Jack had come to think of the king sized bed he bought as mostly for show.
He was rarely in his bed. He bought the apartment for the location. It wasn't the best of neighborhoods, but the apartment was on the top floor which gave it easy roof access. It was a simple design which came with two bedrooms. He had not needed the second bedroom, but for some reason he got it cheap. He suspected it was because he asked Big Marie for help finding an apartment and she set it up. Once again, it's not what you know, but who you know.
Jack had set up the apartment in a day. There was almost nothing to move in, as he lived the bachelor life style. When he slept, he turned over control of his body to Adam, thus his bed saw almost no use.
This is why Jack was surprised to wake up in his bed.
He didn't remember taking control of his body, much less coming back home to sleep. He laid there, trying to figure out what exactly was going on. For example, he was fairly certain he had stripped down to his boxers at some point. Nothing unusual about that. He didn't own any pajamas and usually slept in his underwear. No, that wasn't what he needed to figured out. Jack needed to figure out who owned the tail that was wrapped around his leg.
Chances were it belonged to the nude alien snuggling into his side.
Jack's half-asleep mind finished putting everything together and thus became a ZERO-asleep mind. Jack stared at the ceiling as he reached over to gently touch Wanderer before slowly turning his head to look at her. She was in bed with him, under the covers, naked, and out cold. She was clinging to his arm while resting her head on his shoulder. Her mouth was open and just a slight amount of drool was trickling out. She looked... happy. No. Not happy. Satisfied? No... Content? Yes. That was it. This was contentment.
She was also freaking Jack the fuck out.
Wanderer stirred slightly and lazily blinked her eyes as she took in the sight of Jack. Jack stared back. Wanderer's eyes widened until they resembled dinner plates as she abruptly began to disengage from all physical contact. In getting away from him, she backed up right off the edge of the bed, taking the comforter and bed sheet with her. She impacted the floor with a soft 'thud'. Jack straightened up to look down at the alien all tangled up in his blankets and sheets. He couldn't help but think how absolutely cute she looked.
Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath through gritted teeth. He spoke with a great sense patience, "Why, pray tell, were you in my bed?"
Wanderer just worked her jaw a few times without saying anything. To say she was shocked speechless would be an accurate assessment.
Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose, "I'm not mad... but I would like to figure out the chain of events that got us here so we can prevent this from happening again."
She swallowed and abruptly dropped her eyes, "I'm sorry."
Jack clasped his hands together and looked at the ceiling, "Give me strength." He crawled over to the side she fell off and reached down to cup her chin. He tilted her head up, forcing her to meet his gaze, "I don't care for apologies. I find them annoying, especially when they are used to avoid answering a direct question."
Wanderer was lost in his eyes for several seconds before she abruptly started speaking rapidly, "Adam stopped by and we had fun but he then had to go entertain the others and then when he was finally done he was exhausted and he didn't want to sleep at the base so he asked me to teleport him here and he went to sleep right away but as I was leaving you appeared and I stayed to listen to your thoughts as you slept because your thoughts are so strong it is quite soothing and then I nodded off."
Jack blinked at the verbal deluge, "You like to listen to my thoughts as I sleep?"
She nodded.
Jack pulled his hand away, "That's not creepy at all."
Wanderer kept staring up at him, "You say that in a way that indicates it is sarcasm but you aren't actually afraid of me."
Jack furrowed his eyebrows together, "Uhhh..."
Her expression got stronger, like she was deeply flattered, or perhaps extremely impressed, "You're so certain about things. You make up your mind and you don't second guess yourself."
Jack smirked and spoke like he was making a joke, "Unlike Adam."
"Exactly." She immediately responded.
Jack frowned, "Excuse me?"
"Don't get me wrong. Adam is a very competent lover. He is very concerned about my happiness. Well... satisfaction would be a better choice of words. He knows exactly what to say and how to act. He is quite intuitive." She paused long enough for Jack to begin to open his mouth, but she cut him off as she continued, "But he doesn't enjoy it. He takes pride in a job well done, but he sees it as a job. It's a bit disheartening. Something I am unable to talk with him about."
Jack started to recoil, feeling very uncomfortable about the course of this conversation, "Anyone ever tell you that you overshare?"
"Yes. It's part of my nature as an Elo. We learn to hide our thoughts from others not of our species, but it's very difficult when we feel a strong connection." Wanderer put a hand on the edge of the bed to pull herself up. The sheet covering her fell away as she pulled her face close to Jack's, "I love you."
