Work Text:
When it’s over, when it’s finally over, they separate. It feels odd, like they are breaking apart and into themselves again, but none of them have ever been good with families. None of them, otherwise they’d never have been here. Oh, they splinter into smaller groups. Echo (Caroline? Adelle will never know) is never going to let Ballard out of her sight, she’s well aware, and Priya and Anthony look like they’re never going to let go of one another, curved into each other like flowers towards the sun. She watches over them, smiling, a small, tight thing that nevertheless reads like tentative affection and, almost, pride.
And she is, she thinks, she is proud of them. This, them, their small band of gray and broken soldiers, they’ve fallen apart and broken each other but they’ve accomplished this. They’ve saved the world, and that. That is worth, perhaps, everything.
She takes a good, long look at them. Hopefully this will be the last time she sees them like this, dirty and bloody, with Whiskey’s body spread on the cold concrete beneath them. She tilts her chin up as Ballard reaches to scoop her into his capable arms, watches as her long, brittle limbs flop in his grip like a bird with a broken wing, and she nods tightly as he and Echo turn to leave wordlessly.
It’s an odd moment of silence, stillness. She feels as if her pulse is roaring loudly in her ears but it isn’t, she’s just. The silence is deafening. And then she realises that it isn’t, it’s just the noise of panic and sirens, people screaming, and Topher breathing steadily beside her. It makes her want to turn her back, and she does, ignoring the serene smile Priya shoots her.
She walks away. It hurts, a little, but there’s nothing left to do. Nothing she can do, except, maybe, disappear.
By the time she’s half a dozen paces away, Topher’s running to catch up. She stops when he wraps his fingers around her arm, his grip surprisingly warm, and turns to face him with a cool smile. She owes him this.
“What now?” He asks, with that helpless, reckless smile she knows so well, arms coming up with his fingers spread wide to catch at the air. “What—what can we do now?”
Adelle has no idea. She just doesn’t know. So she smiles again, again and again, in control of her features and her thoughts. “Well.” She says very carefully. “I don’t know about you, Mr. Brink, but I am in dire need of a shower and perhaps a glass of wine.” Maybe two, she adds in her head, raises her eyebrow at him in a perfect arch.
“Right, yes, right,” He says, blinking rapidly.
She turns to leave again, taking a half-step that makes Topher’s hand slide down her arm. The streak of warmth makes her shiver against her will, and she glances over her shoulder to say, “Are you coming?”
His face splits open at her pointed question, and he takes a long step to fall into stride with her, looking back at where the others have disappeared. “So, uh, where are we going?” he asks, as if she has the answers, as if she’s still in control.
But if there is anything that Adelle knows how to do, it’s pretend, and she replies coolly, “A hotel, I should think.”
They have to walk two blocks to find a cab and by the time they do, what they’ve done seems to have really hit Topher, the physical pain and the agony of death. He’s shaking beside her, fine tremors that seem to move the air around him. She has her fingers curled around his, protective, a tiny cage of flesh and bone. It’s almost maternal, as loving as Adelle gets with real people, and. It’s enough.
The cabbie doesn’t say anything, not after the piercing look Adelle shoots him as they slide awkwardly into the back seat, Topher immediately curling into her, his head resting against her shoulder and her fingers carding through his hair. She gives concise directions to him, to get to the nearest nice hotel and quickly, please, and sits back. Exhales.
By the time he pulls up in front of what appears to be the best Hotel Tuscon, Arizona has to offer, Adelle’s breathing has slowed and her thoughts have untwined from a tumbleweed mess. She pays the cabbie, leaving a generous tip for his silence, and leads the way out, holding Topher’s shoulder, leading the way. She walks into the lobby like she owns it and asks for a room. A single, with the largest bed they have, she requests, and barely has to look at Topher before he’s nodding agreement. They need this, she thinks, the warmth of companionship. Of forgiveness.
The receptionist is happy to pass along a key and a plastic smile, and again Adelle leads the way to the elevator, standing side by side with him as it rises. She quirks a tiny smile when he starts humming to the music, offtune and irritating, and steps off when it arrives at their floor smartly, her heels sinking into the plush carpet. When they reach the room, she pushes him in first, and watches him sink onto the bed before she retreats to the bathroom. “Order room service, if you’d like,” She calls from the bathroom, and listens to him shout back something about liquor before she strips herself of her clothes and steps into the hot shower with a groan of bliss.
