#but the moment they skirt close to calling it love they're like 🏃🏃🏃

[another-corpo-rat]

a language of its own

i planned for this one to be tooth-rotting fluff. spoiler: it is not. because god forbid these two stay on script for me

Adam Smasher/OC Summary: In the wake of Hanako's coup, a lot of things are uncertain. Loyalty, mostly.

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“Do I need to remind you what ‘do not disturb’ means?” Victoria’s voice is flat, her eyes not lifting from the document she’s re-read thrice already, certain it’s more interesting than an intern cowering at her threshold like a cold pup. She can hear their gulp, how they shuffle their feet awkwardly in place. Lily, then. A mouse of a girl who’ll get caught in some trap before long.  

“I- I’m sorry Ms Crane,” the gentle voice is confirmation. Really, she would be better working for some holo-company. “But he wouldn’t take no for an answer—” She doesn’t need to look up to know who the he in question is either, simply letting out a heavy sigh and rubbing at her forehead to ease a brewing headache.

“Let him in.” She flicks her gaze up merely to confirm and, yes there stands Adam fucking Smasher. In a Gemini frame granted, so the sight is not nearly as impressive even if he still manages to fill the doorway. No, what’s impressive is his collection of ratty t-shirts he insists on wearing because God forbid he wears one of the many button-downs she had gotten.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Clearance says otherwise.” A clearance she’s surprised he has considering he was grounded, for lack of a better term: confined to a Gemini frame and unarmed until further notice. A slap on the wrist really for his apparent siding with Yoriunbo. Though Victoria has to wonder how long Hanako will prolong the punishment now that the medtechs have marked him as mentally sound enough to return to the Dragoon; what was riding a delicate balance is slowly tipping against the heiress. Already whispers were brewing that she was afraid of Arasaka’s war hound. It wasn’t a good look.

“Why are you here?” She tries instead, locking her desktop’s screen as he steps into the room, too purposeful in his stride towards her desk.

Paranoid, her own thoughts hiss at her. It’s soundly ignored: paranoia has served her well in its small doses, it keeps her on her toes, sharp. It tells her there’s something off about his being in the room, even if she can’t quite pinpoint what as her eyes continuously draw over his horrendous jacket.

“I’m fucking bored.” He drawls out as he circles her desk. His eyes drop from her blackened screen to trail their own path across her scattering of notes, barely legible chicken-scratch a far cry from her usual script. Her own follow a few seconds behind. Nothing too incriminating – she doesn’t think she’s left anything about biopods lying around.

“So you decide to bother me?” A grin bares his teeth as he leans into her chair, the weight of him almost pulling it back. Yes, is the needless answer as he curls a loose lock of hair around his fingers and tugs lightly.

“You’re the safest option.” A final, hard yank before he lets go. Far too obvious in intent as he leans to read the specific paper she’s been hunched over. That grin falters, pulling into something harder when she lays her arm across the bulk of it. “What’ve you been working on?”

Something pricks at the back of her neck; sharp and needling as her throat dries. Pressing her tongue against the point of a canine, she reaches for a casual tone rather than a bite.

“That’s on a need-to-know basis, Smasher.” Immediately she knows it’s too practiced, too formal, the narrowing of his eyes confirms it. The bite would have been better. Calling him Adam would have been better. The material of her chair gives a protesting groan as his grip tightens on the headrest. She almost protests herself, but bites her tongue - better the chair than her, and that is riding on a very thin line. One she’s not quite sure how to tip the balance of.

The focus on the risk to her neck keeps her distracted as his other hand snakes around, snatching the page from under her arm. “Adam!” Her outrage is met with a sharp laugh. Smug in his victory, amused in her pitiful attempt to steal it back.

He snaps the paper rigid in his grip, holding it above his head and reading through. Ignoring her undignified little hops, or the nicks her chrome nails leave when they glance against his skin. His eyes narrow, the thoughts twisting obviously in his head as he lowers the paper.

“You studying to become a neurologist now?”

“In a sense.” A hiss as she snaps it out of his hand and returns the paper to the small hoard of loose sheets, putting herself in the space between him and her desk. As if that’d stop him. But she may as well make some effort; there was too much information laying around and she only had herself to blame for the security risk.

It’ll be pinned on her, might even give Hanako a means to remove her from her project. She’ll throw a stink if it comes to that, for the entire breach the heiress facilitated unknowingly or not by allowing Smasher to keep his permissions. Clearance, he said. A clearance he had the moment Yoriunbo made him head of security, and yet here he is exercising it now.

“So, the princess is still letting you work. I gotta wonder why.” She eyes him as he prowls about her office, rolling his shoulders before he plops himself comfortably on the leather sofa against the opposite wall. It’s not the usual way he’d sit, with an arm thrown across the back and his knees spread wide. No, he hunches forward now, tries to pin her under his gaze.

