Underneath It All
Ashley regained consciousness slowly, her head splitting and every limb aching. What the hell had happened? She'd paid a visit to check on the rebuilding of Vought Tower in the wake of Soldier Boy's attack and was talking to the construction supervisor when—what had happened? And where was she? She tried to move and pain shot through her, forcing her to whimper.
"Steady, Ashley. How do you feel?"
Homelander. She recognized his voice the way she did her own face. A surge of hurt and anger rose up inside her—how dare he speak to her after humiliating her in front of the Deep and A-Train? How dare he make her take her wig off? Bastard. Resentment locked her throat into silence for a moment until she managed to say, "Shitty. I have a headache and everything hurts. What's happened?"
He didn't reply immediately, and she had time to realize that her eyes were open but there was absolutely no light. Also, a man's body was lying directly on top of hers. A terrible suspicion occurred to her before he said, "There was a partial collapse of the section of the Tower that was being rebuilt. We're buried."
Now Ashley remembered a gigantic rumbling before her memory cut off. But he hadn't been there. Homelander had been God knows where, so why was he here talking to her? "Where's Mr. Conforti?"
"Who?"
"The supervisor on the construction site. I was talking to him right before I heard this sound—"
"He's dead."
That shocked her. "How? We're all right."
"You're only all right because I got to you as that part of the building was coming down. I didn't have time to save anyone else. And I didn't care, but mostly I didn't have time."
She couldn't look at his face to judge if he was lying because of the complete darkness; anyway, she was convinced he was. Was it her imagination or did she feel his breath against her cheek? Could he see in the dark? Ashley didn't want to be this close to him. Touching him was something she had nightmares about. He was a rabid dog that she did her best to avoid. Why had he even bothered saving her from the collapse? She was nothing to him, nothing but a figurehead to conceal his control of Vought. Maybe he had known that letting her die would be a mercy, and he had no truck with mercy. "You said we're buried."
"Yes." His voice held no fear, no strain. He sounded as if they were discussing the profit margins of Vought Laserblast energy drink in her office. An image of him came to her mind: sitting in a chair, his expression dark and deadly as a storm, his expression purest loathing until she removed her wig, turning to mean satisfaction when she gave in. She wondered if her humiliation got him hard. She suspected it did.
"Then why don't you get us out? It can't be fun to have part of the building on your back." She realized that she hadn't called him sir since she'd come back to consciousness. If she had her way, she'd never do that again. She'd call him nothing. He had no right to even her false respect after what he'd done.
"It's not quite that easy, Ashley. I'm at a bad angle for using my strength. I'm balanced on my hands and my toes, and right now I'm fully occupied with keeping you from being crushed."
"So what, we just lie here until they dig us out?" That was unacceptable; just the fact of his body being in contact with hers was causing her to panic, despite the fact that she could breathe and didn't feel a lot of his weight, much less the tons of debris that must be on top of him. She could keep it under control, but not indefinitely, so she needed him to move the debris so she could get out of here. Already the air felt stale and inadequate. "Is there even enough air in here to last until then? I know you don't need to breathe, but what about me?"
He gave her a pained sigh. "It isn't airtight down here. Enough should get through the cracks for you to survive."
"But you can't guarantee that, can you?" Ashley felt her heartbeat speed up and knew she was moments away from a panic attack. She couldn't afford to give in to her fear in front of him, so she closed her eyes and tried to control her breathing. Breathe in for a count of four, hold for a count of four, breathe out for a count of four, and a count of four between breaths. Lather rinse repeat. Ignore the fact that Homelander is on top of her. Nothing counts except avoiding panic. What would she even do here if she panicked? Couldn't run, couldn't fight.
"What are you doing?" He sounded genuinely interested.
Ashley took a few moments between breaths to tell him, "Getting myself under control," and went back to controlling her breathing.
"Combat breathing," he said. "They taught me that, a long time ago. To handle it when I was around crowds until I got used to them."
