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“Spider’s sort of an unusual nickname for a girl, isn’t it?” River asks her a week into training. They share a few seminars, so she’s seen him around, and of course she’s heard of him — he’s a Cartwright; everyone has heard of him by now — but it’s the first time he’s spoken to her.
She looks up at him from her seat with a sharp smile. She’s not offended, but she wants him to know she isn’t a sure thing, even with his important last name and annoying good looks.
“Isn’t your name River, or am I thinking of someone else who’s hardly in a place to judge about unusual names?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t come up with mine.”
“Neither did I,” she says with a tilt of her head. River’s eyes trace the elongated line of her neck, but he stops before he gets any lower and looks back at her face. It’s a bit of a shame, because she knows her tits look great in this top.
“Do you like it?” he asks, taking the seat next to her. The lecture hall is still mostly empty, which means it’s his choice to sit close to her, not something down to chance or necessity. “Or should I call you something else?”
She does like it. She hadn’t at first, more because it wasn’t terribly creative than because of the intended implications. But it had stuck, so she’d made it work for her. There were worse things people called women like her; she knew, because people tended to say them about her behind her back. This one, at least, they called her to her face. She’d grown to wear it as, if not a badge of honor, something like armor. It sets a certain expectation: she’s not harmless, and she won’t pretend to be.
“I think it suits me,” she tells him. “Don’t you?”
“Don’t know yet. Guess I’ll have to find out.”
The smile he gives her is all charm, but it doesn’t have the lecherous edge to it she’s used to seeing in men who say things like that to her. Maybe it’s an act, but he seems more interested in getting to know her than “getting to know” her.
“Guess so,” she agrees, finding herself pleasantly warmed by the idea.
“Having fun?” River asks, his voice raised over the din of the pub.
The floor is slightly sticky and the beer is concerningly cheap, and she’s trying very hard to not let on how glad she is that he invited her out.
“It’s amusing.” She feels her smirk turning to something warmer despite her best efforts.
River leans closer, his arm brushing her shoulder. “You don’t come out much. I wasn’t sure if this was your scene.”
It’s not, but she doesn’t tell him that. She’d left behind pubs like this one around the same time she’d outgrown passing a plastic two litre of cider around a dorm room, back when she’d still thought that maybe she could fit in with the girls who did their makeup together and swapped skirts before stumbling to uni parties as a happy gaggle. She’d never quite figured out where the line was with that sort of crowd — when a joke was too sharp, when she should have turned down an opportunity (for advancement, or a quick lay, or both) because someone else thought they were entitled to it, when “ambition” became “being a heinous bitch” — and once she’d figured out how to buy, flirt, or lie her way into posh rooftop bars and pretentiously exclusive clubs, she’d found it easier, if also lonelier, not to worry about that line anyway.
She takes a sip of her beer before answering. “Most of the guys who ask are creeps, and I’m not really…” She nods her head toward a group of three women from their class who pointedly didn’t greet her when she and River arrived.
River follows her gaze, giving a tight smile when one of the women sends a coy wave his way. “Not a girl’s girl?” he asks, his focus returning to Spider.
“I have plenty of female friends from school,” she lies. Apparently unconvincingly, because River gives her a skeptical look.
“I have a few ex-girlfriends who still ring me for a tumble every once in a while.” She shrugs the shoulder that’s still pressed against his arm. “Close enough.”
River blinks at her. “Oh.”
“Don’t choke on your tongue, Cartwright.”
“I just didn’t realize you were—that you…” He trails off and gives her a shrug and a small, sheepish smile, and she thinks he’s trying to tell her that it’s okay, that it’s not a big deal, but she pushes anyway.
“Don’t you find it boring, being attracted to only one gender?”
River takes a long sip from his beer. “I wouldn’t know.”
The answer catches her off guard, the information itself as much as his trusting her so casually with something like that. In the month or so that they’ve spent together, she’s learned that he’s not like her — he doesn’t lean into the parts of himself that people might not like the way she does. The combination of surprise and delight makes her laugh. “Knew there was a reason I liked you.”
“So you like me then?”
“Possibly,” she says, even though it’s incredibly, embarrassingly obvious how much she likes him, how quickly talking between classes became studying together became sharing meals became whatever this is, how eager she is for more.
“I think you do.”
“Seeming less likely by the minute.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
She grins and bumps her shoulder into him.
“I’m gonna grab another. Want one?” River asks, holding up his empty glass.
He’s been outpacing her by nearly three drinks to one, but she’s not sure if he’s got a high tolerance or is just good at hiding when he’s drunk.
“I’m good.”
“I’m coming right back,” he assures her. “Don’t leave.”
She waits, watching the other patrons. More than half of the crowd are people she recognizes from training, but no one else approaches her. She’s not sure if that’s because River has staked some sort of claim, or just due to her demeanor. It’s not that she doesn’t get along with anyone else — she’s obviously capable enough that people are happy to say hi to her, or chat with her between lectures — but she's always struggled with bridging the gap between casual acquaintances and actual friends. River is, of course, the exception.
“Hey, so,” River starts when he returns, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Will it make me a creep if I ask if you want to come back to mine?”
“Depends on why you’re asking.” She’s going to say yes regardless, but she likes that he’s always eager to earn her approval.
He bites at his lip for a moment, looking around the pub. “It’s loud here, and there are too many people, and I don’t care about talking with anyone but you. Thought maybe we could do that somewhere we won’t have to shout.”
“Good answer.”
“So is that a yes then?”
“Yeah, River. That’s a yes.”
“Great! Yeah, let me just say goodbye to some of the guys.”
She watches River find a few of the people from training he’d said hello to when they’d arrived, making the rounds to say his farewells as he finishes his drink. She’s relieved to see he doesn’t seem to mention that he’s leaving with her. Or at least if he does, no one shoots her any knowing looks. Obviously, they’re friends, and hopefully less obviously, she does want to sleep with him, but she knows the sorts of things people would say, and for a reason she’s just tipsy enough to admit to herself feels an awful lot like having a crush, she doesn’t want to stand here and watch them say them to River.
She’s less relieved to see him take a shot that’s pressed into his hand by one of the guys, and then a second one quickly after that.
By the time they’ve gotten in a taxi, River is a bit wobbly. He manages to give the driver his address before he slumps down in his seat, resting his head on her shoulder.
“Are you going to get car sick with your eyes closed?” She keeps her voice low, not wanting to get them kicked out of the cab.
“No. Wait. Yes.”
He sits up and leans against the window instead, pressing his forehead to the glass. In the intermittent glow of the streetlights, she can see his eyes drift shut again, and she squeezes his hand to keep him awake. If she keeps his hand in hers, their fingers intertwined loosely between them, it’s just in case he does it again.
By the time they reach his flat, he’s struggling enough that she has to fish out his keys for him. Once they’re inside, she turns to preemptively explain that she won’t be sleeping with him, but he rushes past her to the loo, slamming the door behind him.
His flat is small and surprisingly tidy despite the general rundown nature of the furnishings. She finds a glass in the kitchen cupboard and fills it with water before following the sounds of retching to the bathroom.
“River, I’m coming in,” she says, opening the door.
“I don’t think I’m done. Don’t want to set you off, too.”
“Not a problem.” She sits down on the edge of the tub. “I’ve got a very well-trained gag reflex.”
“I already feel bad enough about fucking this up,” he groans from his place on the floor. ”You don’t have to rub it in.”
“Thought you were just inviting me back to talk.”
Whatever explanation he was planning on offering is cut off by his leaning over the toilet and gagging.
“This is so embarrassing," he says when it seems like that round has passed, leaning his back against the wall.
She waves it off. “It really doesn’t bother me. Between boarding school and uni, I’ve been around more vomiting than most nurses.”
“Didn’t realise boarding school was such a party.”
“It wasn’t.”
It takes him a moment, but he catches her meaning. “Oh. That’s… that’s terrible. Sorry.”
She shrugs and passes him the glass of water. “We all have our demons.”
“You’re being entirely too nice about this.”
“Yeah, well. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Wouldn’t want them to know, anyway. I like having you all to myself.”
She laughs. “Trying to put the moves on me when you were literally just curled around the toilet is unbelievable.”
“But is it working?” River asks, grabbing the edge of the sink and pulling himself up dramatically before washing his hands and grabbing his toothbrush from the medicine cabinet. The intimacy of watching him brush his teeth, soft-eyed and mussed and holding her gaze in the reflection of the mirror, is sudden and startling.
“I’ll take the sofa,” she says instead of answering the question still lingering between them. “Where do you keep your spare blankets?”
In the morning, she takes off before he wakes up, leaving the blanket folded neatly on the arm of the sofa and two paracetamol on his bedside table.
She’s so fucking cold and she’s so fucking sore and she hates that her fucking body isn’t doing what she’s fucking telling it to.
She doesn’t even want to be a field agent. Her neatly outlined plan that takes her from junior analyst to First Desk does not involve anything that would require expertise in wading through muddy water nearly up to her neck or crawling under barbed wire or freezing her arse off in the desolate moorlands. But this is what’s necessary to get to step one, so here she is, trekking back to the barracks shivering and wet everywhere, and not in the fun way.
Even after a long, hot shower, her muscles are aching and stiff, leaving her dreading the shitty mattress awaiting her despite the deep exhaustion setting in as she dresses in the locker room. Her skin feels oversensitive and raw from exposure when she pulls up her leggings, so she opts to forego her bra — the band would probably hurt like a bitch on her sore ribs, anyway — and tucks it back into her bag before pulling an old sweatshirt over her head. She’d cut the neckline wide and low when that was fashionable, but now it had stretched out so much that it was loose enough to necessitate being careful when bending forward if she wants to avoid giving someone a show they definitely can’t afford a ticket to. She’s only heading back to her room to sleep, though, so it’s fine.