“Because it’s useful. Simple as.” Her innate need to be difficult has her mirror his demeanour; arms crossing as she leans against her desk. Chin lifting to look down on him. It earns her a clenched fist.

“Mhm, funny that.” Something in his eyes harden. A warning that has her own gaze flick to the door. She wouldn’t get there in time. Not with him so close to it. “How you manage to make a big breakthrough just before things went to shit for ol’ Yoriunbo. Great fucking timing there.”  

“It’s not like you to dance around an accusation, Adam.”

Not like him to make a move in this particular field either. He’s well-versed in the dance of career corpos; the machinations and manipulations. Yet he normally leaves that domain for her to play in.

“Fuck it in with the games, Crane. You know what I’m accusing you of.” She does: as well as she knows the barely-concealed anger that mars his tone now. And though he’s not in the Dragoon, the want to soothe him is an innate thing, a skill honed more for her benefit than his. She presses it firmly under heel.

“You think I would manoeuvre myself in a way that would likely set me against you. That I’d stand aside, content with my new lot under a new CEO, and leave you to rust.” She pauses, not to consider her next words but the very idea. Yes, actually, that does sound quite like her…

She hums derisively. “If it wasn’t you, then yes. There’d be some truth to that.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I’m yours in plenty of other ways, what makes this so different?” Something crosses his face then, a confusion she thinks, marring the hard set of his lips and easing the clench of his fists. There’s a tension in his shoulders, obvious to her now that she’s looking for it.  

Has it been there since he stepped through the door? She wouldn’t know; as much as she prefers this newer frame she can’t read him well in it. Not like she can in the Elvis suit, or even the Dragoon.

“It’s an out.”

“It is.” An out to the contract tying her to him; leverage for her to pry herself from his grip. She could never hope to replace Hellman and his niche little hole, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t dig out her own with OIZYS. There’s a versatility she’s yet to explore, lingering on the edges of her attention: all the failed branches and threads to be twisted into their own projects once the parent is perfected.

She watches him as she agrees and – yes, there’s that tension. It rolls through him like a wave, most notable in how he works his jaw. Like he’s biting down. “One you wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about. But,” It’s dangerous. Stupid. She moves towards him, stopping in the space between his spread knees to cradle a square jaw, tilting his chin upward to meet her eye.

His hands rest on her hips, heavy in their press.

“Have you considered that I like being where I am?” She softens her tone, lets fondness ease her gaze as her thumb trails against the rough line of his jaw.

And again, that confusion. It’s beautiful to see up close; the slight, brief furrow of his brows that narrows already hardened eyes. As ill-practiced as she is reading this suit, he’s as out-of-depth emoting in it. Nothing is subtle, it’s as if every relevant muscle is being yanked by a string until he finds the expression he wants. He finds a neutral expression now. Blank to match his dry tone.

“Careful, you might get me thinking that you care.”

“Oh, now I can’t have that.” She smiles as she brushes her lips against his, pulling away the moment his grip tightens and he tries to wrangle control. There’s a mere whisper of space, warmed by her caramel-scented breath.

She’d let him devour her in a heartbeat. Let him make a mess of her and the office alike if the timing wasn’t piss-poor; if Hanako’s eyes weren’t sharp in their search for anything to pry at. They were already treading a delicate line, too blatant, too public and yet not public enough. The stupidly bold part of her wants them broadcasted. “I’ll need to make you certain of it.”

His jaw slackens, grip loosening enough for her to step away without having to pull from him to retreat to her desk, hiding the bubbling in her stomach behind a smug twitch of the lips as she lets that settle in the air. It’s as close to a confession as she’s willing to give and even then it feels too much, her blood thrumming and a buzz rising in her ears at a very obvious misstep.

Her eyes veer to her scrawl of notes, to the page at the top – the one he had read. She doesn’t sit. Instead leaning over the desk, attention crawling over the annotations of an old case study: Phineas Gage and his wondrous survival. Nothing about biopods in that. Good. She can at least look busy, even if her fingers tap erratically against her desk and she worries her bottom lip between teeth. It’s a pointed effort not to glance up when she hears him move, following the sound of his steps in their wide circle of the office until he stops opposite her.

His hands warm and calloused, engulf hers. Pressing them into the desk to stop her tapping as he leans forward.

“Likewise, Blondie.” He’s gentle as he presses a kiss to her forehead, thumbs ghosting against the back of her hands. If she looked up, his expression would have been an uncharacteristically soft thing; eyes warm yet uncertain in the gentler motions. She didn’t look up.

He pulls away as quickly as she did, and with far less grace in his own retreat as he calls over his shoulder; “I’ll see you at home.”

She can’t answer beyond an affirming hum, biting back a too-wide smile and trying to crush the odd feeling in her chest. There’s no real effort to that crush. She gives up on it as soon as the door slides closed.