Work Text:
“The hell you think you’re doing!”
“My job, asshole,” she shoots back, matching his venom, straining to keep her back ramrod, shoulders raised. She knows better than backing down when he’s this pissed.
This… worried.
She refuses to show weakness.
Refuses.
She will not allow this night to validate shit of his concerns about her doing field work. She’s worked her ass off to deserve this assignment. She will not, cannot, blow it over a triviality.
A triviality like a couple bruised ribs. A couple bruised ribs that burn like a someone is presently holding a lit cigarette to just below her left breast. Mirroring his enraged, domineering posture is agony.
But. She. Can. Not. Show. Weakness.
Of course, no one will fault her for showing deference to a superior. Which, he definitely is.
This is the excuse she tells herself, when the pain forces her to look away first; to drop to her knees with a huff she hopes he interprets as indignation instead of relief, bent again over the mobile comp set-up.
He notices. Of course, he notices. Nothing escapes him. The cyber symbiote makes it impossible for his brain to function otherwise.
She fights back a shudder at the thought of that piece of shit in his head.
She feels him. Even as the fingers of her digi-gloves fly over the holo-keys faster than the un-upgraded eye could follow, entering line after line of code, she feels those black-as-voids eyes burning into the top of her head.
She does her best to ignore it. Ignore him. Ignore the pain searing her side with each exhale. She needs to head off the data stream before it can download into the global cloud.
Before the needle they’ve worked months to track down disappears into a virtual never-ending stack of other needles.
“You were not cleared to engage a conscious mark. You are brains, not brawn. Why the fuck do you think I was assigned to shadow? Techs aren’t trained to handle that situation. You should be dead.”
He’s been silent so long, she can’t help flinching at his words, spoken in a near whisper, at the very nape of her neck. He moves like a stray breeze. Sneaky fucker.
The next shudder has nothing to do with her ribs. She forces herself to tamp down the sensation, focusing on making her words leave her as a growl, instead of a moan. “Well, Vegeta, as much as that thing in your skull believes it can calculate every possible variable in every possible scenario, reality doesn’t always follow symbiotic algorithms.”
With a few dozen more lines, she finally heads off the data stream, isolating it within her own stasis program, seconds before it could reach the cloud. With a satisfied huff, she closes the program, all the lights fading into the thumb sized compucube she quickly tucks into the slim belt at her hip. She leans back on her haunches. And finds her back fitting perfectly into a solid cradle of unyielding – yet oddly accommodating— muscle.
“You should not have engaged him.” His voice is still angry, still steel ground over gravel, but she feels his rocketing heartbeat through the thin fabric of their nanosuits.
It makes her braver than wisdom dictates when he’s like this. Callous.
“Well, we could have done without mutilating him.”
He shifts away. Stands abruptly.
She tells herself she doesn’t miss his unnatural warmth at her back. She’s a professional. They both are. If ever there was a shit time for that sentiment…
And, anyway, she remembers she’s pissed at him, too. His arraignment comes before hers can formulate.
“Neutralization protocol,” he dictates, nose flared. His eyes light with rage, but his voice gains a slightly monotonous edge. The machine is thinking. The man is feeling. After all these years, the spectacle still creeps the fuck out of her. “Five seconds. Within five seconds of a mark becoming animate, all digital upgrades must be neutralized, before cloud uplink can initiate.”
“So you rip out his eye, jam your fist through the socket to his prefrontal cortex and rip out his symbiote before his heart stops beating?” She tries, but her voice still comes a choked wheeze of outrage and disgust. Her face contorts with it.
He notices.
And smirks.
A sinister, lopsided hitch to his lips, accompanied by a shift of his weight to one leg, a downward slump to his shoulders, his arms crossing haphazardly over his chest.
That’s not the machine. That’s the man.
He’s beautiful, calm and collected, backlit by the strobing neon of the holo-billboard dominating the rooftop landscape of the high-rise.
She fights back another shudder that has nothing to do with bruised ribs.