The sensation of being watched, even in places where it’s rude to stare such as this, isn’t new, but she’s somewhat surprised when she turns to find it’s a woman staring at her.
She searches her tired mind for a name.
Piper (she thinks, or maybe Pepper) is beautiful in all the ways Spider isn’t: thick hair that falls past her shoulders in rich waves, dark lashes that don’t need mascara to be visible, and a soft, feminine flow to her body that’s only enhanced by her height. Next to her, Spider probably looks like a haunted Victorian child.
If she didn’t have an air about her that practically screamed straight and mildly homophobic except for how badly she wants a gay best friend, Spider might have made a pass at her in the early days of training, but she’s learned when not to push her luck. Piper/Pepper also tends to hang out with a little clique who seem to have decided they hate Spider for no discernible reason, which seems like unnecessary effort when Spider is more than happy to provide ones.
“Off to see if Cartwright will finally fuck you?” Piper/Pepper asks in a teasing tone.
Spider thinks about saying something about it being the other way around, but she’s not going to throw River under the bus just for a jab, and the other woman wouldn’t believe her anyway.
Instead, she gives an exaggerated sigh. “Well, your father’s a boring lay, so I figured I’d try my luck elsewhere.”
Maybe it’s Pippa, actually, Spider thinks.
Piper/Pepper/Pippa smiles like a shark, if a shark had had the benefit of expensive orthodontia. “He’ll never go for a slut like you. You’re just not the right kind of girl, Spider.”
At least the reason she and her friends glare daggers at Spider whenever she’s in the room is pretty damn clear now. Well, if she’s going to pull this school yard bullshit, two can play that game. “Remind me what your name is?”
“What?”
“I feel like it starts with a P,” Spider drawls, making sure she sounds only mildly interested in the answer. “But I just can’t get past that. Phillipa? Pansy? Poppy?”
“It’s Parker,” Parker (apparently) tells her in an irritated voice.
“Right. Never would have guessed that, as your name hasn’t once come up in conversation, with River or anyone else. Goodnight, then, Parker. Tell your father hello for me and all that.” She gives a little wave of her fingers over her shoulder as she turns toward the door.
Parker doesn’t say anything as she leaves.
The tiredness she’d felt earlier has been replaced by a jittery rush of adrenaline, half from being ready for a fight that never came and half from Parker’s comments. It doesn’t matter that they’re not true; the confirmation of how people see her is enough to put her in an even worse mood right now.
River is waiting for her at the door to her room, and for a moment she almost wishes Parker had followed her just so she could see the other woman’s reaction. He’s in sweatpants and a tee and slippers, and would look very convincingly like he’s planning on staying the night to someone who doesn’t know better.
“Hey, so,” River says, bouncing slightly on his toes as Spider nears. “Aditya says he’ll team up with us for the water tunnels tomorrow.”
“Brilliant, thanks for getting that sorted.” Her hands shake as she tries to fit the key into the lock, yet another physical response she can’t master to be frustrated by today.
She knows River’s watching as she finally slots the key in and twists. Sometimes she really hates being in spy training, which is, by definition, full of people learning to be spies and therefore often annoyingly observant.
“Are you okay? Just today’s course, or did something happen?”
“I’m fine.” She walks into the room, and he follows, shutting the door behind him.
“If someone did something—”
“Slow down, White Knight. No need to pull your armor on.” She puts her things away before crossing the room to sit down on her bed. “Someone was a twat in the locker room, and I’m sore and frustrated and my body is being stupid about it all. It’s really nothing.”
“I’m just saying, if you want me to go kick his arse, I will.”
“It was Parker.”
River looks like he’s trying to place who that is, which gives her a little lick of satisfaction.
“Tall, long dark hair, gorgeous, if you’re into that sort of thing. She usually sits toward the front in Risk Management.”
River shrugs. “Okay, well, if you want me to go kick her arse…”
“Ah yes, a tactic that famously works on bullies: sending someone else to fight your battles.”
“We can go kick her arse together?”
“Jesus, River. Aren’t you too tired to want to go start a fight?”
“I’m not that tired, actually. I don’t—I mean, I’m not saying I like the courses, they’re brutal. But… is it terrible if I’m also sort of enjoying it, just a little bit?”
“Yes. Insufferable, actually.”
“I could, um, try to do something about your other problem, maybe?”
“I don’t think this is the kind of frustration you can help me out with.” She wasn’t actually turned on until he followed her into her room, but now that she’s dealing with that on top of everything else, she’s going to make it his problem, too.
River blushes so quickly it startles a laugh out of her.
“I meant the soreness. I was thinking I could help stretch you… out.” River finishes the sentence despite looking like he wants very badly for the floor to open up and swallow him whole.
“You know, I’m pretty sure I’ve watched porn that starts this way.”
“And I’ll just see myself out.”
“No, no. Sorry. That would be great, actually. I’m too stiff to do it properly on my own.” Great, now he’s got her doing it.
“I think that’s supposed to be my line,” he says, but he’s grinning like he’s in on the joke now, the blush fading.
“How do you want me?”
River licks his lips. “Flat on the bed, on your back.”
“Is that a pillow princess joke?” she asks, mock offended, but she toes her slippers off and does what he says.
“I wouldn’t dare.”
He takes her wrist and slowly moves her arm through a series of static stretches. The pressure is gentle, but she still groans when he folds her arm above her head and presses her elbow down into the mattress. He repeats the motions with her other arm before placing it back at her side and guiding her head toward the wall to stretch the muscles in her neck and shoulder.
When he turns her head toward him, she can see that he’s getting hard.
She can hardly blame him; the sounds she’s making are close enough to obscene that someone listening in could easily get the wrong idea, and he’s close enough that she can feel his body heat. It would just be a matter of leaning a short distance forward to get her mouth on him through his sweats, and she can feel herself getting wet at the thought.
He moves her head back to center. Neither of them speaks as he moves down to rest his hand on her ankle.
Placing his other hand on her knee, he lifts her leg and guides it across her body. Her breathing gets shallower with each stretch, each placement of his hand higher on her thigh. By the time he has both of her legs in the air and is pressing them above her head, she’s sure she’s soaked through her underwear.
“Roll over.” His voice is deeper than she’s ever heard it.
He puts a knee on either side of her thighs and leans over to take her wrists. She can feel how hard he is when brushes against her arse, but he doesn’t push, doesn’t grind down into her or press himself against her. He takes her wrists in his hands and gently leans back, pulling her arms behind her slowly until her chest rises off the mattress. Her shoulders and arms ache fiercely, but the tightness in her chest starts to subside.
“Just breathe,” he says, pulling back a bit more. The only places they’re touching now are his hands on her wrists and his knees on the outside of her thighs, but she can feel the heat radiating from his body behind her.
She takes deep breaths as her lungs start to open up, half because it’s more oxygen than she feels like she’s gotten all day and half to force her body to calm the fuck down so she doesn’t lift her hips and push her arse back to grind on his cock.
“Good,” he says, which certainly doesn’t help. He guides her arms back down, and she almost moans when she feels him against her again.
“Better?” he asks, swinging his leg over and standing next to the bed.
She rolls on her side to look up at him. His pupils are blown and there's a flush on his cheeks, and if she didn’t have a physically intensive hell awaiting her early in the morning, she’d pull him down and kiss him.
“Yeah, much better. Thanks for getting me nice and loose.” She grins at him.
“And I’m the insufferable one.”
“You love it.”
Whatever he was clearly about to say is cut off by her loud yawn that she can’t stop.
“I’ll let you get some sleep.” He moves toward the door.
She shouldn’t ask. It’s cruel, really. She can very clearly see that he’s still hard. She should let him go back to his room and have a nice wank, hopefully thinking about her, and pick this back up when they’re not in a concrete block room with a flimsy mattress.
But she wants to see if he’ll do it, see how far he’ll let her take this before he pushes for more. And mostly, she just doesn’t want him to leave.
“Want to sleep here?” she asks, scooting back to make room next to her on the bed.
“Thought you said it wasn’t the sort of frustration I could help with.”
“Maybe I just want you to be frustrated too.”
“That ship has long sailed.”
“There’s a seamen joke to be had somewhere in there, but I’m too tired to figure it out.”
“What, um. Are you asking if I want to…” he trails off, and she almost presses him to finish his sentence, but she’s not sure how well her resolve would hold up to hearing him say those words.
“Just to sleep.” She braces herself for his excuses, something about the bed being too small or needing to be up early. Both of which are true, but neither of which is why he’ll leave.
“Okay, yeah.” He kicks off his slippers and turns off the light before getting into bed next to her. “Do you have an alarm set?”
Her phone is charging on the bedside table next to him, and it would be such an easy excuse to reach across him. But while she’s starting to trust his self-control, she’s starting to doubt her own.
“Yeah. 5 AM.”
“Fucking hell,” he groans. “That’s gonna suck.”
“I thought you enjoyed it,” she teases.
“Parts of it more than others.”
She shifts so she’s facing him. The room is so dark that she can barely make out his features, even from this close, but she can see the soft rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.
“You can touch me,” she says quietly. “I mean not like that, but just. If you want.”
He brings the arm between them up above her head and she moves closer, tucking herself under it.
