Like It's Real

Link to article: Like It's Real.

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text="You're not secretly anything, Ari. You're you. You're always you."]]
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⚠️ **Content warning:** This article contains the following topic:
* Explicit sexual content

If this topic is upsetting to you, please refrain from reading this article.

Thank you.

**Like It's Real** by [[*user Nonacherontia]] -

Other works:
[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/who-s-afraid-of-ulrike-meinhof Who's Afraid of Ulrike Meinhof]
[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/possible-kill-screen Possible Kill Screen] with FleshMaddAvalon
[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/the-golden-threads-weaving-us-together The Golden Threads Weaving Us Together] under MissLapis
[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-8082 SCP-8082: The Wild Hunt]
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+ Scene 1: I am falling

The night she sleeps with Farhan Moradi, Ariadne Katsaros dreams of an ocean.

//It is always the same—a blazing magenta sunset in a sickly sanguine sky. Drifting on wine-dark swells, a low-groaning wind fills her nose with cologne from her dad's house. The water shushes and roars by turns, and the air feels cool on her bare skin. It churns underneath her, hiding worlds of unsleeping mayhem, and she can't imagine a better way to lie.//

//All around her float familiar junk: a stuffed giraffe, her mom's pearl necklace, her dad's Chevrolet Camaro, a boyfriend's hookah, a girlfriend's five-thousand dollar bomber jacket, the surveillance tag still attached.//

"Please..." Farhan murmurs in Ari's ear—

And she wakes up, relaxed, aglow, content like a cat that caught the cream.

As with water's gentle current, she floats on Farhan's chest as it crests and recedes. He's completely naked. She's still wearing a shirt. The slight asymmetry feels grounding in her haze, because some part of her is worried they'd blur together. But God, what a //ground//. His chest is so hard and muscular, his face punctuated by eager cheekbones, a handsome jaw girded by a beard and his resting, full-toothed smile that is no less boyish for it, always rewarding to see. [!--Awash in moonlight, she can make out the tangle of her legs and his. His legs have more mass, but her thighs have a better definition than his, a tighter sculpt. --]

"Please..."

She fixates on how their war wounds flow into each other's like theirs was the same skin, shot and burned and stabbed together. She an orphaned eddy of broken joy after Farhan dragged her with him over the waterfall.

//Goddamn, he's cute.// She lifts her hand to Farhan's cheek, caressing his jaw, and then dips a finger on the inflection of those elegant cheekbones, scratching a tender line to the patch covering his left eye. //Who did that to you, babe?// She frowned. //Why did that word pop into my head?// [!-- She doesn't recall drinking all that much before she dragged him to her room, but she only feels drunk now. --]

Then she feels weightless in a different way, tossed into the air, falling off the edge of the mattress and smashing into the floor in a heap. She's back on the bed in seconds, then she's thrown on her back, and strong arms pin her shoulders to the mattress.

Farhan's face is in hers. Farhan is screaming in her face.

His hands dig into her shoulders and arms.

There's a blur where her mind used to be.

//I can't reach my gun.//

----

Fifteen minutes later, having put Farhan to bed, Ari racks her Beretta 92SF.

Ari sits at a dining table in a small kitchen space with a refrigerator. On the other side of the room, Farhan snores pleasantly amidst sweaty bedsheets. A prized operator, she enjoyed one of the personnel-starved Balochistan site's largest accommodations. Farhan made her world so much smaller now. She couldn't get far enough away to stop caring.

"One."

At approximately 0230 hours, Farhan experienced what Ari has known from her childhood as a night terror. As she'd learned growing up, symptoms included screaming, thrashing, shallow breathing, and the appearance of complete disorientation, and they would typically last for a few minutes at a time (except for one occasion where she'd witnessed an episode carry on for ten minutes).

Farhan's episode included all that and a lot more.

Ari couldn't understand anything he was saying, or how to tell him to stop. //Does dad ever get this bad?// It's a painful, thorny thought she shoves deep inside of her with all the others.

//I didn't want to know. I don't want to know, either.//

Ari field-strips guns after having boys over. Girls, well, no such routine exists because the only girl she ever dated is so good in bed that Ari passes out before she does. //The one kind of caretaking Petra was ever good at.// With boys, whether they stay the night or not, she has trouble sleeping, so she'd spend an hour field-stripping a gun and reassembling it repeatedly, trying to beat her record for completed cycles over a fifteen-minute interval.

"Two."

It's a surface ripple of a deeper itchiness. She doesn't need a therapist to tell her that. For instance, the boyfriend who took her virginity compared sex with her to doing it in a bathroom stall sober. She couldn't get him to clarify what was an incredibly insulting metaphor, and they were both stoned that evening anyway, so following up on it was pointless.

The girl, Petra Shahi, her last serious-ish partner, found the metaphor hysterical and dead wrong.
//Incomplete, really,// she said, //I mean, you do fuck like someone who expects to be caught in the act, but that's because you want it the way it happens in a bathroom stall. Rough. Undignified. What does that say about us?//

She was also wrong, but of all the people who were wrong about her, she was the only one who knew how to make Ari come. It's hard to argue with results.

"Three."

Ari liked how the Beretta 92SF surrendered to her hands, clicking apart, snapping together. She feels closer to herself with every step the gun was taken towards its disintegration, further from the man sleeping in her bed just now. //Like nothing just happened.// It obsessed her, the unfairness of it all. //They never remember it, and I never forget it.// She decides she won't bring it up with him. He either already knows or doesn't want to know.

She ejects the magazine, and before it rattles on the table, she'd pulls the slide back to sight-check the chamber.

"Four." Her hands are shaking. Hazard of a profession where artillery bombardment and airstrikes were considered low-intensity ordinances. The key is to flow with the malfunction, not rage at her body's having it. One might as well rage at a quiver for running out of arrows.