She doesn’t linger, but nor does she hurry, smoothing fragrant soap over her skin with languid movements. It’s soothing, something she can do without thought, and she ducks her head under the water too, slicking her hair back with shampoo. She turns the heat up higher, higher, until her skin is prickling and bright red, as if she’s going to boil. The burn of it is just a little painful, especially when it stings into her minor cuts and abrasions, but she relishes it, tipping her head back and gasping as her neck flushes uncomfortably.
By the time she steps out, she feels better. Calmer. She has no clean clothes and she can’t stand the thought of slipping back into her old clothes, into her clean skin being marred with blood again, so she slides her panties back up her legs again and fastens herself back into her bra before swathing herself with a fluffy, complimentary terrycloth robe.
She steps out to the sound of someone talking. The television, she realises, and hesitates before sitting next to Topher on the bed. He’s staring at the television blankly, and she highly doubts that he’s genuinely interested in the birthing process of the African bullfrog so she reaches over to him to take the remote, thumb it off.
He turns to look at her in the jarring silence, and she startles at the look in his eyes, and thinks, is this the thing that’s finally broken him?
“Topher?” she hazards, curling her hand around the nape of his neck, and he collapses into her, gasping wetly, “Bennet. Oh, god, Bennet. She killed her.”
“I know,” Adelle croons, rocking him back and forth like a child. He starts to sob, great, heaving things that leak wetness onto her shoulder and she closes her eyes against the grief that rises up in her, pressing her face into his hair. She holds him tight, tighter, and whispers ridiculous, soothing things into his ears, stroking his arms and shoulders. She presses her lips to his hair, lets them rest there for long minutes while he breathes shakily against her skin.
They sit like that for a long while, finding solace in each other, and then Topher shifts in her embrace, sitting up and back, eyes averted. Looking down. Ashamed. Or afraid?
She puts her hands on his cheeks, cradles his face, and leans in to press a dry kiss to his forehead. “Better?” she asks, and internally winces at the inanity of it, knowing that it can’t possibly be even as Topher nods.
He brings up his own hands, fluttering uselessly in the air before he curls his fingers around her wrists, pressing hard into her pulse. He slowly turns his head until his face is pressed against the thin skin inside her left wrist, dragging his lips across it, and she realises with a slight catch of her breath what that look in his eyes means when he leans forward.
It isn’t love, she thinks, even as she allows him to press his lips against hers. It isn’t, she thinks again as he pulls back, and she tugs him in again, pressing hers against his; or at least, not romantic love. Not sexual love.
It doesn’t stop her from pressing forward so that she’s kneeling, the length of her pushed up against him. She leans her forehead against his, closes her eyes and breathes; whispers against him, “Is this what you need?”
He nods, slowly, speechless, and she opens her eyes and sighs, “Alright,” slow and sweet into his ear. She presses small kisses to his cheek and again to his mouth, a light, chaste thing. He needs to do this, to deepen it, and he does, pressing her lips open with a push of his tongue, sweeping into her mouth with slow reverence.
It moves slowly, like friendship with the slightest undercurrent of arousal, and it feels like hours before she allows him to press her into the mattress, to push aside the soft terrycloth to catch clumsily at the front-clasp of her bra. She smiles as he fumbles at it and reaches up to do it herself, then gasps in surprised arousal as he mouths at her breast.
It feels like another short eternity before it reaches this point, with him deep inside her. She tilts her head back into the pillow, mouth open and cheeks flushed. Her hair is clinging damply to her temple, just like his, and she reaches to push his back.
His eyes are wide and black, hips stuttering as he looks down at her. “God,” He chokes. “Jesus, you’re just. You’re so beautiful,”
Adelle smiles slowly and with pleasure. “Thank you,” she says sincerely, and lifts her hips up, gasps and bites back a whimper as his clever fingers drift down. It’s only short minutes before she comes, a gentle wave of pleasure lifting her and cresting, and barely three more thrusts before Topher comes inside the condom.
She smiles again, a little dreamily, and helps him tie it off and throw it at the bin. He misses, but that, she thinks, is the problem of tomorrow’s maid, and she turns to lie on her side, tugging Topher’s arm around her when he settles in behind her.
It still isn’t love, and it won’t happen again, but she’s glad it did. She thinks, before she succumbs to sleep, that they needed this.