“Actually,” he says after about thirty seconds of charged silence, “my arm will go numb if I fall asleep like this.”
It’s a perfectly logical reason, but she still feels disappointed.
“Can I just…” He shifts his arm a bit, and she lifts her head, waiting. “Can I move you?”
“Yeah,” she whispers.
He slides his closer arm under her back and brings the other around to grab her far hip and slowly flips her so her upper body is half on top of him. He releases her hip but keeps his arm around her, his hand resting on her lower back.
Her face is cradled on his chest, and she lets herself nestle just a bit closer. “Nice trick.”
“Yeah,” he says, his voice tight. “Figured that might work.”
The room is quiet, the radiator humming faintly. She can hear his heartbeat if she turns her head just slightly, and she listens to it for a moment before speaking. “I’m probably going to drool on you, just so you know. I’ve been told I’m not a pretty sleeper.”
River lets out a soft laugh, really nothing more than a puff of air she feels as much as hears. “Guess I’ll have to find out.”
The echo of what she felt the first time he said that to her comes back tenfold, warmth curling up in her stomach and spreading across her skin.
“Guess so.”
“Do you want to fuck me?” she asks into the comfortable quiet between them. They're in her living room, lecture notes and open text books and half empty takeout containers spread out on the glass coffee table. There’s a decent amount of space between them on the sofa, but she can still sense the shift in him when he tenses.
It’s not that she thinks he’ll be particularly exceptional at it — not at first, at least. But she knows he’s a hands-on learner and eager to please, and she’d seen him on the assault courses so she knows he’s got the strength and stamina to keep up with her, at least as far as the physical exertion side of things goes.
Sleeping with him isn’t necessary to ensure his loyalty; honestly, that particular purpose might be better served by stringing him along, letting him think that if he just does a good enough job, she’ll eventually let him inside of her.
But there are other, better reasons to do it.
On the most practical level, she knows Resistance to Interrogation training is rougher on women in general and even more so on ones like her. It wouldn’t matter if she was a blushing virgin; men see her looks and the way she carries herself and decide she’s an arrogant slut who needs to be taught a lesson, and being tasked with actually teaching her a lesson won’t stop some of the RTI instructors from thinking that way as well, from using it as an excuse.
River can’t protect her from that — she doesn’t need him to, and it would defeat the purpose, anyway — but it would be nice to have someone she can reclaim her agency with, someone she trusts to not see her as weak for wanting to be held or fucked up for wanting to get railed senseless so she doesn’t have to pay attention to the thoughts in her head for a while.
It’s not that she necessarily wants to be seen as his girlfriend, or to attach herself to his name in a more official capacity; half of their training class seems to think they’re already fucking. But it would be better to be thought of as the girl who landed River Cartwright than the girl who couldn’t, despite being practically inseparable from him.
But mostly, she just wants him. He’s sweet, but his humor is sharp. He has a meanness to him that he never directs at her unless it’s in jest, but she loves when she gets to see it aimed at the pricks who assume he’s only there because of his last name or the entitled twats who try to mask being hurt by her disinterest with insults and lewd comments.
While she doesn’t have much to go on by way of comparison, she thinks he’s a good friend. He looks out for her in a way that isn’t patronizing or paternalistic. They’re well matched to compliment each other’s strengths and make up for each other’s weaknesses. She sometimes outpaces him when it comes to the analytical side of things, but he’s never bitter about it, and she’s almost okay with the times he outpaces her in the more demanding physical aspects of training.
She wouldn’t say he has a ‘dark side’ or anything as cliched as that, but there’s an edge to him that she thinks she could hone. He’s mostly boyish charm and optimistic ambition, but he’s hungry for the things he really wants, and sometimes he looks at her like he wants to eat her alive.
They already have each other’s backs in the metaphorical sense and the more literal, out-in-the-field sense, but she thinks having him draped across hers, sweaty and groaning while he thrusts into her, would be a nice addition.
He sets down her lecture notes that he was, until a moment ago, intently reading and shifts so his body is angled toward her. “Right now, or generally, or…”
“Either. Both.”
His eyes narrow, but he’s looking at her mouth when he asks, “Is this one of those trick questions where if I say yes I’m a pig and if I say no I’m an idiot?”
“You know those aren’t the kinds of games I play.” She turns her body to face him, bringing her knees up between them and letting her legs fall open enough that he’ll just barely be able to see her panties past the hem of her skirt if he looks. He does.
“I think asking me at all is a game. You already know the answer.”
“I want to hear you say it. Tell me what you want, River.”
He gets his knees under him and leans over her, fisting one hand in her hair, grabbing at the roots slowly and firmly. She can see it coming out, that fiercer part of him that she gets flashes of sometimes, the one that makes her sure he’ll be able to kill someone in the field if he has to. It’s exactly what she wants. He’s exactly what she wants.
“Yes, I want to fuck you,” he says, low and gravelly with his lips almost on hers. “I want to take you apart. I want to lap at your cunt until you beg, and I want to make you scream when you come on my cock.”
“Then do it.”
He pulls her to him, bringing their mouths together.
His hands grab at her body as he kisses her, his mouth firm but giving while his touch is desperate and needy. He positions her so she’s leaning against the back of the sofa and sinks to his knees in front of her, pressing forward to kneel between her legs. He kisses down her chest, moving to circle his tongue around one nipple before sucking it into his mouth, the gentle, pulsing pressure making her gasp. Grinding the palm of his hand against her clit, he presses his fingers to her entrance through her soaked panties. He gives her space as she shimmies them off and tosses them somewhere across the room, and then he’s on her again.
He moves down her body, kissing and licking along her ribs, down her stomach, across the jut of one hipbone and down to the crease of her thigh before moving up to her mound, dipping his tongue between the lips of her cunt before reaching down to spread her for him. She lifts her legs so her feet are braced on the edge of the sofa, letting her knees fall open so she’s fully on display for him.
His mouth closes around her clit, his tongue flicking against it as he slides two fingers into her slick heat. The vibration of his groan against her sends a spark up her spine. He flattens his tongue, lapping at her just as he’d said, moving from her clit down to her entrance. The loss of his fingers inside her drives a noise of protest from her, until he uses both hands to spread her open to make more space for his tongue to explore her, prodding inside her.
The room fills with the sounds of his wet mouth moving on her and her shallow breathing, accented by her little moans as he moves back to her clit and works up a rhythm. Through the haze of her nearing orgasm, she notices his arm flexing as he works his cock. She’s not sure when he moved one hand away from her or when he started touching himself, but she’s absolutely sure that’s not how she wants him to finish.
“Inside,” she demands, grabbing at his hair, his shoulder. “Come inside me. Need you to.”
As soon as she’s said the words, River is moving, not bothering to wipe his face before he’s crushing his mouth to hers and guiding her to lie back on the sofa. She licks across his lips, his chin, tasting herself on his skin before giving it back to him, pushing her tongue into his mouth and swallowing his groan.
Holding himself above her between her spread legs, he presses the head of his cock against her entrance. She’s so wet that it takes him a moment to line himself up properly, but as soon as he’s started sinking into her, she wraps her thighs around him and cants her hips up to coax him deeper.
“Fuck, you’re perfect,” he whispers into her mouth.
His movements are precise, full of intent, that same control she’d watched him use to run and twist and fight his way through the courses in Dartmoor now entirely focused on her, on her pleasure.
She knows all the right sounds to make during sex, how to pitch her moans and sighs so it seems as though they’re being dragged from her. She’s never faked it in the traditional sense — no point in reinforcing bad behavior — but she prides herself on being really fucking good at fucking, and often times putting on a bit of a show is part of that. Besides, she genuinely enjoys it: whispering dirty things, gasping in her lovers’ ears, feeling them work harder to pull more and more sounds from her.
But for the best orgasms, the really mind blowing ones that leave her dazed and floating somewhere free from her body for so many blissful moments afterwards, she goes involuntarily quiet.
Afterwards, once she’s regained her senses, she’ll spare a thought to wish she could have helped River fulfil his last promise, that she could have screamed for him as she came, but when he grinds his hips down into her, pushing impossibly deeper as his cock pulses and pumps her full of heat and sends her over the edge, she’s silent as the grave.
Resistance to Interrogation training is every bit as bad as she’d expected it to be, and then worse. She knows she can get through it; they won’t actually kill her, and she’s too spiteful to let anything short of death stop her. But it’s unearthing some things in her that she’d really rather stayed buried, and she’s becoming increasingly afraid that she won’t like who she comes out as on the other side. She’s not a scared little girl anymore, and she won’t ever be again.
She makes her way to River’s room, knocking softly in case he’s sleeping off his own torture session. He answers a moment later, not saying anything, just stepping aside to let her in.
There’s a bruise across his cheek and a few scattered along his arms, and she’s certain more are hidden under the t-shirt and sweatpants he's wearing. He looks tired in a way she’s never seen on him, but he gives her a soft smile.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks. It feels domestic and normal and entirely out of place, and it makes her bristle.
“Yeah, figured I’d stop by for a nightcap,” she says sarcastically. She knows it’s unfair to be irritated with him, but she can’t bring herself to care.
“Okay. Tell me what you need.”
“I need you to bend me over and fuck me so hard I can’t walk,” she tells him. Her tone is blunt, matter of fact. She’s not here for seduction. “I need it to hurt.”
“I think being able to walk is sort of, you know, important for what we’re doing here,” he says with a nervous, dry laugh, obviously ignoring the last part of what she said.
She glares at him.