----

**"Please," she hears Farhan babble in English, Farsi, and Arabic, "Please, please,"**

**She should have known better than to talk during one of these, but her brain was a hazy memory maze inundated with cheap beer. "Farhan, I'm here—"**

----

The memory of Farhan's episode burns behind her eyes. She had these moments before, especially after violence. She tried to dismiss it. Her brain was having indigestion.

"Six."

The sense-memory of Farhan's crazed howling writhed under her skin. She was a fluid, indifferent to the pressure, rather becoming the shape it demanded of her.

Her finger slipped on sweat, almost missing the release button. Her brow felt damp and cold.

//My hair should have dried by now!// Everything feels damp and cold. There are no fewer than four hidden guns in her apartment—seven things in total that could kill him.

"Seven."

----
**The screaming stopped, Farhan had let her go, but Ari was no less trapped.**

**"Where am I?" His body language seemed like a scared child. "Where is this?"**

**"Site-290," Ari's voice sounded hollow even to her. The way his wild eyes frantically searched her bedroom, the way he threw himself against the wall when she stepped towards him, it disgusted her. No, it did something else that tickled her eyes with salt. "You're...you're safe."**

**"Allaahummak-fineehim bimaa shi’ta[[footnote]]Quranic Arabic: O Allah, protect me from them In whatever way You will![[/footnote]]. [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/lamb-of-god Take the left one! Take the left one!]" Again and again and again, and she didn't know how to respond.**

**//His eye patch,// she learned something new about his hell, but there was no saving him from it. //It was not lost, it was taken, and they made him choose.//**

**It's a phantom pain, like Farhan is a missing limb. Ari realizes this is what pity must feel like.**

----

"Eight." //Water fills whatever it's poured into.//

----
**He began to flail at empty air so she pushed herself towards him and let her arms flow over his shoulder and waist, buried her face into his chest, and heard his heart batter under his flesh and her temple. "Buddy," she heard herself say, "Get it together." She feels his chiseled torso pleasingly crush her chest.**

**//I never want to see you again.//**

**The cocktail of her words and her body smothered Farhan's fever, and they tumbled into bed together again. She preoccupied herself by reciting the longitude and latitude of every battle she ever fought while waiting for Farhan to sleep, pretending to join him while wanting to be anywhere else.**

----

"Nine."

----
**While she was wrapped around him, his voice was soft, feather-light, and strangely bemused. "Why?" He murmured. "Why?"**

**"Fuck off." Ari murmured, her lips tickling his chest. He grunted, and his heart continued to slow under her touch.**

**//Why did I stay?// It wasn't often Ari couldn't account for her actions. //Why did I stay?//**

----

"Ten-oof-"

She feels Farhan's body press on hers. She hadn't heard him get up. She hadn't heard him walk. She hadn't seen a thing.

[[include component:image-block name=https://i.imgur.com/EdJxLrf.png|caption="I almost forgot I had enough."|width=400px]]

It's //embarrassing//.

//Either he's slick or I'm slow.// How dare he get the drop on her in her own home.

It's all the weirder that she's mostly happy he's alright again.

She leans against him mostly because his beard is scratching a spot on the nape of her neck. His hot breath tickles her ear, and it spread to her cheeks when his lips peck her skin. It does something to her mouth because it's a struggle to complain. "T-The hell? How did you—"

"Hey," Farhan's voice is like a whispered yawn. //Does he see what I'm doing right now?// His hands play with the waistband of her underwear, and his fingers trace the scars adorning her left thigh, teasing her toned skin. "How'd you sleep, //habibti//?"

//'Honey'?// More confusion. //Was that like a one-night stand calling you babe, or darling? Was that weird? Is it a MENA thing? Are Muslim guys just naturally sweeter than American ones?//

"C-can't complain," Ari flattens the shake out of her voice, her fingers tightening on her gun. "How about you?"

"Some fun dreams." Then he stiffens, and then Farhan's voice sounds a little less casual. "What's that you got there?"

"Don't worry about it," Ari says and racks the Beretta in her hands.

"//Ya Rabb!//[[footnote]] Arabic, idiomatic translation: "Good lord!" [[/footnote]] Farhan stumbles backward and slams into the wall.

It should have been satisfying, but it makes her want to touch him

His eyes graze her arm, and the tenderness sours. //Why does it look like he's reading my scars? He a fan of muscle tone or something?// She sees his pupils dip a millimeter, and a flash of alarm briefly widens his eyes. Her stomach drops.

//He’s looking at my gun.//

//I saw him set a dozen people on fire, and he's looking at my gun.//

Her breathing gets harder to control. She reads his eyes, remembers the night terror—

She sees the hired killer behind her tense—

It feels weird that showing someone an empty chamber would be the difference between life and death. Farhan relaxes when she pulls the slide back and shows him. Ari feels like she's not going to relax for quite a while.

//How close was he to killing me?// She tries to play the moment off. "You this easy to spook or am I just that good?"

"Why not both?" Farhan says. He leans on the table, inches from her elbow. "God help me, you're a lovely menace." How effortlessly he had pinned her, the weightlessness of her body in flight, the giddy terror of standing there while a two hundred thirty-pound commando begged her for mercy while his fingers crushed bruises into her skin. //I estimate ten seconds before his hands could snap my neck.//

But she can't stop noticing those soulful eyes. //He looks sad.//

The quiet between them stretches into all sorts of uncomfortable positions.

“Um, do you want a drink?” Ari says a little too softly, and Farhan looks confused so she has to repeat herself: “//Do you want a drink?//”

//Why don't I ask him to leave? Check that. Why don’t I tell him to leave?//

“It’s four AM, Ari.” Farhan chides, “Not exactly the breakfast of champions.” It's like her thoughts are a hamster wheel she can't stop running.

