Chapter Text
Rustling. Grunting. Lisa started, opened her eyes. Rippner toppled out of the crate. He lay with his cheek on the waffled black floor; he tried to push himself up, failed. Lisa caught him from behind, under his arms, and pulled him clear. He sputtered, spat out pieces of straw. They sat there like that for a moment, him tugged up against her, both of them looking at the crate -
Nothing. No gurgling, no growling. No red eyes.
He was all wiry muscle and clammy warm tension. "Did you send it?"
"Yes."
"What was the reply?"
"'See you soon, baby.' Cap on the ess, comma after 'soon'."
"Good. Good job, Lisa."
She held him for another moment, a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. Then she pushed him away. Rippner settled in beside her, sat as Lisa did, catching his breath, quaking a little. He raised his trouser leg, pushed down the cuff of a black sock. Ginger hairs on a pale ankle, a trim calf. Not a single tear in the skin.
"It let go of me," he said. "Why would it do that?"
He spoke rhetorically, of course. Lisa pushed hair away from her face; the sweat on her forehead turned the dust on her fingers to a very thin coat of mud. He couldn't expect an answer. She said anyway:
"Maybe you didn't make the cut."
"How's that?"
It's not you -
"He said it didn't want me."
"Who said -?"
"Old David Bowie. The old man upstairs - maybe it only wants people who are bad. Really bad."
Cheeky grin time. Through smudges, with bonus rhetoric. "So I'm - not - really bad -?"
"Jackson, I'm winging it here."
"Obviously."
"Asshole. Wait. Oh, God -"
All those long crates. Like weapons crates. Rifle crates.
"What, Lise -?"
Or coffins.
"Maybe it was recruiting."
Beside her, Rippner tensed. He swallowed, not looking at her; Lisa saw his Adam's apple rise and fall. He got up, looked about - Lisa didn't bother; she had a sense that she'd seen the last of her dance partner, that little red-eyed bastard. When Rippner offered her a hand up, she took it.
"You know, we could continue this upstairs," he said.
To the washroom via duct. Why a duct?
So that they could see themselves for the messes they were, side by side, there in the restroom mirror.
Lisa leaned down, retrieved her purse. She opened it, dug. Without a word, she handed Rippner a comb.
Grooming, mutual. It seemed to come naturally. They swatted dust from each other, straightened collars and necklines, pulled paper towels from the dispenser and wiped away grime.
Rippner was having a go at a smudge crossing her forehead. "So the forces of evil don't want me. Whatever did I do to deserve that -?"
"You did the right thing -" Lisa saw the corners of his lips twitch; he was suppressing a smirk. She pushed his hand away. "Fine. Never mind."
"Come on, Lise."
"It's dumb, Jackson. You'll say something rude; you'll make me mad -"
"Try me."
"You sacrificed yourself. For those people in Minneapolis."
For a moment, Rippner looked at her blankly. Then his brows huddled over his clear eyes. "I did no such thing. You send the message, Lisa. I couldn't care less about those people. The most important thing - always: you finish the job. Whether people live or die is irrelevant."
"It didn't know that."
"Pardon?"
Lisa pulled another paper towel from the dispenser, wetted and soaped it, and scrubbed savagely at a black spot on his shirt.
"You were being dragged away by a monster, Jackson. Did finishing the job matter at that point? Really -?"
"Of course it -" He stopped, frowning. She kept her eyes on the spot in its spreading moistened circle; she felt his eyes on her.
"Right for the wrong reason is still right. Hate to say it, Mr. Rippner, but you did a good deed today."
He was still fuming - in tiny ways invisible to the Rippner-unattuned eye - when they left the washroom three minutes later. With a tight smile, he opened and held the door for her; she heard him muttering: "Of all the stupid -" She smiled back at him, sweetly, and walked ahead of him into the main body of the cabin. "'Right for the wrong -'," he was saying. "Moronic, cliched -"
He stopped grumbling - he nearly stopped moving, and Lisa did, too - when the cheers hit them.
Team Testosterone had revived. The frat boys had dozed or napped and had woken, refreshed. Lisa's cheeks went hot. She and Rippner had been in the washroom for nearly and hour, and the boys - obviously, the boys had been keeping track. Counting the minutes. Possibly catching a muffled shot, rustling, the odd thud. What could a man and a woman have been doing in the bathroom of a 747 for all that time -?
"Way-to-go-GUYS!"
"Hey, bay-beeee -!"
"Mile high club - yeah!"
Behind her, Rippner said, smugly, "What can I say, guys? She's an animal."
Lisa stopped. She stood there in the aisle, exhausted, sweaty, still wearing a weight of dirt. She stood there with all manner of eyes but red watching her. She bit her lip. Adrenaline remnants bumped about in her system, twitching, threatening tears.
She smiled. "Jackson, you know what -?"
"What's that, Lise?"
She heard it right through the nape of her neck. Smirk number two. She swung around. Her left hand went toward Rippner. Her right hand went back in a fist.
He tracked the fist, his eyes going wide.