River crosses the small room to sit on the bed, patting the space next to him like she’s a fucking pet to be beckoned. “Why don’t you lie down and let me go down on you? I can eat you out until you fall asleep.”
“Jesus, did they knock your head around one too many times today?” she snaps. “That’s not what I said.”
He doesn’t get it. He told her he’d give her what she needs, and she needs to be hurt on her own terms, by someone she picks, to replace the aches she can’t stop thinking about with one that’s of her own making.
“No, it’s not,” River says slowly. “But it doesn’t seem like you’re—”
“I’m not fucking weak, Cartwright. Fuck me or I’ll find someone who will.” She doesn’t mean it, and part of her resents that she really doesn’t mean it, but she can’t stand the way he’s looking at her like she’s something delicate and breakable.
River is up and across the room before she can reach for the door. His touch is gentle as he takes her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilts her face up toward his, but his tone is firm. “Look,” he says, his eyes flicking between her like he’s searching for something, “I’m not going to make whatever’s going on with you right now worse. I’m not going to hurt you, not like that.”
She normally loves looking up at him, loves how his height makes her feel small and protected, but right now it only makes her feel worse.
“I can take it. You know I can.”
“I do know that.” His tone isn’t patronizing, but it still grates at her nerves. “And once we’re through all of this, we can get into whatever kinky, twisted sex stuff you want. But the last thing you want to do right now is mess with your brain chemicals even more than this place already is, and I won’t be able to stay with you tomorrow, so we’re not doing that here.”
There’s a part of her that knows he’s right, but that part is drowned out by her anger at him acting like he knows what’s best for her. He won’t even let her look at him on her own terms. She snaps her head to the side, jerking free of his soft hold.
“You seem to know a lot about kink for someone who's a pretty mediocre lay.”
River bites his lip. “Okay, yeah. I—I get what this is now.”
“Everyone knows you're not the brains of this duo. Don’t pretend you’ve got me figured out.”
“Then I guess it doesn’t take a genius to see that you’re trying to piss me off so I either give you what you want or push you away, which I bet is pretty high on your list of favourite ways to hurt yourself. Not bad for an idiot, huh?”
She grits her teeth. There’s no point in denying it, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to give in.
He takes a step back, and she resents his putting space between them, even though it feels like a victory.
“I want you to stay, but I’m not going to trap you here. If you walk away right now, that won’t be the end of things between us. It doesn’t matter if you go fuck someone else or half of the fucking trainees here, this isn’t going to break us.”
A sound escapes her, nothing loud, just a thin, reedy keen. She hates that she’s starting to cry and she hates that she feels this way, but she doesn’t hate him.
He doesn’t pull her closer or wipe away the tears that she can feel coming down her face in a steady stream now or do anything to treat her like a little lost thing that needs saving. He lets her shake and dig her nails into her fists, and he keeps talking.
“You’re not weak, and neither am I. I love you, and I know it’s a shit time to say it and you’ll probably say I’m being manipulative or a soppy twat or something, but it’s the truth. You can stay here and we can ride this out together, or you can leave and do what you have to do to get through it, but I love you, and whatever you decide tonight, tomorrow it will still be true.”
Something in her breaks at that, and she doesn’t try to stop it. She unclenches her fists and reaches for him. He lets himself be pulled to her so quickly, so easily, and when she tilts her mouth up to his, he leans down to kiss her and lets her pour all of her pain and anger and hurt into him. She scrapes the front of her teeth against his and pushes her tongue up hard along his soft palate and bites at his lips, and he just takes it and takes it and takes it.
When her movements start to soften and become less frantic, he guides them over to the bed and dips her down to it, keeping one hand on her back and using the other to lift her legs onto the mattress. She still hasn’t said anything, but she lets out a small sigh at that.
“When we get home,” he says, taking off her slippers and tossing them on the floor, “I’ll throw you around all you want.” He tugs her leggings and underwear down, discarding them as well. “I’ll pick you up and fuck you so hard we leave a dent in the wall.”
She moans as he moves his hand up her thigh and toward her center. It feels like an offering when he presses his palm against her so she can grind against him, and he waits until she stills her hips before continuing up to tug on the hem of her shirt. She starts to sit up, but he slides his other hand under her lower back and lifts, raising her just enough to get the shirt over her head before coaxing her back down.
The room is cold and his mouth is so fucking hot against her skin when he leans down to lick and suck gently at one of her nipples. He moves to the other to give it the same attention before standing, undressing quickly.
She’d been right about the bruises. There’s a dark purple bloom across his left ribs and another along the slide of his stomach, likely from being kicked. His thighs seem to mostly have been spared, but both shins have smaller bruises along them. His movements aren’t strained, but she still feels like she needs to make sure she’s not hurting him by asking for this.
“Are you okay?” she asks, her voice raspy like she hasn’t spoken in days rather than minutes.
“Yeah,” he tells her quickly. “I’ll tell you if I’m not, okay?”
She nods.
“I’m sorry.” She knows she doesn’t have to say it, that he wouldn’t hold it against her if she didn’t, but she wants to, because she is.
“This whole thing is fucked up. We’re good.”
She makes room for him next to her on the small bed, but he stays standing.
“I hate, really hate that I have to ask this, but do we need to use—it’s okay, if we do, until you can—”
Her stomach sinks, as much at the question as the implication that she might not have told him before if that had been the case. “No. It wasn’t—nothing like that.”
“Okay.”
“River, I would have told you, if it had been.”
“That’s not what I was trying to say, I promise. I just don’t want to assume anything, okay?”
She nods again, watching him cross the room to turn out the light. When he slides into bed next to her, she reaches down between them, wrapping her fingers around his half-hard cock as he kisses her.
In all the times they’ve fucked, he’s never taken more than a moment to get fully hard for her. The reasonable side of her that’s finally reasserting some control in her brain knows it’s the circumstances, but she can’t help but feel a spike of bitterness about it anyway.
“We don’t have to do this,” she whispers against his mouth.
“Not up for working for it?” he whispers back, just enough of a tease in his voice to make it clear what he’s trying to do.
She doesn’t answer, instead moving down to suck at his throat, licking along his collarbone and chest before nudging him gently onto his back, careful to avoid pressing against his ribs. She pushes the blanket down to the foot of the bed, and by the time her mouth is on his hipbone, sucking a little mark there in counterbalance to the bruise on his other side, his cock is full and leaking.
He moves his hand down to rest on her head as she licks at the drop of pre-cum at his tip, but he doesn’t push, letting her lick and suckle and tease him until his hips are twitching with the effort to keep still. She takes him to the back of her throat, getting him slick from base to tip, and then pulls back.
“Tell me if I hurt you,” she says, not waiting for a response before she turns around and straddles him. His hands come up to hold her hips as soon as she starts to sink down on his cock.
She normally prefers to face him when she’s on top, but tonight, she can’t. She trusts him to tell her if she goes too far, but she doesn’t trust herself to not search his expressions for sympathy or caution or pity. She takes a quick inventory to make sure she’s not pressing against anywhere he’s injured, and then starts to ride him, lifting and sinking down onto him with a steady, firm pace.
“Fuck, Spider,” River moans, sliding one hand up her spine and gripping more tightly with the other. He lets her control the speed, tilting his hips up so that she can take him deeper but not driving up into her. “That’s it.”
She lets herself get lost in the flex and release of her muscles, the sounds of their bodies connecting and their breathing getting faster, the stretch and slide of River’s cock inside of her. She moves one hand to press between her legs, her fingers slipping over her clit in tight circles, occasionally sliding them down to feel where his cock is being swallowed by her cunt. She doesn’t speak until she’s right on the edge.
“So close. River, please,” she gasps, not quite sure what she’s asking for, if she’s even really asking for anything at all.
He answers by thrusting up into her, meeting her pace even as she speeds up, keeping time with her frantic movements until she’s shaking around him, coming with a thin cry that catches in her throat halfway. He pushes deeper into her as he follows, grinding his hips against her body as he spills inside of her.
When she can think again, she gingerly moves off of him, stretching out at his side even though she should get up. He nuzzles his face into her hair, running his hand along her ribs and stomach as their breathing evens out. She can feel his cum slowly trickling out of her, leaving a wet spot on the sheets.
“I should clean up and get back to my room,” she tells him.
“Yeah.”
Dressing in silence and making her way across the room in the dark, she opens the door. She’s nearly in the hallway when she hears him speak.
“I meant it, you know. I do love you.”
She lets the door fall shut behind her.
She hasn’t smoked weed since her first year at uni, until River comes over with a joint he’d apparently been given by someone from his Digital Surveillance Methods seminar that he’d bumped into on a run earlier.
He describes the man as “very friendly, but weirdly keen on hanging out sometime” and blushes when she explains that he had clearly been hitting on River and it must have broken his heart when he’d left to go smoke with his girlfriend instead of asking him to join him.
“Great. I’m going to feel awkward every time I see him now,” River says with a laugh.
“Is he fit?” she asks, untwisting the tip of the joint and tapping a bit of contents out onto a plate to examine.
It looks and smells perfectly normal, and she figures that, while it’s generally not best practice to accept drugs from a guy you barely know, the likelihood of someone in MI5 training giving laced weed to a fellow trainee is slim to none. She considers for a moment if it might be some sort of sabotage, but they’ve both already passed their drug screenings, and it’s well enough known that there won’t be another one for a while. Besides, it seems unnecessarily circuitous for someone to go after her through River, and she doesn’t think anyone’s trying to take out the programme’s golden boy via a flirtatious joint.