//He could have killed me in my bedroom. Why did I stay? Why did I let him sleep?// So it goes, again and again and again. //Why does he look so sad? What’s in his head? Why is he still here?//

“You’re sober. I’m sober.” Ari gets up from her seat. “What else are we gonna do?”

It's like her words stoked his imagination and there's so much interest in the way he looks at her. “I mean, if you follow me to bed I can probably think of something.” His voice is like a low purr.

She gives him a side-eye. "Funny, funny man." but a smile underlines it. His lips curl with hers.

//I don't want to smile. I don't want to talk to you. I want a break. I want this feeling to stop.// She hates she still wants to touch him.

Ari makes her way to the kitchen, squeezing past him, and she can't not look at his face as their bodies graze each other, like a river curled by a rocky bank. His chest quickens like he’s breathing her. //He smells nice.// Like sweat and cheap cologne.

It’s a short walk from the table to her vault.

//Just need something for my nerves.//

She hears Farhan’s voice as she busies herself with the combination. “You keep your liquor in a vault?”

“Party favors,” Ari says. “It's a fun loophole in the contraband rules.”

“Sounds generous for a Foundation front-line base.” He sounds intrigued. Intrigue in an operator is identical to suspicion.

“It’s what happens when you put a site in the middle of the desert. Beggers and choosers, dude.” Ari swings open the vault to reveal a glittering collection of liquors of every brand. Her finger dances on the gold and silver labels until she finds the stenciled calligraphy of an expensive bottle of Glenfiddich. “Uh, scotch good for you?”

“Let me guess, beggars and choosers?” Farhan says, bemused. She listens in case of footsteps, motions, or the clacking of a gun. So far, so quiet.

//Just need something for my nerves.//

“Yup.” She grabs the bottle and lays it on the countertop next to her. The alcohol is just a prop. It's what is behind it that puts her mind at ease.

Nestled between a Sig Sauer and a Mockingbird combat knife, is a simple cork-screw bottle opener.

It is good at opening bottles of all kinds, and the push needle inside of it is laced with an aura-piercing neurotoxin said to be so deadly, hell would need its stomach pumped after the target got sent there.

//He’s so sad,// she thinks, and something makes her fingers hesitate rather than grab the most lethal kill-agent a noncom can get their hands on. //Nothing to worry about. It's like a security blanket.//

[!-- She turns to her freezer. Vanity—why else would she walk around in her underwear?—gets her to cross her legs so her muscles have the right amount of tension and torque. With an exaggerated kiai and an explosion of core strength,

she lets her thigh hurl her leg in an elegant crescent kick,

clips the freezer handle,

the freezer door flies open in its wake.

"Woah-" Farhan starts before it slams into a nearby cabinet and bounces closed again. She hears him cackle aggressively, like the laughter is punching a heavy bag, and tries to ignore him. It takes more effort than it should. //Do I throw something at him, or play this off?//
--]

//He's just so sad.//

Just as she makes up her mind and her fingers wrap around the meta-terminator—

The hair on the back of her neck prickles as she senses Farhan walk up behind her.

She almost kills him. She almost slams the needle into the side of his neck and kills him.

She almost reaches for her gun to shoot him twice in the chest and once in the head. //I didn’t hear a damn thing!// She almost reaches for her knife.

Instead she grabs the bottle before she twists around. He has a raised eyebrow and a confused frown. "You looked like you were struggling over there."

"Jesus, stop doing that!"

"I'm just trying to help."

//Gods, he's slick.// Her hands aren't shaking. She never shook around people. //Gods, he's so slick.//

"I can fix a drink by myself!" She trips on the last word.

"I don’t let women pour my own drinks," Farhan gently places his hands on the bottle. "Let alone theirs."

"You're not going to //let// me pour my drink? Did I hear you right?"

Farhan looks down and sighs. "It's a figure of speech."

"It's a figure of bullshit." Ari scoffs and lets Farhan take the bottle from her. "I'm letting //you// pour me a drink, dude.

Then she spots his pupils, giving her body a once-over, then darting back and forth. It hits her: //He’s threat scanning my kitchen!// Ari forces herself to smile, hoping it disarmed the tension neither of them would ever acknowledge. //What is his problem? Didn't he like me?//

He places the bottle on the counter and opens the freezer door to fetch the ice. The cold air wraps around her forearms and legs. While Farhan continues to blab about Muslim hospitality, he has his bare back to her for the first time that evening, and the sight makes her jaw drop.

The tattoos are stunning. Poetry with sharp Arabic calligraphy woven into the skin with expert needling. A nightingale with outstretched wings perches on his shoulder blade, sharpening its beak on his spine along with swords and a sun. It's the prettiest skin-art she's ever seen.

It's the physiological details that give her the chills.

Ari knows the difference between natural human skin texture and prosthetic membrane. A few inches of her thigh are covered in the stuff, a souvenir of a brush with chemical warfare. The pain had been so bad she scheduled time each day to go someplace private for ten minutes because screaming helped with her aim later. Farhan’s lips had taken special care to worship the Texas-shaped scar earlier that night.

His entire back is made of the latter.

He turns around with a wide grin and a redder face. //At the current range, I have ten different striking options to disable his nervous system...//

She smells his floral breath. He leaves the freezer open, turns, and braces Ari against the wall, shy of pinning her outright. //...And now I only have two.//

His mouth is only an inch above hers. Her gun hand itches. A few inches behind her in the vault, the gun itches. The needle itches,

The cold from the freezer dances with the warmth of Farhan’s body. "Can I help you?" she asks, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

"Nah," Farhan leans on one arm while letting another glide along her shoulder and waist. "But I sense disquiet. Can I help //you//?" She feels completely under his control. She likes it. She doesn't like it. It's distracting, how chiseled his abdomen is, how cut his muscles are, the prominence of his jaw, the way his hands play her like a piano.

