The second time he enters her cell, she's standing waiting for him. Alex seems somewhat surprised by this, pausing in the doorway with his hands halfway through rolling up his sleeves.
"... Good morning," he says mildly. He lowers his hand and studies her for a moment, a neat triangle with his gaze from her face, to her left shoulder, to her right shoulder, and back to her face. "You... were asleep when I checked the cameras."
The confidence with which he stands in the open doorway, as if he knows she has no impulse to try and shove past him, is only slightly irritating. She nods.
"I heard you coming," she says, a lame-sounding explanation even to her own ears. The moment she'd heard his boots she'd sprung up from the floor like a stray cat.
He waits for more, and when there isn't any, she sees a small frown and smile chase onto his face for a moment. Then he clasps his hands in front of himself, and when her eyes snag on his knuckles she feels every one of the four days since she last saw him.
He levels his gaze at her and says, kindly: "Would... you like to get on with it?"
"Yes."
His grin is a brief flash, like she's paid him a genuine compliment, but at least he controls it quickly - she knows what she wants, but her grip on the logic she's convinced herself of is tenuous at best:
fighting and losing over and over will break me. Volunteering keeps me in control. If I'm in control, he won't get anything from me.
She's said the sentences to herself all night, and done an excellent job of ignoring every other whispered thought about
his mouth, that pressure, his thumb, those fingers-
"Alright," Alex says. "I can do that."
And when he steps fully into her cell, door whispering closed behind him, her resolve wobbles. She'd forgotten how he moved, the balance of his body.
Just get this over with. That's all I have to do.
"You've got a bed arriving tomorrow," he says, and he glances around her cell as he goes back to rolling up his sleeves. "On the condition that you're still compliant."
She only nods, standing against the wall gingerly. He looks at the awkward way she's holding herself, her shoulders bunched near her ears, her hands loose like she doesn't know what to do with them, and seems to understand more than she does.
"On the table, please," he says, still not unkindly, and her relief at having an instruction to follow is almost physical. She pads barefoot to the same edge she'd sat on four days ago, and the whole time she keeps the makeshift mantras in her head.
Volunteering keeps me in control. Fighting and losing will break me.
Once she's sitting on that cold metal again, she expects to be told to lay down like she was last time - but it's naive of her to think she knows his patterns already, as if one time means anything at all. Instead, he steps up to stand beside her and leans one hip against the table, crossing his arms and looking at her with that calm, confident intimacy that she does recognise from last time: as if this is a normal occurrence for the two of them, and not some slice of war-time madness. Her stomach drops at how easy it is to believe, even if briefly. Something in her body thinks, already, that this man feels
good
, that he means
friend
. She grits her teeth and tells her body to get a hold of itself.
"You're quiet today," Alex says then, studying her face. Even the near-predatory calculation is gone from his eyes, as if he's decided he knows her too.
One orgasm and you think I'm on your team, asshole?
"Taking your advice, I guess," she replies evenly. "You said I can choose for this to be quick."
There's a hazel ring around his pupils - she didn't notice that before, but then again it probably vanishes when his eyes are dilated and they were... definitely dilated last time.
"I think we should talk about it," he says eventually, and she almost laughs despite herself.
"What, our feelings? Consent?"
He smiles. "I meant, we should talk about what you liked last time. I obviously have my own perspective, but I wasn't inside your body."
What the hell is that phrasing?
"Oh. Right."
"I could have phrased that better, couldn't I?"
A lopsided smile cracks through before she can stop it, and she looks down at her bare thighs. "I was just... yeah."
"Was there anything you didn't like?" His voice is quiet and warm, unhurried.
No, but like hell am I telling you that.
She opens her mouth and makes herself lie: "You talked too much."
And Alex laughs. She can't help but glance up - when he does it, creases appear in the corners of his eyes, and she immediately wonders if he's older than she first thought. Then she remembers that he's probably not even
human
, let alone a human that's had years of friends and jokes, or a girlfriend, even a family to make him laugh until there are lines like that to show for it.
"What?" she asks, "is it so unbelievable that one of your captives doesn't want to listen to you all day?"
"We both know you wouldn't have gotten anywhere if I'd been stone-faced silent the entire time," he replies, and the teasing glance he passes her makes her face warm out of nowhere.
Handsome asshole.
"You don't know me for shit," she replies as flatly as she can. "You don't even know my real name."
"Do you feel like enlightening me?"
He seems to expect her smirk of silent rebellion, because he just smiles as well. Then he lifts himself away from the table, boots thudding softly as he turns away just long enough for her to get a decent look at the narrowness of his waist, the shape of his ass in his pants. Then he's reaching under the table and there's a soft, barely audible
beep
.
Almost immediately, she feels the metal surface grow warm.
"What the hell?"
He glances at her. "What?"
"You could make it warm this whole time?" She hadn't noticed any kind of control panel under the table, and she'd know if it was there thanks to her 'privilege' of sleeping on the floor every night.
He has the decency to look sheepish, or at least pretend to be. "You were cold last time. My apologies."
"Drip feeding me benefits to make me more compliant?" she guesses, any flickers of warmth inside her snuffing out even as the table becomes pure relief against the cold of her skin - she puts her hands palm-down against the surface and can almost feel her bones relax out of their stiffness.
He raises his eyebrows for a moment, then schools the expression. "Not particularly. I just didn't think about it."