River squints a bit into the middle distance like he’s trying to remember what the guy looked like. “I guess. I don’t know. He’s tall.”
She finishes repacking the joint and goes to wrap her arms around his neck. “Ask him if I can watch,” she says, just to see him blush. “It could be fun.”
His hands come down to circle her waist, but his expression is skeptical under the colour in his cheeks. “Just based on being tall? Is that really the only qualification?”
“Who cares? I wouldn’t be looking at him. Not at all.”
She stretches up onto her tiptoes and pulls his head down to meet her, arching her body into his as she kisses him.
RTI is behind them, and getting through the rest of training feels not just likely but almost inevitable after that. It’s not as though either of them will start coasting now, but it’s a Friday evening and she’s never had sex while high. Seems as good a time as any to try.
They smoke out her bathroom window and she puts on some music and River goes down on her for what feels like hours. When her thighs are shaking from her third orgasm and she’s too sensitive for him to try for a fourth any time soon, he moves up the bed to rut against her stomach, his cock leaking across her sweat-slick skin. He comes as soon as she reaches down to work her fist along his length, settling next to her once he’s able to move again and watching with sleepy eyes as she licks her fingers.
She runs her clean hand through his hair and thinks maybe he’s it for her.
The thought would probably cause her stomach to drop if it weren’t for the floaty combination of weed and post-orgasm satiety, but with the assistance of a chemical-induced calm, she lets the idea settle in her mind.
Being with River isn’t always easy, but he doesn't let her make it too difficult. She hasn’t told him she loves him, but she knows she does. She can count the number of people she’s said that to on one hand and still have fingers to spare, though, and she doesn’t want him to think she’s only saying it because she’s stoned.
“What are you thinking about?” River asks, moving up the bed to bite lightly at her shoulder.
“You.”
“Anything you want to share?”
She shakes her head no and pulls him into a kiss, tasting herself on his tongue.
She’ll tell him when they’re not high.
“More?” Monteith asks, gesturing to the bottle of wine that he’s had the majority of.
Spider shakes her head, declining with a polite smile. “I have an early lecture,” she tells him.
“It’s admirable to go all the way through training, but surely it’s mostly a formality at this point for someone as promising as you.”
His smile is as patronizing as it is lecherous, and she has to force herself not to move her leg back when she feels his foot rest against hers under the table. She’s not so out of practice that she can’t charm him, but it feels different now, less like a second skin she can easily slip into and more like an ill-fitting costume.
“Just keeping my options open,” she replies.
“You’re a smart girl,” Monteith says with a laugh, as if the very concept of an intelligent woman is a joke. “Always good to keep things… open.”
Their dinner plates have been cleared for a while and she’s put in the work of being seen being courted by the owner of one of London’s top private security firms, and now it’s time to start making her excuses to leave. Before River, she might have let Monteith take her to an expensive bar for a late cocktail just to better secure his favour, but lately she’s found her stomach for that sort of thing has weakened. She’s not so far gone as to feel constrained to strictly professional networking, but it’s a near thing, and she doesn’t like it. It’s a weakness, and it’s annoying.
“As enticing as Chieftain sounds,” she tells him, intentionally quirking her lips up slightly at the name of the firm to lay on the suggestiveness just a bit more, “I can’t make any decisions until I know what’s on offer at the Park. I hope you understand.” She reaches for her purse and stands.
Monteith stands as well, moving toward her and offering a handshake. “Of course. You have my number,” he says, tugging her in just slightly as she takes his hand. “Reach out for anything you need. Anything at all.”
She smiles and assures him that she will before leaving. She doesn’t need to look back to know he watches her walk away.
She sits silently in the back of the car Monteith had waiting to take her back to her flat, forcing herself not to text River.
It turns out to be a moot point, because he’s in her living room when she gets home.
“Where were you?” he asks, taking in her low cut dress and stilettos with a look that seems to be a mix of appreciation and suspicion.
“That dinner meeting, I told you.” She takes off her heels and goes to the kitchen, intending to get a glass of water. River follows.
“I didn’t expect it to go so late,” he says. He looks like he wants to say more, and part of her wants him to. She’s irritated with herself, not him, but he’s close enough to the cause that she can feel the urge to fight about something bubbling up.
“You know how these guys are.” It’s intentionally dismissive.
“No, I don’t.”
The cool water down her throat does nothing to soothe the heat starting in her chest. “They’re creeps. They want to be seen wining and dining a pretty young woman. It’s not that complicated.”
River stares at her. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I’m just hedging my bets, making sure I have options.”
“You’re in the top of the class and you’re damn good at this, and you know that. You don’t need options.”
She places the glass down on the counter. “I don’t have a legacy keeping my spot warm for me, so yeah, I do.”
“It’s demeaning.”
And there it is. The gloves are off. Letting more condescension drip into her tone, she tilts her head. “It’s demeaning to me to be taken out to an exclusive restaurant and have the CEO of a private security firm spend a stupid amount of money just to talk to me, or it’s demeaning to you to have your girlfriend have dinner with another man?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Good, because it sounds an awful lot like you’re saying I can’t talk to other boys.”
“You know that’s not it,” River snaps, moving closer to her.
“Then what is it?” she asks. “And don’t say it’s demeaning again. I love you, but you know that’s condescending as fuck and you’d never say that about a man doing what I did tonight.”
He goes quiet, but only for a moment. “I just don’t understand why—”
“You know why I did this. I’ve already told you why. What do you actually want to know?”
“What is it that you did, exactly?” There’s an edge in his voice that makes her want to bite her lip, and she really hopes this is going where she thinks it is.
“We had dinner. He talked about his firm, and more about himself, and went through most of a bottle of wine while I smiled politely and nodded when I was expected to. He tried to flirt with me, which was clumsy and disgusting, and I flirted back, because that’s what was expected, and then I left.”
River has her boxed in with his body now, one arm braced on the kitchen counter behind her, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Ask, River,” she prompts.
“Did he touch you?” he asks, sliding a hand under the hem of her dress.
She considers teasing him, stretching the truth a bit, but she knows she doesn’t need to. “He shook my hand twice, and once he nudged the side of my foot with his. That’s it.”
He presses his hand against her cunt through the lace of her panties before pulling the fabric to the side and pushing two fingers into her.
“You’re soaking wet. Not because of him?”
If she weren’t so turned on, she’d laugh. “Jesus Christ, River. No. Stupid fucking question.”
He tugs her dress up until it’s around her waist. “Because of me?”
“Unfortunately, you being irrationally possessive is a huge turn on.” She stands still as he slides her underwear down her legs.
“Because you’re mine?” he asks, undoing the fly of his jeans.
Part of her hates that the answer is so fucking clear. The rest of her loves it.
“Yes.”
His lips are on hers before she’s finished saying the word, and she gasps when he grabs at her hips, lifting her onto the counter. He slides his tongue into her mouth as she wraps her legs around him, trying to work his jeans further down his hips with her heels. Using one hand to help, he shoves at the fabric until she feels his cock pushing against her.
With one firm thrust, he’s inside of her.
She gasps, dragging her nails down his back. He doesn’t give her time to adjust to the stretch of his cock filling her before he’s pulling back, moving until he’s barely inside of her before pushing all the way in again.
He tightens his hold on her hips, both hands pulling her against him in counterbalance to his thrusts. The sharp edge of the cabinets digs into her shoulder blades when she leans her upper body back against them, letting River have full control.
River looks as wild as she’s ever seen him, his skin flushed and his gaze hungry as his eyes move between her face and the place where his cock is disappearing into her cunt.
She brings a hand up between them, resting it over his heart, squeezing at his pec. “I’m yours,” she says, her voice sharp despite the way it feels like River is stealing the air from her lungs every time he pushes into her.
At his groan, she slides her hand up to his throat, not squeezing, just holding him firmly, letting him feel the weight of her fingers against his skin.
“And you're mine.”
River keens, leaning forward to capture her mouth in a kiss that’s more teeth than lips or tongue. His movements grow shallow, quick, hard thrusts that tell her he’s close.
He releases one of her hips, reaching up to press her hand harder against his throat.
“Show me, River,” she demands, panting as she tilts her head to bare her own throat. “Claim me.”
It’s primitive and probably somewhat regressive and part of her is going to be incredibly fucking annoyed when she’s applying concealer for the next week or so, but it’s so fucking worth it for the sensation of River’s mouth desperately sucking and nipping at the sensitive skin just above her collarbone as he marks her while he comes.
She’s stretched out on his sofa in just a loose tee and a pair of boyshorts with her feet in his lap while she reads and he scrolls through his phone for something to order for dinner. It’s only the beginning of summer, but it’s already too hot for wearing proper clothes around River’s unairconditioned flat.
“Do you want to get married?” he asks. It’s the same tone he’d used when he asked if she fancied pasta a few minutes ago, and she can tell that’s intentional.
She sets her book down and pushes at his shoulder with her foot. “That was a pretty shit proposal.”
River blushes, swatting at her ankle. “No, I mean. Is that something you want in general? Ever? Not necessarily with me. I mean, I hope it would be with me, but—”
“Don’t give yourself an aneurysm, love.”
“Fuck off. It’s a big question.”
She moves down the sofa to straddle his lap. The air is thick and warm, and the golden light of sunset filtering in through the windows makes him look softer. Or maybe it’s the earnest nervousness in his expression.
“I can practically hear you plotting to throw yourself into traffic,” she says, winding her arms around his neck. “I’m fine with whatever you want, relax.”