"No, it's okay, it's. It's. O...kay?" Ari feels his cold fingers slide under her shirt, his thumb tracing her muscle tone. The heat and the cold do a sensual tango under her skin, and she feels herself start to melt. //Oh, he's good.// She remembers to complete her sentence: "Your back is. Um. Interesting."

"That's not fair. I've yet to get a good look at yours." Farhan's hands begin to move and Ari feels her shirt slowly lifting above her waist.

//Does he see the gun or the needle? Is he trying to reach for—//

Everything about him is so firm and she just wants to—

Whether it’s hormones or tactics driving her, she pulls his collar and lets her lips collide with his. His arm wraps around her waist and pulls her into him as his tongue tickles her lips, and she breathes (or moans), letting him in—

Her fingers scratch his stomach on the way toward the waistband of his underwear and then slip underneath, causing him to gasp—

Before she squeezes, then shoves him into the fridge—

But not before the shock of cold like an icy knife slashes down her spine, and she shrieks. "You clown!"

A handful of ice cubes slides down her back, scattering on the floor.

"What the heck?" Ari glares at Farhan, who winces while quietly massaging himself. "Are you this goofy with everybody you fuck?"

"Ha..." Farhan ignores her question. "Ari, you might want to go easier with the grip strength next time... ow."

"Yeah, you know what? //You// can make the drinks. I don’t care anymore." She tries not to show him her smirk.

She fails. He grins. She smiles. He chuckles. She chuckles. He giggles—

She bursts out laughing, "Oh my God," //That freaking giggle!// "Help!" She clutches her own sides.

"Okay, okay—" he walks towards her, "Can I pour our drinks already—"

"No, you aren't pretending that didn't happen!" She slaps the wall, "It sounded like a chicken doing a falsetto—hahahaha—"

"I'm gonna pour our drinks now,"

"Nuh-uh." She grabs him and kisses him flat on the lips. He tries to keep a straight face and keep his lips stiff as her lips touch his. It's like a dam broke and now they're both a river of giddy voices talking over each other and the fun is calling the shots now. "Can I really—" "No." "Will you—" "Only if you giggle like that again." "I don't think it's //that// funny." It's all so funny.

It wasn't. It wasn't really. //Why am I laughing?// She feels like something is coming out of her, falling off of her, not just from today, but a lot from a while ago. //He's so funny.//

"Get over here," she says and keeps kissing his stubborn, stupid, sheepish smile—

"If you insist—" he crushes her giddy peals with a passionate kiss she pushes herself into. "You're so fucking cute." He says, and he pins her to the wall, and he feels her up while they make out for a bit. His hands are all over her and his body feels much less lethal now.

He pulls her away by her hair. The sharp sting is unexpected but oddly thrilling, and she can tell he notices the way the look on her face just lit up. "You're a bit ridiculous yourself."

"Oh yeah?" Ari's biting her lip.

"Yeah."

"Prove it."

"Field-stripping a gun in the middle of the night after sex?" Farhan kisses her but it feels patronizing now. "Who does that?"

Ari remembers Farhan holding her like this during his night terror, and the euphoria dims. She loosens her grip on him. "Fine, make me a drink." He grabs the bottle and fixes their drinks while she takes her place in front of the vault, watching him. The time it would take for her to get the needle is just a second slower than it would take for him to neutralize her. Her brain reviews the ways she can get that second back. "Don't spill the ice, //chuckles.//"

"Funny girl." The liquid jangles the ice in the glasses, and Farhan carries them to the table. "You coming?"

Ari looks at the ice cubes at her feet, already beginning to puddle. A deeper cold blooms in her stomach. //His mouth is the same when he laughs and screams. Does he really not remember a thing?// The memories bellow in her mind’s ears. The heat in her vanishes, replaced by the taut chest aches, like Farhan is still on top of her, many footpounds of energy crushing her into the mattress.

//Also, that ass is...something else.// It's like the anxiety makes her touch-hungry too. //Was I supposed to hear the things he was screaming at me? No. How does a man maintain opsec when he talks in his sleep?//

"Hey," Farhan’s cheerful yell cuts through her reverie. He's casually twirling the slide of Ari’s Beretta between his fingers. "Before the ice melts." //Her// gun.

She's really pissed off now. //Fuck him. That's MY gun. Fuck him. Fuck this.//

Ari reaches into the vault. Her fingers briefly touch the needle before wrapping around something else. "You know what—" She pulls out her Sig Sauer pistol instead. Fully loaded. Bullet in the chamber.

Farhan yelps, "The fuck—" He jumps out of his chair—

Before Farhan can react, she ejects the magazine and pops the bullet. "How about a drinking game? If you win, I’ll tell you."

Farhan clears his throat and takes a breath, failing to play it cool. "And if I lose?"

+ Scene 2: I am fading

//Being drunk and getting head are synergistic activities.// Ari lets out a dry-throated hiss as Farhan tucks icy fingers under her underwear and pulls.

-----

Ten minutes ago, Ari was having fun.

The game was very straightforward, she explained as she casually tossed the Sig Sauer P320 on the table before Farhan. The pistol was a well-crafted, standard-issue sidearm that anyone spending a day with the GOC would have used and cleaned. The gun she had been working with was the Beretta, a model phased out in the 90s, partly because of how complicated disassembling and reassembling it was. She reached over with her glass and tapped Farhan's before he could pick it up and take a hearty gulp of rocky Single Malt.

"What were you saying about the game?" Farhan raised his glass and took a sip.

"Field-strip your gun as many times as possible in a one-minute window. I'll do the same. The loser takes a shot. Rinse and repeat. The first person to drop something or say 'uncle' has to perform the forfeit." Ari's train of thought encountered many a corkscrew, liquored up at this hour.

Farhan raised an eyebrow. "You must be drunk. How fat-fingered do you think I am?"

"Those aren't pianist hands."

"I defuse bombs."

