She can't stop herself anymore, and stills Jack's hand. She pulls it gently away, but leaves it between her legs. Their fingers entwine slightly. A word passes through her mind. She ignores it. Lover's they might be, in the crudest sense of the word, but nothing more. She can taste the lie, even in her thoughts.
"You had a nightmare," she whispers, trying to keep the emotion from her voice, but knowing she fails.
"That's hardly unusual," Jack snaps back, tugging gently at her hand, but hardly putting up much resistance to being held.
Jack tried valiantly to hide how much that little piece of plastic meant to her, but Kasumi had made her life around seeing things others didn't. She took Jack's snide comments in stride, not sure why they stung so much. They shouldn't.
When her hair fell around her shoulders, she expected the attack. She had seen the look in Jack's eyes seconds before she was pressed up against the crates. Jack was fast. She was beautiful.
She was taking advantage.
Warm fingers made their presence known even though the thick fabric of her armor. Kasumi fought the desire to press into that hand, to let Jack take what she wanted. What she refused to admit they both wanted.
Her mind flittered back to Keiji. To the feel of his large, strong hands. To the way he seemed to always know how to play her. No matter how much her body wanted this, no matter how much she knew all of her wanted it, she wasn't ready.
Jack is on the floor in a heartbeat. She had trained with masters, and for all Jack's greater strength and biotic prowess, Kasumi knew how to take her down.
She expected more resistance than she got.
She teased Jack, playing with her words, but when the biotic pressed back up against her, trying to push her off, it took everything not to let the moan escape.
It wasn't right.
It wasn't fair.
She left before she could change her mind.
Jack's body hums with tension. Kasumi can feel it where her thigh is pressed against Jack's side.
"You're tense. Relax," she says, eyes playing along the other woman's naked body. She figures if she keeps talking, it might prevent her from what she already knows is inevitable. It has been inevitable every time since the first.
She continued to go down and see Jack. She tried to stop herself. There were more important things to worry about than the mental health of a clearly insane woman. She felt better, though, when she knew Jack was okay. When she knew Jack wasn't hurting.
She knew Jack knew, but neither let on to the game.
"I just had a fucking nightmare, as you so graciously pointed out. And you stopped my attempt to relax." Jack shifts gently, her chin pointing down at their joined hands, which cup her, but offer neither any relief. Kasumi bites her lip, wanting to lean over and kiss those full lips that pout so dramatically when her hand is denied the right to move again.
"I thought that little show was for my benefit?" she says, hoping to deflect her own thoughts.
It was the Collector ship that finally drew her to reveal herself a second time to Jack. Jack had gone with Shepard, and Kasumi had waited on the ship, her mind running through all of the worse-case scenarios. Most of them involved Jack not coming back.
She ignored those thoughts, unwilling to put a name to them. To accept that Jack had already weaseled herself under her skin.
That night, after she was sure Jack as asleep, after hours of tossing and turning in her own bed, she'd snuck down to see her. To convince herself that everything was fine. Jack hadn't woken. It was the first time she hadn't immediately known Kasumi was there.
She stripped down to her underwear and crawled in beside the sleeping woman. She hadn't stirred. She'd been worn out; that had been obvious during the debrief earlier that day. Kasumi tucked her head against Jack's shoulder, letting her hair fall across the woman's chest.
She was asleep in seconds.
Jack pushes up, but Kasumi shifts just enough to keep her from feeling the friction of their hands. "You're full of yourself," Jack mutters under her breath.
Kasumi can't help but laugh, her mind going to what she'd much rather be full of. She debates saying as much, knowing Jack would find it amusing, but resists. "You do set yourself up for the most horrible puns," she says instead. To bring home her point, she releases Jack's hand, pushing it out of the way and replacing it with her own. She has to bite her lip as her fingers glide up inside Jack, her inner walls clenching gently at the intrusion.
She forces herself to go slowly, to tease. She loves the way Jack degrades to little more than curse words when she does.
"Fuck, Kasumi," Jack growls, not disappointing. Her cover blown, she lets the cloak drop, shooting her biggest grin down at the woman twisting up into her hand.
"Don't worry, we'll get to that," she purrs.
She'd slipped out of Jack's cot before first shift the next morning. But returned the next night. And the night after. She wasn't sure when Jack was finally awake to greet her. Wasn't sure how she lost her resistance and pushed the crazy woman onto the cot, stripped her out of her clothes, and learned how making love to a woman is so terribly different, and so very much the same, as making love to a man.