Turning his head to kiss her forearm, he leaves his mouth against her skin for a moment, thinking. Or maybe trying to figure out how to phrase his thoughts in a way that he doesn’t think will send her running.
“I mean, I get that it’s sort of fucked up, as an institution,” he starts. “But I think, you know, what it means, the commitment and all that, yeah. I want that. A lot, actually. But If it’s not something you want, I don’t want you to feel like you have to.”
“It’s not like you expect me to give up my career and become a housewife.”
River slides his hands under her top, curling his fingers around her sides, his thumbs resting just below her breasts. “I’d never ask you to do that. You know that.”
“Which is why I’m okay with it.” She sighs, and his hands follow the movement, giving her ribs room to expand. There’s a metaphor here somewhere about him always giving her room to breathe, but it feels a bit too on the nose for her. “I’m ambivalent about it as a concept. It’s sort of boring and the whole wedding industry is a nightmare. But there are advantages. Besides, I look good in white and I’d love an excuse to buy you a tux.”
“I own a tux, actually. My grandfather insisted.”
“Hmm,” she hums noncommittally, making a mental note to put together a list of potential clothiers anyway. “Okay then. But I swear if you do something tacky like propose to me in public with some big song and dance number, I’ll pretend I have no idea who you are. And possibly call the police.”
“Can’t hire a flash mob, can’t casually ask while you’re in your underwear,” he complains, reaching down to snap the waistband of said underwear. “What’s a guy to do?”
“Pick something to eat, River.”
He grins at her wolfishly, his eyes traveling down her body.
“Delivery order first, that…” She grinds down against him. “Second.”
He picks up his phone and taps it a few quick times, barely looking, before tossing it down again. Either he’d already decided on something, or it’s going to be a surprise to both of them what shows up.
“We’ve got 27 minutes,” he says, running his hands down her body to her hips. She stands so he can slide her underwear off more easily before letting him pull her back to him.
“Better stop your chattering and get to it, then.”
Not wanting to be in the field doesn’t mean it’s not really fucking satisfying to be good at it. She knows River was on the floor watching her upgrade assessment on the screens of the Control Center, and she doesn’t even mind when he dips her and kisses her in the lobby of the Park as soon as she gets back like they’re in some sort of terrible romcom.
“Come back to mine?” he says, both of them grinning like loons.
“My place is closer,” she replies when she’s standing again. She doesn’t bother to take a step back, staying far too close for where they are.
“My place has a bottle of champagne that I could barely afford. And,” he says, leaning close to her ear, “I want to see you in my bed, so fucked out you can’t think.”
That does make her take a step back, if only so she doesn’t press herself up against him. “I need to debrief with—”
“I cleared it with Taverner. You have a meeting with her tomorrow morning, 10 AM. You’re good.”
“You cleared it with her?”
River looks impossibly proud of himself. “Yep.”
“Second Desk agreed to reschedule a debrief so that you can take me home and screw my brains out?”
“I didn’t go into detail, but I think it was probably implied.” His smile is shameless, entirely unembarrassed.
“You’re so lucky that I’m too happy to be upset with you right now.”
They hold hands all the way to the car park, and she’d be sick with how sappy it all feels if she weren’t bubbling over with a heady mix of satisfaction and arousal. As soon as they’re in River’s car, she reaches over to rest her hand on his upper thigh, rubbing him through his trousers.
“Let me at least get past security without a completely obvious hard-on, I’m begging you.”
“I like it when you beg.”
“Not helping.”
By the time they make it inside River’s flat, she’s practically climbing him.
“Bed,” River pants into her mouth.
“Why?” she whines.
“Because by the time I’m done with you, neither one of us will be able to walk, and I don’t think you want to sleep in my entryway.”
“Promises, promises,” she says, but she follows him to the bedroom, both of them stripping and dropping their clothes haphazardly along the way.
A year ago, celebrating her success in a rundown flat in an undesirable part of town with a man who loves her, who wants to marry her, would have been laughable, pitiful, boring, embarrassing. Now, it feels exactly right. This is their beginning, the part of the story they’ll look back on fondly when they’re at the top and reminiscing about how far they’ve come… how far they’ve come together.
She’s feeling a bit dopey and lovesick, but thankfully River snaps her out of it by quite literally throwing her onto the bed. Her cry of indignation is silenced by the way he follows after her, prowling up her body in a way that would look ridiculous if she weren’t so turned on by it.
“That was so.” He kisses her calf. “Fucking.” He pauses to scrape his teeth along her inner thigh. “Hot.” He bites at her hipbone as he slides a hand between her legs, causing her to hiss and arch her back. By the time he makes his way up to her mouth, kissing and sucking and licking along the way, he’s got three fingers buried in her wet cunt, and she’s panting. She sinks her teeth into his bottom lip as he curls his fingers just the way she’s taught him, and she tastes the metallic salt of his blood as she comes.
He doesn’t give her time to catch her breath before he’s kneeling between her legs, lifting her hips to pull her onto his cock. She cries out when he pushes into her, the hot slide of his length quickly turning the aftershocks of her orgasm into the precursor of another.
Want courses through her, an overwhelming need for more even as she’s overwhelmed by the feeling of him inside her, over her, against her skin.
“Harder,” she gasps, gripping at her own thighs to tuck them against chest, opening herself up even more for him. “Harder, River.”
As always, he’s so good for her, obediently slamming his cock into her with enough force to move her up the bed with each thrust. His body is curled over hers, every muscle taught and straining. She can tell he’s not holding back, that he’s pushing himself to give her what she’s demanding of him.
“Come for me,” he pants, speaking his own demand against her neck. “I’m not gonna stop. Come for me again so I can fuck you through it.”
He’s fucking her so deeply that there’s no space between their bodies for her to touch herself, but she doesn’t need to. She circles her hips, grinding against his pelvis and clenching around him.
“That’s it,” he whispers. “I know you’re right on the edge. I can feel you getting tighter around me. Come for me, Spider.”
She throws her head back, the muscles in her neck tensing, her mouth open in a silent scream.
Her body locks up as she comes around him, and he keeps his word, folding her practically in half as he continues to pound into her. He’s moaning her name and fisting the sheets next to her head when there’s a series of loud cracks, and the mattress dips suddenly, not so much dropping as sliding unevenly to the floor.
“Don’t fucking stop,” she says, her laugh turning into a moan as he once again does as he’s told.
The next day, he lets her buy him a new bed frame, one with heavy, reinforced supports and a thick walnut headboard that definitely costs more than his monthly rent. She gets him a much nicer mattress as well, because what good is having all this money from her dead parents if she doesn’t spend it on the things that really matter.
“I understand this may seem like a difficult decision, but it shouldn’t be,” Taverner says. She sounds more bored than anything, as if they’re discussing what to order for lunch and Spider is taking too long to make up her mind between a salad or a sandwich. “You can help me handle Cartwright in a way that won’t end his career entirely, even leave him with a chance to earn his way back here in, say, a year or so’s time. Or I can do this without you, which will mean manufacturing a fuckup so severe that even his grandfather won’t be able to cushion his fall, and he’ll never work in the Service, or anything close to it, again.”
Spider keeps her eyes trained on the woman in front of her, willing herself not to look down at the Control Center where she knows River is working.
“If I may ask, why me?”
Taverner sighs, and Spider is surprised when she answers. “I’m not being intentionally cruel. It’s necessary to avoid scrutiny. It can’t be someone who could be looking to get Cartwright out of the way to advance their own career. You’d never intentionally screwed over the love of your life, or whatever you think he is.”
Spider nods.
“Unfortunately things are already in motion,” Taverner says, her tone making it clear this is not unfortunate for her personally and is entirely intentional. “I’ll need your answer now.”
It’s not a choice at all, not really.
“Whatever you need, ma’am.”
“I’m glad to hear that. There are a few final details to work out, but we’ll go over everything before his assessment. And I’ll need you to destroy these photographs. You know the procedure, I’m sure.”
Picking up the folder Tavern slides across her desk, Spider gives her a polite nod. “I’ll take care of it.”
“You’re smart enough that I don’t need to tell you what will happen if you warn him — or anyone else — about this.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“You may go.”
Spider makes her way back to her desk, shuffling the folder under some papers. She waits until she knows Taverner is in a meeting to slip the pile into her briefcase.
For the first time in nearly a year, she feels entirely alone, the hollow coldness as unpleasant as it is familiar. She doesn’t ignore the voice in her head that tells her she better get used to it; she knows it’s the truth.
“If I fuck things up tomorrow, will you still love me?” River asks her the night before his upgrade assessment, his voice quiet and flat. He’s seemed off since she arrived at his place a few minutes ago and he pulled her down to straddle his lap on the sofa, but she’d figured it was just nerves.
There’s no way he knows. There’s no way.
But maybe he has a feeling. He’s not always the best at knowing which threads to pull, but he’s got a knack for seeing when something could be unraveled. Perhaps it’s just insecurity, or perhaps he’s got some sense on a subconscious level that things aren’t what they seem.
She doesn’t lie and tell him that everything will be okay. But answering, that’s easy.
“Yes. Of course I will,” she tells him. She moves to kiss him, but he pulls back.
“Tell me. Please, just—”
“I will love you no matter what happens tomorrow.”
She doesn’t ask the same of him. It would be unfair, and she knows the answer anyway.
His body sags against hers, the tension draining from him like the tide going out before a tsunami, his muscles relaxed but something still lurking there, a tension below the surface, a held breath.
She doesn’t want this to be their last night together, but she can’t see a way back from this or out of it. He’ll hate her forever, but maybe this way at least he won’t hate himself for too long.