Jack immediately backpedaled to the far edge of the bed, and gave Wanderer a look so shocked, one might expect static discharge, "Well I Don't Love YOU!"
She seemed unphased by his response, "I know. You feel a sense of duty to fix Adam's mistakes and a vague sort of attraction towards me. I believe the phrase that comes to your mind is, 'In any other situation, I wouldn't kick her out of bed'."
Jack froze, trying to gather his thoughts. His eyes slid off her to glance from side to side before raising a finger to point at her, "You need to stop telling me how I feel and stop reading my mind."
Wanderer nodded once, "I can stop telling you how you feel, but I can't stop reading your mind. It's so... strong. So certain. So Clear. The only other person I know who thinks like you is Grifter. Everyone else second guesses themselves, or changes their minds, or holds contradictory thoughts in their head. It mades it easy to ignore them." She glanced upward for a second before looking back at Jack, "Like crickets?" She slowly climbed onto the bed to sit cross-legged from him, "But your thoughts... they blot everyone else out. It's intoxicating."
Jack opened his mouth, but said nothing for her exposed self was distracting to the point of blotting out everything else in HIS mind. He turned to swing his legs off the edge of the bed and sat facing away from her. A flurry of thoughts raced through his head ranging from claiming her on his bed, to screaming at her to leave. He settled for closing his eyes and inhaling deeply through his nose. The smell of lingering acrylic oils and canvas, of dried sweat in a young maidens hair, it all lingered on his shoulder. All Jack had to do was roll his head to the side and Wanderer was there. Strong enough he could almost taste her.
But none of her smelled like home.
Wanderer smiled at Jack's back and let her head list to one side, "And now you are trying to figure out a way to not hurt me." She closed the distance between them by crawling closer and bowed her head forward to rest it against his back, "You have a real knack for making an Elo feel safe."
Jack tensed up at her touch, "I told you to stop telling me what I'm think-" He paused then closed his eyes, "Hold it. What I said was-"
They both spoke in unison, "Stop telling me how I feel."
Silence filled the space between them, only to be broken by the sound of someone pounding on a door.
Jack gave his bedroom doorway a most annoyed expression, "What the fuck?" He got up and walked out into the hallway. The pounding repeated, this time clearly coming from the front door of his apartment. Jack stalked over and peered out the peephole to see a familiar face standing there in WASP issued body armor. Well, a face familiar to Adam.
"OPEN UP." Agent Theta pounded on the door again, "I'm being polite, but I dont have to be! Don't make me knock down this door!"
Jack pulled away and gave the peephole a confused expression as he repeated, 'what the fuck' to himself. He paused only long enough to look down at his fire engine red silk boxers and shrug before throwing open the door.
Agent Theta was standing there in gold armor that Jack noted to himself looked nothing like the suit worn by the Golden Knight. The Golden Knight's armor was flowing, dramatic, and artistic. This was sterile, cold, and focused on functional. It was non-standard as was typical for all the top agents of WASP. Generic WASP troopers were identical, but top agents each had their own unique styles. Jack presumed it was a marketing thing.
The color of the armor matched Theta's eyes, a shade of gold that was sharp and piercing. Her long hair was a deep auburn color and something that she flaunted. Her trademark, insect-like helmet was flipped back and visible as her flowing hair pooled inside it. One might wonder how she could put it on without her hair getting in the way.
Without the helmet on, it was easy to tell by her expression that she was not expecting Jack to greet her topless in his underwear.
Agent Theta paused briefly to look Jack up and down before she barged her way in, "Have you no decency?"
Jack belatedly made a sweeping gesture with his hand to usher her inside, "Welcome to my humble abode, Agent Theta." She paused to turn and look back at him with squinting eyes. He smiled politely as he casually kicked the door shut, "At last we meet again for the first time for the last time."
Theta curled a lip in disgust, "Excuse me?"
Jack turned to step into the small kitchen off the entrance, "It's a quote from a movie." He walked over to the fridge, "Ain't got much to offer you, Dark Helmet." He opened it up and looked inside, "I got beer, packets of soy sauce, and a spray bottle full of water I use to style my hair." He looked up over the fridge door at her, "Any preference?"
Agent Theta glared at him, "You're attempts at levity will do you no good." She strolled past the round table for dining at that was next to the front door and out into the living room. It was best described as Spartan. The other way to describe it would be empty, with the exception of a couch that faced an empty shell of an entertainment center.
Jack walked over to the window that connected the kitchen and the living room and leaned over the sink to look out at Agent Theta, "You sound like an SS officer trying to search my home for Jews. You know that, right?"