"Then this shouldn't be a problem for you. Here." She grabbed his drink and took another sip. "Doubling up on the handicap."

"This feels exploitative," Farhan smiled. "I don't like to use the word 'daddy issues' with women, but—."

Ari picked up her gun. "Here's some trivia about my dad. Since I was six, he'd wake me up at 0500 for PT with an energy bar and a protein drink. Made blueberry pancakes for me at 0630. Every //single// day he could. I had to stop him when he was sick." She racked the pistol for a function check. "Now, let's roll."

Farhan's gun was simple, his hands were deft and steady, and he'd clearly done this before, and for a while. A professional, she had no business playing this game with him, and she knew he knew it.

His hands never shook, not even during the literal night terrors.

She also knew she'd been field-stripping this particular Beretta since she was nine.

It took him ten minutes to realize Ari hustled him. "For—for fuck's sakes, //Uncle!//"

She won so handily she'd taken a couple of shots of her own accord because she didn't want to dry out waiting for him to lose.

//How stupid does he think I am?// Ari wrinkled her nose with irritation. //Like I'd opt into a game I stood a chance of losing?// Another voice in her head replied: //What do you call joining the military?// She hopped out of her chair onto the table, crawled across the surface, and dangled her legs and feet so they comfortably nestled in Farhan's lap, letting her toes tickle his torso. He locked eyes with her again. This time, he was beaming, and she didn't stop her lips from meeting his eyes with a smile. "You look dopey."

Her brain, meanwhile, harbored harsher words: //Is that tongue only for talking shit? You woke me up at 0300 hours because your REM sleep is on Satan's wavelength. Now make me come!// Words that rough didn't fit in her mouth. Petra had always said that Ari was exceptionally mild-mannered for someone who killed for a living.

And Farhan began to touch her, and the thoughts dimmed to a merry murmur.

There is a valley between a massage and a grope, and Farhan dragged Ari's nerves there with what his hands did to her calves and legs and thighs. //Especially the thighs.// She felt him tease the fake skin on her thigh and saw something in his eyes, a glint of recognition. "No—no fair, dude, you're not supposed to—" //Do what? Make me feel better?//

Then she felt crushed and compacted as she breathed, and her eyes closed, flooded with a cocktail of her body's most potent thrill chemicals like she was mainlining a rosy amphetamine. She opened her eyes as her skin whispered in strangled gasps that Farhan's left hand snuck under her shirt, just dead center where the waistband of her underwear made a perpendicular with the scar tissue along her spine. His other hand moved another few inches up her waist, and a fingertip or two brushed aside the few millimeters of fabric and—

//Fuck.//

Pushed forward and

As he—

Pressed onto her—

Until treading him—

Her face was all above the deep—

And his eyes continued to drown her.

"From this angle, you look like Rachel Singer."

"The math teacher from that crime drama about that Muslim mob boss? Where do you get that from?"

"Big grey eyes, prominent Mediterranean nose, high cheekbones, your lips do a bit of a natural pout. Your eyes are pretty Central Asian—mom or dad, I wonder? The main difference is..." He pulled her closer to him. The rough skin on his knuckle grazes her with just the right degree of rough that she gasps, and her breasts swell against his chest, and in her fevered perspiration she's frustrated that his hair can't tear into own skin because of the shirt. //That's not coming off.// "You're so bloody fit," She feels his fingers glide along her back, and again her shirt slowly crawled up her skin, the artificial cooled air bracing the small hairs along her back—

"Ow!"

Ari sank her teeth into the skin between his shoulder and his neck. "Hands off the shirt." She nuzzled his face, then pressed her forehead against his. Then she closed her eyes, and his mouth pressed on hers, and she stiffened when his tongue pushed against her mouth, but then a few fingers moved between her legs, and a thumb delicately teased her, and she gasped again and melted in his arms, and his tongue and weight pushed a moan out of her, and he pulled back and his fingers left from beneath her underwear, and she groaned. "The fuck?"

"That look..." Farhan sounded out of breath, "So that's what you look like, drunk."

"I've been drunk." Ari gasped, "Come //on//..."

"Not in the way it counts."

"You //bitch//—" Farhan smothered her bark into another moan and a sigh. She felt weightless in the air for a minute as Farhan swept her off the table and carried her to her bed—then she crashed into the mattress, a liquid non-presence writhing under Farhan's hot breath and ravenous flesh. She wrenched her lips from his as he tried, again, to take her shirt off. "Dude," She tried to sculpt her panting into something sharp, "Are you unwrapping a gift or giving me mine?"

"Fucking bossy—" but Farhan obliged her, and she felt a path of kisses flow over her belly—

//Being drunk and getting head are synergistic activities.// Ari lets out a dry-throated hiss as Farhan tucks icy fingers under her underwear and pulls.

-----

Ari writhes in her sheets. Her fingers claw at the fabric, toes curl into the comforter. She wants Farhan to turn the light off because she hates looking at herself on display like this, but she forgot to tell him and it'd be awkward to stop things now and the white fluorescent lighting makes her pale skin look washed out and her scars better defined than her curves. Her shirt sticks to her sweaty skin.

//How am I feeling this bad with someone else’s tongue inside me?//

Her groan is muffled by the pillow she's pressing into her face because she doesn't like to look at herself.

He also can't see her blush.

"Are you usually shy about this?" He says.

Yes, she was. Now: //What’s taking him so long? He can't be this bad at it!//

There's no reason for it. It feels nice sometimes, but climaxing like that needed muscles like anything else, and she knew hers were getting tired. And eventually, he’d get bored.

But she's bored. So very, very bored. Boredom is bad for her because then she starts to think and she doesn't want to think about him right now.