“I love you,” she says, and he licks into her mouth like he’s trying to taste the words.
She whispers it over and over as she rides him in his bed. “I love you,” she says against his skin, and she selfishly hopes the words sink in, making a home in his bones. “I love you.”
Tomorrow, when he crashes Stansted and the future he spent so many nights telling her about is ripped away from him by four little words from the same mouth that’s pressed against his now, it will still be true.
Having been told that a laptop was being brought over from Slough House had inspired a bit of masochism in the form of pulling up the Stansted videos and torturing herself by replaying them yet again — that takedown of the station guard still makes her wet, even with all the ugly feelings associated with the whole thing — but it’s still a shock to see River fucking Cartwright being led into her office.
He’s a bit scruffier and his hair is floppier, threatening to overpower the styling wax and fall across his forehead the way it would in the mornings when he first woke up. Or when he was on top of her, thrusting into her. He looks not so much tired as worn down, but he’s still unfairly attractive.
She can hardly appreciate the view though, because her stomach is in knots and she feels a bit panicky, like her skin can’t decide if it’s numb or oversensitive. There’s a hot lick of anger and a hotter lick of something else along her nerves, and her first instinct is to run across the room and shove him right back out the door that his escort so politely just closed. Or possibly up against it.
But she can be professional, as long as he can. No use in risking an incident that could be a mark against her later when she’s worked so hard and given up so much to get here. Not that here is exactly where she wants to be, but she’s working on it.
“River. Didn’t know it’d be you,” she says, crossing the room to greet him, mostly in hopes of making this a quick visit. She holds out her hand as she gets closer, trying to signal that they’re both mature adults who can conduct themselves accordingly for a simple hand-off. “Let’s not make this awkward.”
He looks at her hand and then slowly down her body before taking his time on the journey back up to meet her eyes. His expression is flat, mildly unimpressed if anything, and that hurts more than his words. “You look tired.”
She doesn’t. She looks fantastic, the weight she’d lost after Stansted having finally come back and the sleepless nights having more or less abated thanks to a combination of carefully administered pills and letting her guilt and sadness twist into anger and even more ambition than she’d had before.
So she knows he’s lying. But that suits her just fine, too. She’s always excelled at being a bitch.
“Awkward it is then,” she says, pulling her hand down and smoothing it along the waist of her cashmere sweater dress.
“Keep a lot of hard copy in here, don’t you?” he asks, looking around the room.
“Bit above your paygrade, love.”
“Oh my god, you’re HR. Is there still a file about us in one of these drawers?”
She stiffens. “It’s not HR. It's vetting. And everything to do with you has been sent over to Slough House where the rest of the paperwork about useless things goes.” It’s a lie, in more ways than one, because two can play that game. “Speaking of… laptop, please,” she says curtly, holding out her hand. “Wouldn’t want you somehow rendering it obsolete by proximity.”
He hands it over with his left hand, which he’d been using to hold it. It wouldn’t be that noteworthy — she’s more than aware that he’s pretty dexterous with both hands — except that he’s had his right hand shoved in his pocket since he walked in. There’s also a noticeable lack of a flash box, the laptop instead having been transported in a Jiffy bag that looks brand new.
She wonders if he would actually be that stupid, but doesn’t press the issue. She’s not his minder, and it’s not like she’s going to tattle on him.
Opening the envelope and turning to walk back to her desk, she hears a quiet, sharp intake of breath. Thank you, Givenchy, she thinks.
The dress skims her form but is modest from the front, with a high neck and long sleeves and a hemline that falls just below her knees. The back, however, is the pièce de résistance, tying at the neck and waist and leaving her skin exposed in a wide vee between the two, with a triangle of her lower back revealed below as well. It makes it very clear she’s not wearing a bra, and she doesn’t think River knows enough about women’s undergarments for the idea of the silicon pasties she’s wearing to ruin the mental image she’s sure is running through his head.
She has a blazer to wear over it around the Park, having no interest in giving the Dogs something to bark about (though most of them had seemed to spend more time looking at River than her when he was still here), but she’s planning on going to a nice bar after work and entertaining herself by accepting free drinks and not sleeping with anyone who sends them. It had seemed practical, when she was getting dressed this morning, to wear something that worked for both, to avoid adding to her already considerable dry cleaning bill.
She hopes River thinks it means she has a date later.
He seems to have recovered from whatever effect seeing her bare skin had on him by the time he takes the seat in front of her.
“It’s funny. You’re the one who fucked up and let me take the fall, but you’re acting like I cheated on you and stole your cat,” he says, squinting at her like he actually can’t understand why she’s behaving this way.
She’d known when she’d agreed to Taverner’s so-called ‘offer’ that she was ending things, but somehow she hadn’t expected him to cut her out of his life immediately and entirely. He hadn’t shown up to get his things (or offered to drop off hers, which was fine except that there were a few very nice I.D. Sarrieri pieces she’d bought when they’d first started sleeping together that were out of season now, and she wasn’t going to reduce herself to buying secondhand just to replace them), or even sent so much as an accusatory text. She hadn’t expected the silence, and in that endless fucking silence, she’d found anger.
“It’s been eight months without so much as a word from you, River. You even blocked my number. Very mature, by the way. What, were you afraid I’d call and tell you I was pregnant?”
It’s a low blow, but he matches it.
“Jesus, that would be a nightmare. Someone’s life in your hands.”
“And what have you got in your hands at Slough House apart from your dick? Or do you save that for when you’re lying in the bed I bought you, thinking about what happened to the old one?”
“No, I don’t really think about you at all.” He flushes slightly, his tongue darting out to nervously wet his lips, and she hopes he isn’t this transparent in the field. Not that he’s there much these days, anyway.
“God, you’re a terrible liar.”
“And you’re a terrible person. What a pair we make.” He cocks his head slightly to the side as if considering something. “Or we would, if you hadn’t decided that maintaining the spotlessness of your career was worth ruining my entire fucking life.”
“Your life isn’t ruined. Spend a few more months twittering away in Slough House, and I’m sure you’ll be back to being the golden boy of the Park soon enough.”
Once Taverner’s plan has played out, the photos won’t matter. Alan Black will be extracted without anyone who matters ever having known he was there, and her anger at River for tailing her and disobeying her direct order during his upgrade assessment will fade. He’ll be able to get back on track with this behind him as a year or so of unpleasant character building. She’s sure of it.
“Do you really think I’m only talking about being in Slough House?”
“People break up. It happens.”
“People break up?” He laughs, the sound humourless and cold with disbelief. “Yeah. Sure. People break up when they’re having fights all the time, or when the relationship goes stale. They don’t usually break up when they’re perfectly happy and in love and planning on spending the rest of their fucking lives together. Except, I guess, when one of them decides to cover up her mistake by throwing the other one under the fucking bus. Or the train, in this case. Were you already planning on dumping me and couldn’t pass up such a convenient opportunity, or did you really care so little about me that you just figured our relationship was an easy sacrifice if it meant keeping some minor mark off your record?”
She wants to scream, or shake him, or straddle his lap and kiss him until he understands that she cared too much, that she still does, even though she’d gladly rid herself of her feelings for him if she knew how.
She can’t offer any explanation, though. It’s too early, things are still in motion, and she doesn’t know if he’d even believe her, anyway.
But maybe she can help him get there himself. It’s hardly her fault if a highly trained agent senses something is amiss and pieces things together.
“You really never fucking learn, do you?” she asks, but there’s less anger than disappointment in her voice.
“Learn what? Not to trust you? I’ve certainly learnt that lesson.”
“To ask the right questions.”
River blinks at her. “What does that even mean?”
“Tell you what, why don’t you have a think on it, and if you can figure it out, unblock my number and I’ll give you answers. Until then…” She picks up her desk phone and hits one of the programmed buttons. “Escort, please.”
She gets up and moves to the front of her desk, just to make him look up at her. It’s a miscalculation on her part though, because he stands as well, boxing her in with his arms as he leans over her.
It’s intimate, not threatening. Her heart races all the same.
She lifts her chin and watches as his eyes search her face like he’s looking for answers. Or maybe, finally, looking for what questions to ask to get them.
“Fuck you,” he says, drawing the words out. He’s still looking at her mouth, but his eyes snap back to hers when he adds, “Webb.”
There’s a light knock at the door and he moves back, not a surprised jerk but a controlled retreat.
He doesn’t say anything as he leaves, and she doesn’t call after him.
Spider hears the door to the sauna open and close, but doesn’t think anything of it until she senses the person who entered sitting far too near to her, leaning over to breathe deeply next to her ear.
She opens her eyes to find River’s face inches from hers.
“Jesus Christ.” She jerks her head in surprise but doesn’t move to wrap her towel around her naked body, forcing herself to keep her arms at her sides and legs slightly spread, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of making her uncomfortable.
River, disappointingly, keeps his eyes fixed on hers.
“Never really understood the appeal of these, myself,” he says, standing up. “But I suppose it must remind you of home, what with the blazing heat.”
“Ah, yes, joking that your ex is from hell.” She rolls her eyes. “How original.”
“I’d say ‘if the shoe fits,’ but you don’t seem to be wearing any.” At that, he drags his gaze along her body under the guise of making his point, but she’s too satisfied by the way his eyes linger on her curves to feel embarrassed.
“Didn’t realize you were so hard up that you had to stalk me just to see a pair of tits.” She arches her back slightly, and he smirks.
“Trust me, if I were that desperate to get laid, I would have called you up, oh, any time in the last eight months.”