Her left hand he ignored. An ancient trick, a sly one. While your opponent watches the obvious threat, you sneak inside -
Her left hand caught him by the back of the neck. Her fingers tangled in his hair. She pulled his head to hers and kissed him full on the mouth. She pushed her weight into him, shoved him off balance, held him steady with her right hand under his jacket, against his side. And kissed him.
"Mmmf -" he said.
She released him. Rippner staggered against a seat, his UV-lamp-blue eyes on her and on nothing, stunned.
"Whuf," she said to him. She was shaking. She turned toward Team Testosterone and grinned. "WHUF!"
She let the cheers buoy her back to her seat. She sat down, smoothed dust off of her skirt, and picked up her copy of Time.
A discreet delay later, a baritone throat-clearing. Rippner stood in the aisle next to his seat. "May I?" He was looking formally toward the front of the plane.
Lisa turned pages, passed ads, skimmed. She didn't look up. "You may."
Rippner sat down. He stayed quiet for a time while she pretended to read. Then he said, "You think about it, Lise; you very nearly did the wrong thing for the right reason." He leaned in close, said barely above a whisper: "'I've got you, Jackson. Hold on.'"
"You're a bastard, you know that?"
"Yeah." He didn't sound nearly convinced, but he didn't sound smug, either. Truth to tell, he simply sounded tired. He sat back, looked straight ahead. "I know. So - how about it, Lise?"
"How about what?"
He smiled at her wearily. His lids slipped lower over his crystalline eyes. "You know what. My place is just minutes from the airport."
She closed her magazine and looked away, toward the window. They'd left the storm. Far to the east, the very lowest edge of the sky was lightening to a deep royal blue. "I think you've pressed your luck enough for one night, Jackson."
He didn't reply. Minutes passed. When Lisa looked at him again, Rippner's head was back, his eyes closed. Asleep, or pretending to be. She opted, just for now, for the first one; just for a moment, then, she sat simply watching him. Freckles, far too many. Lashes, far too long. No wonder the forces of evil had coughed him back up. She stifled a yawn, started to look away, paused. Perhaps to guard an investment, just to be sure - she would never say she was acting protectively, but she had put a certain degree of effort into him that night - she put her hand over his, there on the armrest. He didn't stir. She gripped his wrist gently. His bones were almost delicate, very human. His skin was warm and crisscrossed with fine ginger hairs. In any other reality, it might have been a 'moment'. Lisa held on to him and looked back at the window.
She woke when she heard the flight attendant waking Rippner. Before he opened his eyes, before he raised his head from his seatback, she'd removed her hand from his.
She waited, half out of her seat, while he wrestled his clunking something out of the overhead.
At her raised eyebrow, at her unspoken What have we here? The makings of a homemade bazooka? - or any of a thousand variants - he smiled and said, "Rare books, Lisa. Just a duffel's worth of rare books."
Then he stood aside for her, followed her up the jostling aisle to the door of the plane. Team Testosterone jostled along after him.
She hadn't noticed men among the flight attendants. The steward at the door was thirties-ageless, golden-blonde, slender in shirtsleeves, blue vest, a tie striped in grays. His eyes were mismatched in color, one blue, one green. He smiled. "Nothing like a floor show to liven a dull flight. Until next time, miss -"
He winked at her with his green eyes. The press of passengers carried Lisa forward, carried Rippner right along with her.
"- thank you for flying Brandywine Air."
(Safe on the ground, yes... ?)
They walked together along the concourse. It seemed only natural. Rippner steered her toward a quiet spot and stopped. Steered but not forced, Lisa stopped, too.
"Are you going to contact airport security?" he asked.
"And tell them what? That I helped a terrorist defuse his own plot while fighting off a pig-monster in the cargo hold of a 747?"
"Something like that."
"Think I'll pass."
"Good girl." He smiled, just that side - the right side - of patronizing. "Tell you what - why don't we collect our luggage and I'll buy you breakfast? Or do you have a connection?"
"You know I don't."
"Come on, then." He moved to go.
She stayed. "No. Thank you, Jackson - but no."
"Lise, you completed the job. I owe you a bagel and an O.J., at least."
"So now I'm working with you. The FBI could - my fingerprints are on you phone. Great."
"You saved a whole lot of people today, Lisa. You tried to save me -"
She grimaced. "You saved yourself, Jackson."
"All those folks in Minneapolis, then. Let me buy you breakfast for them."
Lisa hesitated. The flight attendants from their jetliner walked by, chatting. Among them was the ageless man with the mismatched eyes. He glanced their way, smiled a smile of charmingly crooked teeth, kept walking.
Lisa followed him with her eyes, held her breath while she waited for him to look back. But he didn't. He walked on with the other attendants; they turned a corner, disappeared. "Tell you what, Jackson," she said. "Let me buy you breakfast."
Rippner pushed fingers through his dust hair. "Lisa, look: there's no empowerment angle to this. You don't have to play the feminist card. It's just breakfast - and I can buy my own, thank you."
"Can you?" That moment - the next moment, when he frowned, when he knew only that she knew something he didn't; she really enjoyed that. "The kid with the red eyes, Jackson. He took your iPod and your phone. Care to guess where your wallet is -?"
She walked away. Rippner stood there.
But not for long.