Was that a weakness he'd just admitted to, a little bit of humanity peeking through the supe arrogance? It didn't matter. She kept breathing.
He didn't pay attention to her silence. "Are you claustrophobic? Maybe afraid of the dark?"
She desperately wanted to tell him to shut his yap, but even in her current situation she understood what a fatal mistake that would be. "I'm not going to tell you what I'm afraid of. Why hand you a weapon?"
"You think I'd use your fears against you?"
"Yes, in a heartbeat. Can you just stop talking so I can concentrate on my breathing? I'm not very far from a panic attack."
"Say please."
"Fuck you." It was out of her mouth before she even thought. A wash of panic went through her, but she was already doing her breathing so she didn't feel the full extent the way she usually did.
"What?" His voice was low, deadly.
In for a penny, in for a pound. "You heard me. I said fuck you. Let me die. You're always threatening me, so you can shit or get off the pot. That was the last time I'll ever give in to you out of fear."
"What was?"
That infuriated her, and in the limited space available she managed to get a hand up and smack him with her fist somewhere on the torso. As it was so dark, she hadn't been able to pick a target and she didn't have enough wind-up room for a good hit, but it made her feel a little better. "Don't pretend you don't know!" Was it even possible that he didn't understand what he'd done to her? That he was so oblivious to anyone else that he couldn't comprehend how much he'd humiliated her? Was it just not important enough in his scheme of things?
"Ohhh. You mean your hair."
"Yes, I mean my fucking hair! Congratulations on figuring that out, Captain Obvious."
Homelander's voice was suddenly in her ear, and now she knew she hadn't imagined feeling his breath on her face. "You need to be more careful, Ashley."
"Or what? You'll drop a building on me? Here's your chance. You can get rid of the Wicked Witch of the East and no one will ever blame you for it. I don't have any friends, all my family is dead—hell, the media will probably even call you a hero—as usual—for trying to save me. Have at it."
He didn't make any moves to do that. "I didn't know your family was dead."
"You didn't ask. And I guess you didn't listen to me when I made my first CEO speech. My mother died of cancer when I was seventeen."
"Specifically?"
"Brain cancer. Glioblastoma. Very aggressive. Mom didn't like going to the doctor, even when she started getting the headaches, so they didn't catch it until it was very well advanced. From diagnosis to death it was eleven weeks."
"I'm sorry."
Ashley didn't feel like calling him a liar, but the "Yeah" she replied with should let him know.
"What happened to your father?"
"He fell into the bottle after that. The same year I started at Vanderbilt he got into a car accident. Fatal. His fault. My younger brother was in the car. He died too. The lady in the other car lived."
Homelander didn't say anything for a while. "What was your brother's name?"
"Brandon Barrett." Why did her throat hurt when she said it? She hadn't said his name to anyone since before she'd graduated and come to New York to start working for Vought. "My father was Charles. My mother was Aimee."
"How old was he?"
"Fourteen. What does that have to do with anything?"
"You're not having a panic attack anymore, are you?"
He sounded so fucking smug that Ashley balled her fist up and hit him a second time. "That excuses nothing, definitely not what you did."
Of course he wasn't polite enough to even pretend he'd noticed her punch. "Was it really such a huge thing, Ashley? Men go bald all the time."
"They don't do it to themselves because of the stress! And most of them spend a fortune trying to find something to regrow the hair they lost. And it was a huge thing. There was no fucking reason to make me show them how ugly I am except to hurt me. Which you did. Congratulations." She wished she could hit him again. In fact, what was stopping her? She made a fist and hit him again.
"What, are you afraid Deep won't want to fuck you if he knows you're bald?"
That was so out of nowhere that she was struck dumb for a few moments. "I don't know what you are talking about. The Deep does not want to fuck me. If he did, just knowing I'm bald wouldn't turn him off."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You've known him longer than I have. You should know what a pussy hound he is. As long as I have a pulse and a working vagina, I'm his type."
