Work Text:
The first time it happened, Chief was a little perplexed.
Although jolted out of a work-induced haze, her mind managed to offer her three options.
First: continue to scour through the document in her hands as normal, as though she had not spent the previous thirty seconds of her time persistently rereading the same sentence to no avail, or that the letters had begun to blur into an indistinguishable smear beneath her weary eyes the longer she tried.
Second: acknowledge the figure that’s been hovering behind her, who, moments earlier, had marched into the office with her usual disregard for knocking, and has since made a comfortable place for herself at Chief’s back, chin tucked lightly against her shoulder.
Normally, Chief would’ve found this display of affection rather cute, if not a little surprising. Spontaneous visits from Zoya were not uncommon, and Chief has grown accustomed to the Legion’s leader dropping by on her whims. Whenever questioned about it, Chief found herself hiding a smile each time Zoya passed it off as simply needing a quieter place to rest, or declaring that someone had to make sure the bureau leader didn’t work herself to death.
Luckily for Chief, Zoya was generous enough to be that person.
Of course, they both knew better.
Chief would nod along all the same, remembering only afterwards that she was technically supposed to reprimand Zoya for the habit.
Fortunately, Zoya was rarely disruptive. Most afternoons found her dozing off on the office couch, an arm or jacket flung over her face to shield herself from the light. Other times, when Zoya had more energy to spare, she’d entertain herself with what little amusements the office had to offer: idly spinning a pen between her fingers, flipping through reports she had no real interest in reading, and offering thoughtful little remarks towards Chief akin to “your handwriting gets worse the longer you work.”
Still, these gestures of affection, coming from Zoya of all people, had a way of making Chief’s heartbeat quicken no matter how accustomed she ought to be to them by now.
This time, however, the pressure seemed less like something stirring inside her chest, and more like something resting squarely on the outside of it.
Which led her to the third, and arguably the strangest, option: directly address the hand now settling far too comfortably on her boob.
Chief liked to believe she can focus through most things. It was a skill she had spent a long time honing— the demands of her position had seen to that. There are documents to review, procedures to follow, problems to intercept before they could gather enough heat to become bigger ones.
And Chief is, generally speaking, good at this, save for her tendency to land herself in sticky situations before she even gets a chance to intercept it.
However, after hours of uninterrupted work pouring through formal reports, even Chief was beginning to feel the steady decrease of her concentration. Instead, what she did have was a gloved hand wrapped quite snugly on her left boob. Which, she would argue, counted as a more-than-adequate distraction whether or not she was already running on fumes.
With the last thread of determination available to her, Chief squints down at the report again. As expected, the letters swam uselessly on the page.
“…regarding the reallocation of operational expenditures…”
The hand gave an experimental squeeze.
Without lifting her gaze from the document, Chief finally spoke, her voice leveled and calm. “…Zoya.”
“Mm?”
Chief briefly wondered how she should go about addressing the absurdity of the situation. Zoya’s breath was warm against her neck, the combined weight of both her body and sheer audacity pressing heavily against Chief’s own. With gritted teeth, one of Chief’s hands loosened its grip on the document and moved to curl around Zoya’s wrist instead. “What do you think you’re doing?”
To her disbelief, Zoya’s hand remained where it was, entirely unaffected by Chief’s attempt to move it. If anything, the grip seemed to settle more comfortably, fingers spreading to cover more surface. Near her ear, Chief heard Zoya chuckle softly before shifting closer, pressing her nose deeper into her hair as though she had no intention of moving at all.
“Decompressing,” Zoya replied at last. She offered nothing more, sounding deeply satisfied with that explanation.
Chief was not.
“...You do understand what you are doing right now, yes?” With considerable effort, Chief tried to move Zoya's wrist once more. In a rather spiteful attempt, she dug her nails into the gloved hands to see if it would make a difference. "Quit playing games with me, Zoya."
Even without facing her, Chief could feel the light-hearted smile surfacing in Zoya’s tone. “Me?” the gang leader replied, feigning innocence so convincingly it borders on insulting. “You know I never play around when it comes to you.”
"I see." Chief paused, generously allowing those words to sink in for a moment. She weighed in on the situation once more. There's a trace of annoyance flickering into her brows and seeping into the tone of her words, one that Zoya recognized but chose to ignore. "Your hand,” she spaced out each word carefully, on the very slim chance that Zoya was not aware of it, “is on my boob."
Zoya simply nodded, as though this is new information she must now process.
Pulling herself from the crown of Chief’s hair, Zoya lifted her head just enough to properly inspect the situation at… hand. Her movements were lax, as if she was conducting a mere evaluation of their current position rather than acknowledging the fact that she was, very plainly, groping her superior officer.
“It’s been a somewhat stressful week,” Zoya explained, her tone remaining perfectly calm to Chief’s growing exasperation.
Chief exhaled slowly through her nose. If she turned around now and found Zoya looking ridiculously amused by the situation, she just might consider sending her off to do some petty yard work.
“Zoya,” she said once more, the steady throb at her temple suggesting that her patience is running thin. “You are aware that touching my boobs does not qualify as medical treatment.” She hesitated, clearly searching for a suitably professional way to finish her phrasing. “Nor are they something you can use for your… stress.”
For a couple of seconds, the office was silent. Zoya grew quiet at that, as though Chief had presented her information genuinely worth considering.
Chief waited, expectant. She was fairly certain that the problem had been resolved. Surely, now, Zoya will recognize the impropriety of the situation and remove her hand like a reasonable person.
It was then she felt another absent-minded squeeze.
In amazement, Zoya mused, “...It’s almost like a stress ball.”
Chief closed the report she was reading.
Work, it seemed, had officially ended for the day.
Chief had assumed it would be a one-time thing.
Much like her endurance during fitness tests, that assumption didn’t last very long.