"Well hurry...hurry the fuck up. Stop...stop fucking teasing me."
"All in good time."
"Fuck."
"Such a poet."
"Just get me off already!"
She almost hit Shepard when the woman told Jack to be their barrier against the swarms. Only went back with the colonists and the ship's crew when Shepard directed her because of the soft smile and gentle nod Jack sent her way.
Kasumi has never ignored a direct order from her lover. At least not since she first thought, and dismissed, the word for what they are. She knows what Jack wants, knows what she likes, and gives it to her. Her own breathing catches as Jack tries to meet her in the middle. It occurs to her suddenly that she is still fully dressed, but Jack's moans keep her from stopping to strip.
She never said a word to Jack when Shepard dropped them all off at Omega, with one last order to get as far away as possible. She wanted to, but couldn't make herself admit that what they had had was anything more that just needing to feel alive when they were sure everyone was going to die. Enough people had died on that mission.
It was luck that led her to Grissom. She remembered Jack's reaction to hearing about the Ascension program, and heard through the grape vine about a new teacher that had the students wanting to learn. It hadn't taken a genius to put two and two together.
The Alliance wasn't good at security. At least not enough to stop her. She stowed away on a cargo vessel dropping off food stuffs, and hid in the laundry until the school had shut down for the night.
"I didn't think I'd run into you again," Jack said, already working at the clasps on her clothes.
"I think it's more fair to say I ran into you," Kasumi answered, enjoying the feel of Jack's slightly longer than stubble ponytail that was just beginning to grow.
Jack's hand slipped between the layers of her clothes and her fingers played roughly with Kasumi's nipple. The thief groaned, pushing Jack back toward the bed.
Jack writhes under her, her breathing stopping and starting as she nears her peak. It had scared her, at first, the way Jack would suddenly stop breathing for seconds at a time. She waits for it now, knowing what it means, and knowing better than to stop.
She returned to Grissom more times than she can remember. Returning to the same place repeatedly is dangerous, and Jack told her that she can just come in the front door. She laughed at her, kissed her, and told her not to wait up. She was always gone before Jack got up in the morning.
She brought the book the next time she was there. She hid it in the sock drawer while Jack was in class. She found it on the bookshelf the next time she came to visit.
The gifts became habit, and she found herself looking for small things she could take back to Jack whenever she was working.
Jack stops breathing entirely, and Kasumi twists her hand, hooking her fingers. Jack's breath comes back in a gasp. Kasumi pulls her through her orgasm, capturing the scream that comes at its tail end with a kiss. She slows her hand, but doesn't stop, preventing Jack from coming down completely. A hand stops her, pulls her away from the warmth they've sunk into and draws her entire body up to lie on the bed.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Jack forces out. Kasumi grins at the way the words break as she tries to catch her breath. She wiggles away from Jack long enough to get out of her clothes, then tucks herself up against her side again.
"I missed you. Still can't get out of the system. You can only steal the same painting so many times from different people before it gets boring." It's hard to admit that, to missing her. She still refuses to admit what they are. She doesn't need to. She's here now, and as far as she's concerned that's all that matters.
It nearly killed her when she heard about Cerberus. She left the crucible project long enough to make it to the Citadel just to confirm that Jack was okay. She didn't speak to her there. Didn't approach her. It was enough to know that she was okay.
"You should try blowing shit up. Works for me."
"As subtle as a Reaper," she answers, stealing yet another kiss.
"But more fun," Jack whispers, using a leg to leverage Kasumi onto her back. She lets herself be rolled, enjoying the feel of Jack's weight on top of her.
"We'll have to see about that."
They went to dinner after the war. It was in an Alliance mess tent. They don't talk. They leave separately. Kasumi spent the next three days tracking Jack to find out where she was staying.
Kasumi won't admit it's love. She won't admit that it is anything other than sex. She doesn't need to. She won't be there in the morning. Or maybe she will be. She doesn't know. She won't know until the sun creeps over the window sill and she makes that decision. She wonders if Jack wants more. She thinks she might be willing to give it, but she won't admit to that out loud either.
It doesn't really matter.
All that really matters is that no matter where they are, whether she's there in the morning or not, whether Jack feels anything more than an emotionless sexual attraction or not, whatever they decide to call themselves; they are content.