"Nothing you can do about that, I suppose?"
"What, the pulse or the vagina? I'm fond of both these things." Then Ashley had a revelation that blasted her anguish over his actions into nothing. "I still have my phone! I can call for help!" Relief washed through her as she twisted herself, trying to access her jacket pocket in the limited space available.
"Ashley, what are you doing? Ashley, stop that!" Homelander sounded startled and a little panicked, but she didn't care because she had the means of escaping this nightmare situation and she was going to use it.
"Can you sort of lift your hips? I know you have half the building on your back, but I need to arch myself some to get the phone out."
"No, I can't lift my hips." Ashley wriggled and tried to shift herself underneath him to reach her phone. Her fingers slid across the corner of it and she squirmed desperately to get her arm into a position where she could grasp her iPhone. "Stop that right now!"
"What the hell are you taking on about? If I can get to my phone, I can call for help and they can dig down to us. That way they can get some of the building off your back and we can get out of there." She wished she had more room, and her cheek brushed against Homelander's as she tried a half-turn and the phone was in her hand.
"You're getting me hard."
For a second she couldn't comprehend what he was saying as it was outside her frame of reference, trapped under the remains of Vought Tower. Then she figured it out and rolled her eyes. "Sorry."
He heard the lack of remorse in her voice. "I'd think you wouldn't want me distracted from keeping you from being crushed by debris."
"Now that I have my phone, it should be fine. Plus, you're a grown man. Once they get us out of here, you can take the situation into your own hands whenever you want. Pun intended." She unlocked the screen, found the speed dial, and tapped Also Ashley.
"Ms. Barrett!" The other woman sounded stunned. "You're alive!"
"For the moment," she said. "I'm buried under some of the rubble from the building collapse. Homelander is with me but he isn't in a position to assist. How many people are missing?"
"Most of the construction crew. The area was closed off to other employees so they were the only ones in the path of the collapse."
"Pull three or four secretaries off their desks and start calling phone numbers," said Ashley. "Get the list of construction employees who clocked in to work today and haven't clocked out. Their personnel files should list their cell phone numbers. Do we have rescue people on the scene yet?"
"Yes, Ms. Barrett."
"Tell them we're calling cell phones. Maybe someone can hear them ringing. Maybe, if they're conscious, they can answer their phone. Do we have rescue dogs on site?"
"We've sent for them and they should be here within half an hour."
"Good. Maybe you can use GPS to pin down the locations of some of the trapped people. Make sure we have enough medical personnel standing by."
"Are you all right, Ms. Barrett?" Also Ashley sounded concerned, but she knew better than to trust the other woman. She was as much a product of Vought as Ashley herself and would stab her in the back at the first chance. Maybe she had even seen herself as the new CEO of Vought, right up until her cell phone rang and she saw Ashley's name on the screen. Would Also Ashley even tell anyone that she had called? She might think that her boss was injured badly enough to die if she kept her mouth shut and didn't tell the rescue workers about the call. But Homelander was with her, and that would complicate any scheming of Also Ashley's. No, with him in the equation, she could count on the other woman to obey her orders. It eased her mind a bit.
"Yes, I'm fine, Ashley," she said, ignoring the splitting pain in her head and her impending panic attack from Homelander's proximity. "I'd still like to get out of here ASAP, though."
"Yes, I'll let the rescue workers know you're alive. I'm glad to hear from you, Ms. Barrett."
Ashley doubted it, but said, "Thanks," and ended the call.
"Why did you hang up?" asked Homelander.
"Saving the battery," she said. "I don't know how long we'll be down here."
"Also Ashley sounded like she had things under control."
She made a noncommittal sound and tried to ignore the fact that he was lying on top of her. And hadn't he said she'd gotten him hard? Ridiculous. He'd never indicated that he knew she was a woman, so how could he get any feelings in the pants for her?