She closes her eyes and tries to pretend its her ex-girlfriend, Petra, hoping it's easier to come to a familiar fuck. The soft, firm feel of Petra's densely coiled curls, a sophisticated mess framing her heart-shaped face. The way sweat glowed on her ebony skin. Her full lips and the toothy dangerous grin they portend. The way Ari fell asleep on her chest, curled up in her sweat while Petra hummed Ziad Rahbani songs under a humming ceiling fan, Petra's fingers sifting through Ari's hair. (Petra showed Ari her scalp was a sweet spot.)

//Pick a team, already!// Petra would say because being into both men and women was incomprehensible to her.

She tries to remember the way Petra’s tongue and fingers would play her like a fucking piano—

No. Nothing. Fuck Petra. One guy being bad at oral does not refute her sexual orientation. She remembers what Petra would say when Ari would seem too stiff: //"Talk! Talking distracts, cuts the tension. When people talk, their brains stop working." "Girl, you're the chattiest person I know!" "And now you know why!"//

"You, uh-" Ari catches her breath. "Um, you ever do this with someone like me before?"

"What?"

She throws the pillow over her face at the wall. "Am I your first time hooking up with military?"

"Yeah." He says. He sounds like he’s busy fixing a car.

//Maybe I could try looking at him.//

His eyes look so focused, and the way he makes the color hazel smolder, she swears she can taste it. Something sweet and salty. "You're the first. Why?"

"No. No reason."

//I'm taking so long.// Ari wonders if he’s going to complain to his friends about her broken clit. Irrationally, she wonders how far down the power ladder this puts her in his sex life. //Maybe I should say something?// But then it would be a thing. Like most guys she knew, he would take the question as a criticism, and then there would be more feelings, and the buzz would just die—

It's too late, she's thinking now. She's thinking pretty hard.

-----

**It's eight minutes into Farhan's episode, Ari feels like it's been an hour.**

**"I'll be a good lamb, please-"**

**Ari remembers locking the door when dad screamed like this at night. The parallel was so striking. Farhan is the first time she sees what is on the other side of the door. She never did open the door to help.**

**There are no doors here.**

-----

It's like there's a third party on her bed and it looks just like Farhan and she remembers open she is to him—

//No, I don't want to think about that.// She feels really dumb. //And for my next trick, I'll try not thinking about elephants next!//

"Uh, fun fact! You're the first guy who's gone down on me!" //Ari, what the FUCK?//

He stops, and Ari groans. //Physiologically, the break might help. Subjectively, I want to throw the other pillow at him, too.//

He seems thoughtful. Then: "First guy?" He //finally// starts using his fingers, and she hisses and closes her eyes, but she keeps talking because it's starting to help keep the sound of screaming at bay.

"There was...a girl." Ari bit her lip. //Finally, that's more like it.// "She. Wow. Better than you. You're not bad. For a boy."

“A girl?” He stops again.

“Yeah, a girl.”

“Huh,” he sounds puzzled, “You like them, too?” //Oh, my God, am I the first time he's heard of...it?// She still is sheepish about liking boys and girls herself.

“Yeah, is that a problem?”

“No, it’s…” Farhan fumbles for the right word. "Interesting." //He's so fucking put off.// It’s as if he expertly designed the best way to simultaneously punch her in the gut and throttle her with suspense. "What was her name?"

//It's actually a problem. He's just like Petra. It's not that weird for me to like both!// She feels like it's a little weird. //What is everybody's problem?//

"Why." Ari swallows. "Why do you ask?"

//Why is this the first guy I come out of the closet to? What was I expecting?//

Farhan voice sounds tense again. "What else am I supposed to say? 'Is she better at this than me?'”

//I don't know! Anything else? And yes, she is!// "Her name is Petra Shahi."

Farhan pokes his head out from between her legs. His head tilts like a cat spotting a bird through a window. "She Persian?"

//What an oddly specific question.// Ari is exasperated—at herself. //Am I actually tilted at this guy?//

"No, Somalian."

"Did she have a Persian parent? Maybe adopted?"

"Nope."

"Ok, that's absurd!" Farhan sounds confused. “You’re joking! What’s her actual name?”

"What?"

"That was //not// her real name."

"How'd you know that?"

"Petra Shahi is a //very// Persian name."

//Shit—// Ari's eyes widened, //How'd I not notice that?//

She forces herself to shrug. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

And then another punch to her gut—//Was that her real name? Have I been calling her an alias this entire time?//

"Why are you thinking of her now?” Farhan frowned, “Am I that bad?”

It's like the specter of Farhan's torment just tagged in her ex's bullshit. //I don't want to be here.// Ari can't even be snarky. She's fully mask-on now.

“And who was she to you?

//You don't know the half of it.// And then Ari wonders, apropos of nothing, //And who are you to me? Who are you? Who are you? What are you doing here? Who are you?// Short breaths. Tight chest. She feels like punching someone or running, but Farhan’s back at it so she stays still, she feels like talking but then the thoughts are back—

----

**”Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Please! Please!”**

**He babbles the same phrase again and again.**

**"Who are you?" Farhan asks. "Who are you?" He lapses from English to Farsi to Arabic. Adrenaline and alcohol make it harder for her to understand him. The way she’s too slow agitates him more and she sees a dozen faces from her past in his.**

**It got so much worse after she tried telling him he's okay, that he's safe.**

**Her hands look funny. They're shaking. They're actually shaking. Why are they shaking now? They don't shake!**

**Farhan lunges forward. Ari's reflexes are superb. In the field, she moves faster than him.**

**It's why it surprises her when his hands seize her shoulders. This has truly become a night of firsts.**

**She immediately calculates the movements required to break Farhan's grip and neutralize him. His frenzy leaves him vulnerable. She could shatter him at any time.**

**Instead, she mumbles, "Fuck off. Fuck off. //Fuck off.//" as he shakes her and screams in her face. She finds herself wondering if her father also cries on evenings like these. Did he grab her mom? How'd her mom do it? Why didn't they talk to her about these things?**

**Ari wonders what her own face looks like now.**

----

She thinks about water instead.