In hindsight, perhaps it wasn’t all that unusual. Objectively speaking, while it was the sort of behavior that would make anyone with stronger professional conduct bristle with disapproval, especially for someone in Chief’s position and a member of the Legion, it wasn’t anything particularly strange within the context of their relationship either.
Chief supposed that if Zoya could be familiar with what she sounded like behind closed doors while she had the Syndican leader wrapped snugly in between her legs, then a little boob grab here and there wasn’t that big of a deal in comparison.
This reasoning made a lot of sense to Chief.
Still, it required a short period of adjustment, most of which involved discouraging the Legion leader from describing her breasts using wordings like a “stress ball.”
Like she does with most things, Chief found comfort in studying what she didn’t understand until she could pin reason to it. After some consideration, she concluded that there were two recurring situations in which Zoya’s hands inevitably found reason to wander.
As it turned out, Zoya simply enjoyed holding them while she talked.
Somewhat conveniently, Chief enjoyed listening to Zoya.
There was something pleasant about the way Zoya spoke to her when she wasn’t in the middle of issuing orders to a group of followers or provoking some poor officer with snide sarcasm. Left to their own devices where positions and ranks hardly mattered, Chief had grown rather fond of the moments where Zoya felt relaxed enough to share her thoughts freely.
She liked to listen whenever Zoya stood by the window in the early morning, broad and tattooed back in her full view as Chief lounged just a few minutes longer in the warmth of their bed. Zoya would run a hand through silver hair, idly remarking on some small, inconsequential thing currently brewing in her mind that day.
Sometimes, it was for urgent matters, like a reminder that the cupboard was running out of coffee, the expensive kind that Chief had gotten as a gift once and Zoya has apparently taken a deep liking to.
Other times, it’d be about the way Chief sleeps.
“You sleep like a damn corpse,” Zoya had told her once as they were getting ready to start a new day. Leaning against the bathroom door, she watched with open amusement as Chief struggled to run a comb through a particularly stubborn knot in her hair. With a quiet scoff, she pushed off the frame and stepped behind the smaller woman, plucking the comb from her hand before working it through herself. “I thought of checking your pulse a few times to make sure you were still alive.”
At that, Chief would smile to herself.
She wouldn’t tell her that it was because she actually slept much more soundly when Zoya was in her bed — the Legion commander likely already knew that. She also was careful not to point out that she knew Zoya would quietly watch her in the early hours before she woke, either.
Listening to Zoya like this, it was easy to forget that the same woman could walk into a room and have half the Bureau stand on edge from her presence alone.
Over time, Zoya’s habit of holding her had grown into an absentminded gesture that eased naturally into their private conversations. Whether she was on the listening or speaking end, Zoya enjoyed tugging Chief closer, hands settling on her without much thought.
Chief found that she didn’t actually mind.
And just as Zoya had insisted it would, Chief eventually realized that this particular way of holding her seemed to actually soothe the woman.
The point had been proven rather convincingly after a particularly rough mission where Zoya had returned from an excessively violent assignment, even by the Legion’s standards. When Chief arrived, she faltered for a moment at the sight of her. Torn fabric clung to Zoya’s shoulders, dark with dried blood, and several fresh bandages had been applied so unevenly Chief was certain that Zoya must’ve bullied the medics into letting her leave early.
Before she had time to sit properly at the edge of the bed, Zoya reached out and pulled her close, gathering her into a careful embrace. For someone who had just returned looking worn and tattered from the battlefield, Zoya seemed entirely unconcerned with her own condition. She simply relaxed against Chief’s body.
Like any responsible administrator would do upon seeing the Legion’s most troublesome leader stitched together so hastily, Chief began inspecting the damage. With a sigh, and eyebrows pinched, her fingers hovered near a bandaged shoulder, then a bruised rib, mentally cataloging every injury Zoya had clearly decided was beneath mentioning.
She was halfway through the process when she felt Zoya’s touch.
Instead of the usual complaint she might have offered on another day, she simply glanced down at the hand. “I thought your arm had been injured.”
“Not that one,” Zoya corrected immediately.
Chief frowned faintly. “You seem remarkably selective about which injuries matter.”
Zoya shifted slightly against her. She offered a smile that eased some of Chief’s growing worry. “You need to quit fussing over me,” Zoya patted the area next to her. “Lay down.”
Seeing as there was no point in arguing, Chief complied with another sigh.
“You are a pervert,” she still felt compelled to add.
Zoya laughed, and suddenly it felt rather silly for Chief to stay irritated. Whether it came from being groped while she’d been worried sick, or from seeing Zoya return in such a state, she couldn’t quite tell anymore. “Are we not similar in that sense?”
Chief doesn’t argue.
Because for one reason or another, it was true that Chief has never truly made a move to stop her.
On an evening much like the others, Chief sits hunched over her desk, shoulders caved inward and looking like she might fold into herself if the night dragged on any longer. The lamplight caught in her eyes, bloodshot and unfocused through hours spent staring down reports that refused to write themselves. She pressed her fingers against her temple, silently urging the growing migraine to subside.
Next to her, Zoya had arranged herself into what could only be generously described as a sitting position. Claiming the edge of the table as a comfortable footrest, the taller gangster leaned back on her chair with a grunt, propping her boots up casually.
For a while, the only sound in the room was the faint scratching of Chief’s pen.
Then, as if pulled by a torturous, invisible string puppeteered by Zoya herself, Chief’s gaze drifted disastrously on Zoya’s boobs. Before she allowed her mind to wander, her eyes quickly darted away again.
Naturally, that did not escape Zoya's notice.
Chief was fairly certain very little escaped the Legion’s commander when she was bored.
Slowly, Zoya‘s lips stretched into a grin.
”It helps,” she offered.