"Are we going to deal with the elephant in the air pocket?" Homelander still didn't sound worried, or stressed, or tired, just mildly interested.
"What are you talking about?" Would the rescue workers be able to find them using the GPS? Even though she thought calling the worker cell phones was a good idea, she wondered whether Also Ashley would do that for her.
"All that squirming around. Even after I told you to stop." The amusement in his voice strengthened as she figured out what he meant and horror froze her in place. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to awaken some male interest."
Fresh anxiety coursed through her blood. "Well, you do know better, so we can put the subject aside. Why did you even bother saving me? Oh, right, you don't want to lose your corporate meat puppet and have to take some responsibility for Vought yourself. That would be boring. Never mind."
"I saved you because I didn't want to lose you." His mouth was near her ear again and his warm breath sent a shiver through her.
"Meat puppets are a dime a dozen at Vought, and most of the executives would think it's a privilege to take the fall for you when one of your plans goes bad. A lot of them wouldn't even see that aspect of it." Ashley turned her head just a little and felt her cheek brush his again.
"But you do. You can see under the surface of things. That's valuable to me."
"You fooled me, that day with Blindspot. I never knew who you truly were until then." Why did that knowledge still hurt? Reality cramps, she decided; losing the idealized image of the man she'd had a crush on until then, its replacement by the monstrous reality bound to cause pain.
"You had to know eventually. I couldn't have maintained the façade for very long. I need someone I don't have to pretend with."
"Maybe it would be better for both of us if you just let the building come down." Until Ashley said it, she hadn't had a clue those words were in her mind. "They'll still call you a hero if you can pull a bunch of the construction workers out. You can hear their cell phones with no trouble."
"Also Ashley knows I'm with you." A distant curiosity flavored his voice.
"And if you make her my replacement, she'll be thrilled to forget all about what she knows. If you hadn't been with me now, and I hadn't told her, she wouldn't have breathed a word about me being alive. She would have prayed for me to suffocate under the wreckage and cried photogenic tears at my funeral."
"Really."
"Really." She closed her eyes, even though the darkness remained total. "You can be free of me. She would…support you fully in being your real self. She wouldn't talk to you about your image, the nuts and bolts of Vought business, things that bore you. She would let you become."
"How would it be better for you if I dropped this rubble on you?"
"I'd be free. There wouldn't be any more pain or fear or suffering. Life stretches out and there's nothing there for me, no joy or possibility or love, and I'm tired of enduring. I want it to end." Ashley felt horror at the words spilling out of her, the most secret thoughts she had, but they were a waterfall, unstoppable. "Just end me. You want to. You know you do."
Homelander shifted against her and suddenly his pelvis was tight against hers and she realized he hadn't been lying about his state of arousal. "But I don't want to do that, Ashley. If I'd wanted you to die I wouldn't have shattered my penthouse windows getting out the moment I heard the start of the collapse. I wouldn't have bothered using my speed to find you in the crowd. I wouldn't have covered you with my body to save you." His tongue flicked out to tease the skin of her neck, run up its length to tickle her ear and dip inside just a bit, and a violent shudder racked her. "I'm not finished with you yet. I've been doing some thinking, and I have some more uses for you that we haven't explored. Intimate uses that you will love."
Ashley hated herself for the fact of her nipples hardening at his words, at the movement of his tongue on her throat and her desire to put her head back to give him more room, the tingling between her legs. Knowing all she knew about him, how could he still arouse her? The vestigial remains of her old crush or just an atavistic need to fuck the strongest, most powerful man available? A pained noise escaped her and he laughed.
"Why do you think I don't know you at least as well as you know me? You may hate me, you may be terrified of me, but there's nothing you want more than to know what it's like to fuck me. And I'm generous enough to make that happen." He sounded as if he was holding back laughter.
That infuriated her. "How nice! You assume I want to be a mercy fuck of yours. It is a generous offer, but I think I'll pass."