"Water, she says." She pinches herself and clings to the driftwood of pain in the current of numbness. "Uh, what’s your favorite body of water?"

"What?"

“I like watching rivers when I’m nervous.” She blurted out. “I…”

“Huh?” Farhan makes a noise like a dog’s whine. “Are you nervous?”

“Uh, no, but-” Ari gasps as Farhan. “Are you? Don’t you get nervous?”

A pause. “No.” Before she can say anything, he resumes failing to make her come, and now nothing is happening at all.

“I, uh, dude?” She bites her lip. The feeling of his tongue and fingers down there is gross. She feels way too anatomical. Sometimes, this would happen with Petra as well, but Petra couldn’t physically throw her body off the bed during a night terror.

//So tell him you’re done. Tell him to stop,//

But she doesn’t want to make a thing of it when just waiting it out is easier. Feelings may get involved, and she doesn’t want any of Farhan’s—

She feels a weight press on her, push her into the mattress. Farhan's face is above hers. Farhan’s arms on either side of her head. She can’t actually move.

“Why are you nervous?” Farhan smiles, but his eyes are as cold as the dry white lamps. “Relax. Let me take care of you.”

//Go on, try and return the favor.//

----

**Just as Ari's shoulders begin to ache from his grasp, he leaps backward, tumbles onto the floor, scrambles onto the bed and wraps his arms around his knees, sobbing. She checks his head for signs of any head trauma. His cute wavy hair. She runs her fingers through it, almost maternally. The shadow the warm moonlight casts hides his eyes under his messed hair and she lets him have his sorrow at her feet.**

**Is this what mom had to do? Is this what I was hiding from?**

**Farhan's crying. There's nothing she can really do then, other than stand there and watch. "I don't care." She murmurs. "I could leave. I could leave you. I could leave you at any time. I don't care."**

**"What am I doing?"**

----

He's on top of her now, straddling her. His hand is on her cheek. "You're so stiff, Ari." Farhan looks quizzical. He stares at her. Staring through her almost. "So much talking. Is something bothering you?" The questions don't sound like he wants much to talk. //He's really asking, "Tell me what I gotta do to shut you up."// Ari is afraid, and then angry. //Who the fuck does he think I am? One of his honey pots?//

His caress felt like she was nuzzling cold granite. "You are so stiff." Farhan sounds more like her medic. "Just relax."

"I..." She swallows again, "I'm so bored, Farhan. You're so boring."

"I see." His eye is now hard, staring through her. The boy is gone, sense of humor missing. What's in his place is hard with cold hands. "And what do you propose we do about that?"

"Do what comes natural, I guess." She is not being complimentary.

She takes his hand and places it so she's wearing his fingers and thumb around her throat, so his thumb can feel the retort of her quickening heartbeat to the pressure. She nods with narrowed eyes devoid of feeling, in a body that no longer felt hers.

The next minutes are a blur. She feels weightless again, flipped on her belly, then his fingers wrap themselves in her hair and yank her, and it's with no tenderness now, and she's not having the fun she had. "You're still so stiff," she hears him say. "Just relax. Let go." //Why don't you?// He feels anything but relaxed—

Then, from behind, he fills her, and she shoves her fingers in her mouth and bites them, swallowing a moan because it's foreign to the disgust inside her.

He fucks her lifelessly and mechanically. He's so automatic, and she's so checked out, she preoccupies herself with figuring out if his fucking has a time signature. Her teeth dig into the rough flesh of her pillowcase. Her mouth is wet. She's a wave flung from a gurgling ocean, part of her receding, part of her dissolving into the sand. She heaves. She feels...

She's an object to him. He's trying to put her down. It all feels so wrong. She—

"Farhan." She whispers. He keeps going. If anything, he goes harder. If he hears her, it isn't with pleasure. He shoves her off her knees and slams her into the bed, but now she //really// isn't into it anymore, but makes herself moan louder because it's better than showing him how squeaky of a wheel she's always been.

She wishes the lights were off because she can't do it right now.

There's pleasure, but it is grotesquely physiological. She turns her head, and her cheek feels gross because her saliva is on the pillow, and she can just make out his head, and it isn't angled towards her. "Farhan..." she mumbles, "What are you ...what are you looking at?" He doesn't hear her. She catches his eyes. "Farhan, what are you looking at?" //Look at me. Farhan. Not like the others. I'm not just anyone. I'm me. Farhan, you fucking accident.//
His eyes are glazed, distant.

He isn't looking at her.

He's looking at a wall. She's beside the point. She remembers how her mom and Petra and the rest look at her, and Farhan becomes them—

He's fucking her like

Like she is not

**Fucking**

**THERE.**

"Farhan." She barks. "Stop. Get off me." He freezes, takes a second too long to pull out and she elbows him somewhere she hopes is his kidney. He throws himself off of her, and she crawls forward on the bed away from him, letting an errant kick tap his shoulder for good measure.

Her face, her mouth, and her eyes are so wet. She puts two fingers to her neck. Her heart thunders like she just ran a marathon, blood hungry for air. She pants and tries to control her breathing while keeping her eyes on Farhan. She can't tell whether he's concerned or intrigued with the way his gaze focuses on her face. She turns away from him when his mouth opens.

"Did you come?" He asks. //Man's got a checklist.//

"Yes." //Why am I lying to him?// "No."

"So what's up? What's going on?"

"Nothing. I'm just bored." She walks to a dresser and, after a succession of flung open drawers and heaved slams, collects another shirt, a sports bra, fresh underwear, socks, shorts, and a revolver and walks to the shower, setting it to an appropriate temperature, and walks into the water. She feels gone, just a hollow earpiece taking in the world.

"Ari, what's up?" He says.

"Ari?" He says.

"Ari, you're freaking me out." He says.

"Ari? Come on." He says.