Theta sighed and turned to face Jack, "I don't have a problem with you putting on your clothes."
He shrugged, "Sounds like a YOU problem, not a ME problem." He pushed off the sink to walk around and out into the living room, "So what brings you by at..." He checked the clock then did a double take, "Five am? Seriously?"
Theta turned and walked up to Jack, making sure to look him in the eye the whole time, "I'm onto you."
Jack stared back at her, "Okay. Good luck with that."
Jack and Theta both noticed the movement out of the corner of their eyes at the same time as Wanderer peeked out of Jack's bedroom. Theta turned to stare at her for a second, "Huh." Theta turned back to Jack, "Why is it that all the men from other universes wind up whores?"
Before Jack could respond, Wanderer came out of the bedroom with balled up fists and a head full of steam. She had apparently put her clothes back on. She came charging down the hallway towards Agent Theta, "What did you just-" Jack cut Wanderer off with a hand held up flat in her face. She stopped short and went quiet, but didn't stop glaring.
Jack never took his eyes off Theta as he pointed a finger, "First of all, I never accept money for sex, so at worst, that'd make me a slut, not a whore." Then another finger joined the first, "Second, I suspect it is because in the rest of the multiverse, males are the sexually aggressive ones." He smirked slightly, "That would make your world the freak and my world the rule."
Theta turned to look at Wanderer, "Did you tell him? You know that talking about classified information would be grounds for immediate deportation." The deep red of Wanderer's face turned a light pink as the fear of being expelled from the planet obviously ran deep.
Jack did not take kindly to that.
Jack decided to paraphrase one of the most bad ass speeches he'd ever heard as he stepped into Theta's personal space, "I don't know what you want and I don't care. If you are looking to shake me down for cash, I can tell you I don't have much, but what I do have is a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career as a bill collector. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. I made bank by becoming the most annoying man I could possibly be without ever breaking the law. I know how to skirt that line so hard you'll want to go wake up congress that very night to pass laws banning whatever I come up with. So if you go after someone I care about, I will look under every rock in your world, I will find every secret you ever made vanish, and I will erode your sanity until you finally snap and break the law in a way that I can use to BURY YOU."
In that moment, two things happened.
First, Agent Theta blinked.
Second, Wanderer fell even harder for Jack.
Jack had come to think of the king sized bed he bought as mostly for show.
He was rarely in his bed. He bought the apartment for the location. It wasn't the best of neighborhoods, but the apartment was on the top floor which gave it easy roof access. It was a simple design which came with two bedrooms. He had not needed the second bedroom, but for some reason he got it cheap. He suspected it was because he asked Big Marie for help finding an apartment and she set it up. Once again, it's not what you know, but who you know.
Jack had set up the apartment in a day. There was almost nothing to move in, as he lived the bachelor life style. When he slept, he turned over control of his body to Adam, thus his bed saw almost no use.
This is why Jack was surprised to wake up in his bed.
He didn't remember taking control of his body, much less coming back home to sleep. He laid there, trying to figure out what exactly was going on. For example, he was fairly certain he had stripped down to his boxers at some point. Nothing unusual about that. He didn't own any pajamas and usually slept in his underwear. No, that wasn't what he needed to figured out. Jack needed to figure out who owned the tail that was wrapped around his leg.
Chances were it belonged to the nude alien snuggling into his side.
Jack's half-asleep mind finished putting everything together and thus became a ZERO-asleep mind. Jack stared at the ceiling as he reached over to gently touch Wanderer before slowly turning his head to look at her. She was in bed with him, under the covers, naked, and out cold. She was clinging to his arm while resting her head on his shoulder. Her mouth was open and just a slight amount of drool was trickling out. She looked... happy. No. Not happy. Satisfied? No... Content? Yes. That was it. This was contentment.
She was also freaking Jack the fuck out.
Wanderer stirred slightly and lazily blinked her eyes as she took in the sight of Jack. Jack stared back. Wanderer's eyes widened until they resembled dinner plates as she abruptly began to disengage from all physical contact. In getting away from him, she backed up right off the edge of the bed, taking the comforter and bed sheet with her. She impacted the floor with a soft 'thud'. Jack straightened up to look down at the alien all tangled up in his blankets and sheets. He couldn't help but think how absolutely cute she looked.
Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath through gritted teeth. He spoke with a great sense patience, "Why, pray tell, were you in my bed?"
Wanderer just worked her jaw a few times without saying anything. To say she was shocked speechless would be an accurate assessment.
Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose, "I'm not mad... but I would like to figure out the chain of events that got us here so we can prevent this from happening again."
She swallowed and abruptly dropped her eyes, "I'm sorry."
Jack clasped his hands together and looked at the ceiling, "Give me strength." He crawled over to the side she fell off and reached down to cup her chin. He tilted her head up, forcing her to meet his gaze, "I don't care for apologies. I find them annoying, especially when they are used to avoid answering a direct question."
Wanderer was lost in his eyes for several seconds before she abruptly started speaking rapidly, "Adam stopped by and we had fun but he then had to go entertain the others and then when he was finally done he was exhausted and he didn't want to sleep at the base so he asked me to teleport him here and he went to sleep right away but as I was leaving you appeared and I stayed to listen to your thoughts as you slept because your thoughts are so strong it is quite soothing and then I nodded off."
Jack blinked at the verbal deluge, "You like to listen to my thoughts as I sleep?"
She nodded.
Jack pulled his hand away, "That's not creepy at all."
Wanderer kept staring up at him, "You say that in a way that indicates it is sarcasm but you aren't actually afraid of me."
Jack furrowed his eyebrows together, "Uhhh..."
Her expression got stronger, like she was deeply flattered, or perhaps extremely impressed, "You're so certain about things. You make up your mind and you don't second guess yourself."
Jack smirked and spoke like he was making a joke, "Unlike Adam."
"Exactly." She immediately responded.
Jack frowned, "Excuse me?"
"Don't get me wrong. Adam is a very competent lover. He is very concerned about my happiness. Well... satisfaction would be a better choice of words. He knows exactly what to say and how to act. He is quite intuitive." She paused long enough for Jack to begin to open his mouth, but she cut him off as she continued, "But he doesn't enjoy it. He takes pride in a job well done, but he sees it as a job. It's a bit disheartening. Something I am unable to talk with him about."
Jack started to recoil, feeling very uncomfortable about the course of this conversation, "Anyone ever tell you that you overshare?"
"Yes. It's part of my nature as an Elo. We learn to hide our thoughts from others not of our species, but it's very difficult when we feel a strong connection." Wanderer put a hand on the edge of the bed to pull herself up. The sheet covering her fell away as she pulled her face close to Jack's, "I love you."
Jack immediately backpedaled to the far edge of the bed, and gave Wanderer a look so shocked, one might expect static discharge, "Well I Don't Love YOU!"
She seemed unphased by his response, "I know. You feel a sense of duty to fix Adam's mistakes and a vague sort of attraction towards me. I believe the phrase that comes to your mind is, 'In any other situation, I wouldn't kick her out of bed'."
Jack froze, trying to gather his thoughts. His eyes slid off her to glance from side to side before raising a finger to point at her, "You need to stop telling me how I feel and stop reading my mind."
Wanderer nodded once, "I can stop telling you how you feel, but I can't stop reading your mind. It's so... strong. So certain. So Clear. The only other person I know who thinks like you is Grifter. Everyone else second guesses themselves, or changes their minds, or holds contradictory thoughts in their head. It mades it easy to ignore them." She glanced upward for a second before looking back at Jack, "Like crickets?" She slowly climbed onto the bed to sit cross-legged from him, "But your thoughts... they blot everyone else out. It's intoxicating."
Jack opened his mouth, but said nothing for her exposed self was distracting to the point of blotting out everything else in HIS mind. He turned to swing his legs off the edge of the bed and sat facing away from her. A flurry of thoughts raced through his head ranging from claiming her on his bed, to screaming at her to leave. He settled for closing his eyes and inhaling deeply through his nose. The smell of lingering acrylic oils and canvas, of dried sweat in a young maidens hair, it all lingered on his shoulder. All Jack had to do was roll his head to the side and Wanderer was there. Strong enough he could almost taste her.
But none of her smelled like home.
Wanderer smiled at Jack's back and let her head list to one side, "And now you are trying to figure out a way to not hurt me." She closed the distance between them by crawling closer and bowed her head forward to rest it against his back, "You have a real knack for making an Elo feel safe."
Jack tensed up at her touch, "I told you to stop telling me what I'm think-" He paused then closed his eyes, "Hold it. What I said was-"
They both spoke in unison, "Stop telling me how I feel."
Silence filled the space between them, only to be broken by the sound of someone pounding on a door.
Jack gave his bedroom doorway a most annoyed expression, "What the fuck?" He got up and walked out into the hallway. The pounding repeated, this time clearly coming from the front door of his apartment. Jack stalked over and peered out the peephole to see a familiar face standing there in WASP issued body armor. Well, a face familiar to Adam.