“My methods would not have been needed, had your program been competent enough to complete its designated function while keeping the mark subdued.” His smirk grows. Both in width and darkness. “As opposed to triggering all his neurosymb’s firewalls, conversely causing him to come to, two-hundred pounds of flailing muscle.”
He cocks his head, still amused. “Point blank strike to the mid torso. Possible broken or fractured ribs, likely collapsed lung, internal hemorrhaging. At best, every breath is torture. Serves you right for the shitty tech.”
She’s on her feet in a breath, nose-to-nose, fighting back a cringe, courtesy of the scorching ache in her side. In her indignation, she shoves at him. Actually, forces both palms hard to his chest.
Idiotic. She’d sooner get a steel beam to budge. And her ribs make a hard case as to the stupidity of the attempt.
She’s glad when only anger ignites the tenor of her voice. “Listen, shithead. This is on your people, not mine. The intelligence you provided built this guy up to be nothing more than a smalltime toady. Level three bulwarks, at most. My hack was level six. That symb was outfitted with level nine firewalls. That man was not a bottom feeder. Had my intelligence been accurate, I would have designed malware capable of breeching without compromising the mark. As it was, you’re lucky I was able to download the data stream your methods released into the ether before the hack finished mining the files. We could’ve done without leaving a post-era slasher film behind for the heat. And, we’d have a stable, untraceable hack on what is likely one of the Syndicate's top enforcers. We lost a useful asset.”
His demeanor doesn’t change, aside from the hitch to one eyebrow. He’s no longer angry. Just bored.
“We traced that waste of skin and organs to the kidnapping and trafficking of dozens of children, all under the age of twelve, for trade in the skin market. Don’t expect me to lose sleep over his untimely departure from among the living.”
With that, he activates the nanos in his suit, walks to the edge of the roof, and kneels into a take-off stance.
“I’m not working with you again,” she states with finality, coming to flank him as fast as her compromised body will allow.
It catches his attention. Those dark eyes focus on her, keen.
She shrugs. It hurts. She plays it off by looking away at the cityscape beyond. “If the Royals want to work with the Corp again, let them send Goku. Hell, I’ll even take Radditz. Anyone but you. I don’t need a sociopath compromising my hits. And I will be taking on more hits, Vegeta. Regardles of your report, I have the data. That makes this assignment a success. They will give me more. I’m not turning them down. Not because of you.”
That hint of amusement flashes the onyx of his eyes, but his mouth remains a tight line.
She keeps eye contact. She will not bend on this.
He moves faster than any man should, and his mouth is on hers, coaxing, drawing. She’s prepared for an argument, not this. Caught off-guard, her body responds of its own accord, as years of muscle memory have conditioned it to. She molds herself to his side, reciprocating. Until lack of oxygen forces her to break for air.
His gloved hand comes to stroke her cheek, touch light as a feather. His voice is a coarse rumble. “It will be a cold day in hell when you go out on another assignment without me. You can try, but I outrank you. We both know how that will go.”
She shoves off from him, steps away to the opposite edge of the roof, activates her suit to make her own leap. She’s never been more grateful their outfits are on opposite ends of the city. Still she can’t help throwing over her shoulder, “You’re impossible, Vegeta. Do whatever the fuck you want. I’m still taking whatever assignment Brass throws my way.”
“Bulma!”
She huffs and sideeyes him. That infuriating smirk slashes his face. She can’t decide what she wants more: to smack him or jump him.
“What?”
“My turn to pick up dinner for game night at the Sons. Med team’s nanites should have those ribs set in a couple hours. Chinese or pizza?”
A deep sigh escapes through gritted teeth, and her right hand subconsciously moves to her left, absently turning the band on the finger next to her pinky under her glove. A rote habit. She does it when she concentrates on especially difficult coding back at the lab.
She’s furious all over again when she catches the gesture. She sends him the nastiest smile she can manage, not for the first time that night, her imagination briefly flashing on mariticide.
Who’s she kidding. She loves the asshole.
“You hate Chinese.”
He gives a one-sided shrug.
“Chinese it is.”
And she leaps off the ledge, smiling absurdly as she coasts for Headquarters.