Homelander took her earlobe between his teeth and nipped. She shivered again and cursed herself for betraying a response, letting him know that she enjoyed him playing with her. "Maybe I'd be a mercy fuck of yours, Ashley. Maybe I've been fantasizing about you for months, years, and don't want anything more than to be buried up to the hilt inside you, with your arms and legs wrapped around me."
She couldn't hold back a laugh. "And maybe the angel Gabriel will fly out of my ass, but I doubt it. I think we should probably stop talking to conserve the air in here."
"I already told you there's enough air getting in for you to breathe. You don't want to hear about how much I've pined for you?" His mouth brushed against her neck and she couldn't stop a sound of pleasure. Ashley felt him smile against her skin and tried to get things back onto a familiar footing.
"I have a limited appetite for lies, and you've already given me indigestion. Let's just stop talking about it and wait for the rescuers to find us."
"It's a shame you don't have my hearing, or you'd know that I'm not lying to you. I want you. I've wanted you for a long time, but I wasn't sure what to do about it. You were so afraid of me that I knew you'd run away if I let you know what I was thinking. Now you're just angry because of the wig thing."
"And fuck you very much for that, by the way."
He laughed. "You were loyal to me. You did what hurt you most just because I asked. I could have asked you to give me a blowjob in front of the Deep and A-Train. I could have gone down on you in front of them."
"I have to think you would have enjoyed both of those more than the sight of my bald head," she muttered.
"You know why I didn't? Because neither of them is allowed to think about you that way. Neither of them is allowed to see you that way. Only I'm allowed that."
Ashley wanted to ask who made those rules, but a shaft of light cut through the darkness and she realized what it was. The rescue workers had found them. "Help! Help! We're down here!" she screamed.
Homelander winced and scolded her. "That was loud."
"Who whispers when their lives are in danger? Help!" she shrieked again.
More shafts of light joined the first one. She began hearing the sounds of shovels, of picks, of whatever tools the workers were using to reach them, and debris shifting, releasing its grip on them. Homelander let his cheek rest against hers, and she felt an odd sensation that seemed like regret. They would escape their little tomb in the next few minutes, and things would go back to their normal. This conversation they had just finished would be an anomaly, a secret little lapse that neither of them would ever mention again, unless he decided to torment her for whatever reason. After this, she'd never think about the hard-on that still pressed into her, the way she didn't still think about the sight of him naked in his apartment as he stood up from his couch after she'd barged in with the news about his numbers. Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that.
After a long while the shafts of light shifted, merging until they were a solid window of sky and the head and shoulders of a rescue worker appeared. "Everybody all right here?"
"Yeah, thanks," said Homelander. "I was in a bad position to get us out of here. You guys are the real heroes." Ashley almost rolled her eyes at that.
He kept her tucked against his chest as they moved into the cleared section and the rubble collapsed into the space they had occupied seconds before. She had to bite her lips to keep from flinching. That would have been her when the building first came down, crushed and dead without his intervention. "I suppose I should say thanks," she began to say as he lifted off the ground and they landed on a fairly level section of the collapse. News cameras stared at them from every inch of the sidewalk outside the barricades, and the crowd of people murmured and eddied in flock-like movements.
Homelander didn't give her a chance to finish what she was saying. Without warning he tilted her face up to his and brought his mouth down on hers, his leather-gloved hand gripping her chin so she couldn't pull back and escape. Not that escape was on her mind at all; the suddenness of his action cut through her defenses and all she could do was kiss him back as the sensation of contact with him made her light-headed. A big "OOOOOHHH" erupted from the crowd, followed instantly by cheers and applause. Ashley had never been so embarrassed in her life. Or so turned on.
When he broke the kiss, he leaned down to her ear and whispered, "We'll continue our conversation once we're inside. I think you might enjoy hearing about the many intimate uses I've imagined for you. And maybe you can suggest a few you might have for me."