"OPEN UP." Agent Theta pounded on the door again, "I'm being polite, but I dont have to be! Don't make me knock down this door!"
Jack pulled away and gave the peephole a confused expression as he repeated, 'what the fuck' to himself. He paused only long enough to look down at his fire engine red silk boxers and shrug before throwing open the door.
Agent Theta was standing there in gold armor that Jack noted to himself looked nothing like the suit worn by the Golden Knight. The Golden Knight's armor was flowing, dramatic, and artistic. This was sterile, cold, and focused on functional. It was non-standard as was typical for all the top agents of WASP. Generic WASP troopers were identical, but top agents each had their own unique styles. Jack presumed it was a marketing thing.
The color of the armor matched Theta's eyes, a shade of gold that was sharp and piercing. Her long hair was a deep auburn color and something that she flaunted. Her trademark, insect-like helmet was flipped back and visible as her flowing hair pooled inside it. One might wonder how she could put it on without her hair getting in the way.
Without the helmet on, it was easy to tell by her expression that she was not expecting Jack to greet her topless in his underwear.
Agent Theta paused briefly to look Jack up and down before she barged her way in, "Have you no decency?"
Jack belatedly made a sweeping gesture with his hand to usher her inside, "Welcome to my humble abode, Agent Theta." She paused to turn and look back at him with squinting eyes. He smiled politely as he casually kicked the door shut, "At last we meet again for the first time for the last time."
Theta curled a lip in disgust, "Excuse me?"
Jack turned to step into the small kitchen off the entrance, "It's a quote from a movie." He walked over to the fridge, "Ain't got much to offer you, Dark Helmet." He opened it up and looked inside, "I got beer, packets of soy sauce, and a spray bottle full of water I use to style my hair." He looked up over the fridge door at her, "Any preference?"
Agent Theta glared at him, "You're attempts at levity will do you no good." She strolled past the round table for dining at that was next to the front door and out into the living room. It was best described as Spartan. The other way to describe it would be empty, with the exception of a couch that faced an empty shell of an entertainment center.
Jack walked over to the window that connected the kitchen and the living room and leaned over the sink to look out at Agent Theta, "You sound like an SS officer trying to search my home for Jews. You know that, right?"
Theta sighed and turned to face Jack, "I don't have a problem with you putting on your clothes."
He shrugged, "Sounds like a YOU problem, not a ME problem." He pushed off the sink to walk around and out into the living room, "So what brings you by at..." He checked the clock then did a double take, "Five am? Seriously?"
Theta turned and walked up to Jack, making sure to look him in the eye the whole time, "I'm onto you."
Jack stared back at her, "Okay. Good luck with that."
Jack and Theta both noticed the movement out of the corner of their eyes at the same time as Wanderer peeked out of Jack's bedroom. Theta turned to stare at her for a second, "Huh." Theta turned back to Jack, "Why is it that all the men from other universes wind up whores?"
Before Jack could respond, Wanderer came out of the bedroom with balled up fists and a head full of steam. She had apparently put her clothes back on. She came charging down the hallway towards Agent Theta, "What did you just-" Jack cut Wanderer off with a hand held up flat in her face. She stopped short and went quiet, but didn't stop glaring.
Jack never took his eyes off Theta as he pointed a finger, "First of all, I never accept money for sex, so at worst, that'd make me a slut, not a whore." Then another finger joined the first, "Second, I suspect it is because in the rest of the multiverse, males are the sexually aggressive ones." He smirked slightly, "That would make your world the freak and my world the rule."
Theta turned to look at Wanderer, "Did you tell him? You know that talking about classified information would be grounds for immediate deportation." The deep red of Wanderer's face turned a light pink as the fear of being expelled from the planet obviously ran deep.
Jack did not take kindly to that.
Jack decided to paraphrase one of the most bad ass speeches he'd ever heard as he stepped into Theta's personal space, "I don't know what you want and I don't care. If you are looking to shake me down for cash, I can tell you I don't have much, but what I do have is a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career as a bill collector. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. I made bank by becoming the most annoying man I could possibly be without ever breaking the law. I know how to skirt that line so hard you'll want to go wake up congress that very night to pass laws banning whatever I come up with. So if you go after someone I care about, I will look under every rock in your world, I will find every secret you ever made vanish, and I will erode your sanity until you finally snap and break the law in a way that I can use to BURY YOU."
In that moment, two things happened.
First, Agent Theta blinked.
Second, Wanderer fell even harder for Jack.