“And yet it’s now been twice in how many days? Seems like you want something from me.”
“I do,” River says, moving to stand between her legs. “I want to know what’s on Hobden’s USB stick.”
“That’s classified.”
A whole heap of classified nothing that had nearly cost the analyst who broke the news to Taverner his job, but River doesn’t get to know that.
“Is it something to do with the kidnapping?” he presses.
“I understand they don’t let you handle anything above Official over at Slough House so you’re no doubt out of practice, but if you’ll recall my previous answer…”
“Okay, look, I get it,” River says, holding up his hands like he’s giving in. “We’re just slow horses. We’re grunts. But you said you’d answer—”
She scoffs. “I said I’d answer if you started asking the right questions. Not chasing useless bullshit.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me know there’s nothing useful on the stick.”
His self-satisfied grin makes it clear he thinks he’s won, and she very much doesn’t want him to think he has a leg up on her. (Over her is a different story, despite her best efforts.) She stands, moving close enough that her body is almost pressed against his, and runs her hand down River’s right arm. When she reaches the rough texture of the burn on the back of his hand, she squeezes.
“You already knew that,” she says as he winces slightly at the pain.
“Yeah, well, always nice to have confirmation, especially from as high-up a source as HR.”
She lets go of his hand and reaches up to trace a drop of sweat sliding down his neck. “You’re going to ruin your shirt.”
“You’re right,” he says, turning to leave. “We’ve already ruined enough.”
She spends the rest of the day in a terrible mood, not because he’d interrupted her post-workout relaxation routine or because he’d tricked her into saying more than she’d meant to, but because she can’t stop wondering why he included himself in that last statement.
She works late in an attempt to distract herself, but she still can’t sleep until she gets herself off thinking about him. For the first time in eight months, she doesn’t call up a memory; she lets herself imagine the future.
Her personal phone buzzes, which is surprising because the only people she can think of who wouldn’t reach out on her service phone are her sister (or someone calling to say that her sister is dead, more likely, if she’s even still her emergency contact) or—
River’s name comes up on a new message notification.
She unlocks it and opens the message, forcing herself to not read up above the most recent one. She’s practically got the old ones memorized, anyway.
River: You said you’d answer my questions if they were the right ones.
He’s using proper capitalization and punctuation, which means he looked over this one a few times before sending it.
Spider: Is that a question?
She never said she’d make it easy for him.
River: do you still have the photos
Less thought put into that one, apparently.
She reads the message again, making sure he’s asking what she thinks he is and it isn’t wishful thinking on her part. It’s strange to feel both nervous and relieved all at once.
Once she’s sure that’s what he must mean, she doesn’t pretend not to know what he’s talking about. It’s better, actually, if neither of them has to spell it out, although Taverner, at least, will know exactly what’s going on if the Park gets into their personal phones.
Spider: Yes.
She watches the grey bubble and tries not to guess at what he’ll say next.
River: think i understnd. some of it. need phots
And then, following quickly after:
River: sorrty,in boot of moving car. hard to type
Well, that certainly wouldn’t have been on her list of guesses.
Spider: Have you been kidnapped?
River: no. how soon can you meet at toys office
River: *your office? 10 mins?
She retrieves the coffee she’d placed on the railing when she’d seen his first message and starts walking, making sure to keep her pace casual.
Spider: I’m down the hall. I’ll be there.
Spider: She’s not going to let you just walk in here.
River: dont wrry :
River: )
River: *:)
She wonders if she can convince him to turn on autocorrect if this is going to be a regular thing.
The Park is never really quiet, the hum of activity from the Control Center floor as reliably present as her fellow agents who have as bad a work life balance as she does. With a high profile kidnapping in progress, even more people are milling around than usual for this time of night, and she wonders how the fuck River is planning on making it to her office, let alone (she assumes) to Taverner’s after that.
Planning had never been his strong suit, to say the least, but he’d always managed to pull things off, despite all odds. Until, of course, she’d put a stop to that.
When she gets back to her office, she leaves the lights off. She knows the location of the file folder by heart anyway, and she figures if someone comes in when River is here, she’ll have a lot more to explain than why she’s in a dark office. Once she’s retrieved the file, she doesn’t have anything to do but wait.
Her anxiety increases as time passes. Maybe he’d already been stopped. Maybe it had been some sort of test. Maybe—
River rushes in, flinging open the door she’d left ajar and only catching it at the last second before it hits the wall.
“What’s it filed under?” He strides to one of the first rows of filing cabinets, toward the Bs, it looks like, and pulls out a drawer to start leafing through the tabs.
She grabs the folder off her desk, bringing it over to him. “I already pulled it.”
He reaches past the file and takes her wrist, pulling her against him and turning them so her back is pressed up against the filing cabinets. There’s a metal handle digging into her shoulder blade, but she doesn’t care, because he crushes their mouths together.
She gasps, and he licks into her mouth like he’s trying to count her teeth. He leans down further, bending her backwards as he gets his hands under her thighs and lifts. She wraps her legs around his waist as she feels the drawer handle snag on her dress. Worth it, she thinks.
“I’m still mad and I don’t have time, the Dogs are already looking for me and I have to get these to Taverner’s office, but I needed to—”
The zip of his jeans is pressing between her legs and his hands are sliding up under her dress and somehow she still manages to put a thought together.
“Clothes. I brought the things you left at mine, after your visit the other day. Figured this was the most likely place I’d see you. You should change. They’ll have pulled surveillance, it’ll buy you—”
He kisses her again before letting her down, hurrying to undress.
“Are you going to get fucked for giving me this?” he asks once he’s down to his underwear and is rummaging through the duffle of his old things.
She lets herself look, not bothering to hide that she’s watching him. “I think that’s up to you, isn’t it?”
“I mean, Taverner—” he clarifies as he does up the buttons of the dress shirt he’s found. Between that and the slacks he pulls on, he looks like a perfectly nondescript Park employee. From a distance, at least.
“You’ve got a gun, River,” Spider says, gesturing to the weapon he’d placed on her desk as he changed. “She’ll be pissed, but I’ll figure it out.”
“Okay, yeah.” River heads to the door, looking through the small window there to check if the hall is clear. “Um, call me?”
It takes her a moment to process what he’s just said. “Fucking—yes, I’ll call you. Oh my god, go—”
The smile he gives her before he heads out the door makes her lower stomach flip.
She gives herself five seconds of grinning like a lovesick fool before she starts forcing herself to cry. By the time the Dogs are forcing their way into her office, she’s worked up a good proximation of full-blown panic. She launches into an incomprehensible babble when they start asking questions, half-sobbing about how scared she was instead of answering. She clutches at Duffy’s arm and plays up the distressed damsel role so much that she’s a bit nervous at least one of them will see through the act, but thankfully Duffy seems to be at a complete loss as to how to calm down a crying woman, and the other two are plenty keen to try to comfort her.
By the time one of Duffy’s men has escorted her out the Park and put her in a car to go home, she’s less worried about what Taverner will have to say and more concerned about the ineptitude of the Park’s internal security team.
She’s not so far gone as to not stress about whether she’ll still have a job in the morning, but her anxiety over that is at odds with an overwhelming feeling of relief, and something that feels dangerously like hope. River knows. She can work with that.
Spider waits until she gets home the next evening before calling River. He picks up after the first ring.
“Are they sending you to Slough House?” he asks by way of greeting.
“I think Taverner would have too hard a time justifying that at the moment. I’m definitely on her shit list, though.”
“Might have been fun, being co-workers again. We never really did the whole office tryst thing.”
She doesn’t comment on the last part, even though she badly wants to. “You’ll get back to the Park.” She believes it. Probably.
“I’m starting to wonder if I even want to.” There’s a frustration in his voice that she wants to soothe, but that’s not for her to do. Not anymore. And maybe, not yet.
“You can’t mean that.”
River sighs. “I don’t know. Probably not.”
She tries to keep her tone light even though her skin feels flushed and too tight, an uneasy combination of nerves and tension and longing sliding through her veins. “I saw the footage of your daring rescue. Very heroic. Stupid, but heroic.”
She hears a small huff over the line, and she can see the self-deprecating smile she’s sure he’s wearing perfectly.
“Yeah, well. That’s my style, I guess.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know. But I was, a bit.”
“Maybe we both were,” she says. “I don’t know. Taverner said it had to be me because no one would believe I’d betray you. I think she actually wanted it to be me so you’d be too focused on how I hurt you to look beyond that.”
“She played us both. No surprise there.”
Stepping out onto the balcony, she lets the October air cool her skin. The sounds of the city slipping into night calm her, and for the first time in what feels like ages, she lets herself think of the times she spent with River out here: the quiet weekend mornings reading together; the way she’d press him up against the railing and kiss him because she knew he loved the idea of someone looking up and seeing them together.
“I thought I was protecting you,” she tells him quietly.
There’s silence on the other end of the line for a long moment before River says, “This doesn’t feel like the sort of conversation to have over the phone.”
“Okay, yeah. That’s… fair.” She tries to force her tone to stay even, but apparently he hears through her efforts.
“That’s not what I—What are you doing right now?” His voice is decisive, quick. It doesn’t feel like an idle question to change the topic.
“Nothing. Talking to you.”
“Are you home?”
Hope bubbles up in her like champagne.
“Yeah.”
“If I come over, will you let me in?”
They both know the answer is yes.
“Guess you’ll have to find out,” Spider says instead.
River laughs, and she can hear the sound of a door opening in the background.
“Guess so.”