She stops the water, realizes she forgot to take her shirt off, throws that aside and dries off before putting her clothes on. He's staring at the floor now, probably feeling sorry for herself, and she quickly opens the vault and grabs the needle while he's not looking, and somehow she feels better with it.

She walks over to the door for her shoes.

Farhan moves to grab her shoulder, and she tenses her muscles, prepared to do something nasty to whatever limb he tries to touch her with. He recognizes the tension and backs off. "Ariadne? What's going on?"

"I'm going for a job. I mean, going for a //jog//. Breakfast's in the fridge. Help yourself to a power bar and coffee. Feel free to leave whenever."

"Ari," Farhan grabs her hand—she lets him grab it, "Can we talk?"

"No, that's boring, and I'm already bored."

"Can I at least keep an eye on you—"

"//Stop.//" She realizes she shouted at him just then. She never shouts. "Get out, or go back to sleep."

"Good...good night." Farhan sounds despondent.

She thinks about saying something productive. Instead: "You suck at oral, dude."

She thinks about slamming her apartment door on her way out. Instead, she gives it minimum force, and the door bounces off the hinge with an anemic tap, leaving her door ajar.

And so she goes.

+ Scene 3: I am drowning

Ari jogged in the Balochistan desert. At 4 AM the temperature is a skin-tickling forty degrees. Making your own heat was both the challenge and the reward.

Her breathing is loud in her ears amidst the deep silence. She's only about putting one foot in front of the other as fast as she can, feeling comfortably engulfed by the ocean of scorched sands and the red of patient mountains carving up the dead horizon.

Eventually, perverse curiosity leads her feet to the site bar whence she'd pulled Farhan. The site bar is routinely raided by lonely or desolate staff after hours. Site Management tacitly looked the other way. It's the cost of setting up shop in a wasteland. All you needed to take advantage of the 'privilege' was the skills to breach a level two security system.

This isn't a problem for Ari. Two years of dating Petra Shahi means learning some things by osmosis. It takes her three minutes to get inside.

Something about the emptiness flushes the adrenaline out of her system. She takes a seat at the bar and leans against the table, burying her face in her hands. Why hadn't she just come back to her apartment? Because he might still be there?

//Because he probably wouldn't still be there.// Ari groans. //You don't want to get into the habit of missing him.//

She closes her eyes.

----

Her hands slide off her eyes, and she takes in the well-lit bar and the electric gleaming of the varnished liquor cabinet. The bottles of high-priced scotch.

And one quite good-looking...

Woman with rich dark locks, a head of carefully chaotic coils, ebony skin,

A hungry grin,

A striped suit, bowtie, dress shirt straining to contain a generous body,

A warm feeling flushes Ari's face and skin.

"Hi, Petra." Her hands slip from her cheeks and smack the wood. She looks around the bar. "Looks slow tonight." She slams the barstand with both fists and bursts out laughing, a high-pitched squeal of mirth. She snorts once. She slaps her hands over her mouth.

Petra suggests she knows why Ari pretends not to have a sense of humor.

"Shut up, you clown, and pour me a drink." Ari puts her hand on the bar and sticks out four fingers. There's a hollow crackle as frost-caked cubes tumble out of Petra's scoop into a highball glass, and then a soothing glug of whiskey flows out of a pour spout, filling the glass halfway. Ari checks the measure with her fingers again, pokes the ice cubes mingling on the surface once or twice, and throws back the drink until the ice hits her teeth.

The glass smacks the table. "Well, it was nice catching up, Petra-" Ari checks her pockets and frowns. "Uh, Petra, I forgot my wallet in my other pants. How's my credit around here-"

Petra says her credit is fine.

[[include component:image-block name=https://i.imgur.com/NBjz0Ob.png|caption="The world was more interesting with you in it."|width=400px]]

"Oh, well, I suppose a second drink couldn't hurt."

Petra asks if she'll have the usual this time.

"No. Honest to God, I mostly drink it when I start to miss you so the feeling goes away."

Petra puts her hand on Ari's. Ari remembers the zesty bergamot and lemon and flowers of Petra's Aqua Universalis perfume, the pear-flavored taste of her lips on hers.

Ari refuses. "Stop. This isn't what this is."

Petra says fair enough and asks Ari how she is doing.

"Could be better, Petra. My mom died, and a dog snuck into my bed and shat in it."

Petra asks her if her mom had regrets.

"We both know the answer to that question."

Petra asks why she barely called her mom after she joined the army.

"Because she hated my career path."

Petra asks if Ari's sure it's not because she hated Ari.

"I don't see why she'd hate me."

Petra suggests it's because Ari scares people when she looks at them.

"Oh, that's true. I hope you're not suggesting that's why I joined the army.

Petra explains Ari joined the army because she's a good killer, and joined the Foundation because she's a bad human. She asks why Ari is angry at her mom if it's all her fault.

"It's inconsiderate for her to go when I'm only twenty-one. Who is going to keep my dad company now?"

Petra asks her if she wants another drink.

"I want two. One for me and one for him."

A one-eyed dog eagerly laps from a glass of scotch on the bar.

Petra compliments her on the dog.

" I let it in my apartment. Assholes might have taken out the other eye."

Petra inquires as to whether Ari is keeping it.

"Fuck no, just waiting for it to leave or an owner to keep it."

Petra remarks that it seemed to have followed her.

"It came here for a drink. It did not follow me."

Petra doubts it. She asks if she did anything for Ari's tastes to change from women to dogs.

"Shut the fuck up."

Petra asks her if she's aware she's in a dream.

"Duh! How stupid do you think I am?"

Petra declines to comment.

"You are so fucking boring, Petra."

//"Fuck yourself, Ari,"// Petra does nothing to hide her tears flowing down her face. //"How fucking dare you?"// She hurls Ari's glass just past her head, then disappears into the liquor cabinet behind her.

"Petra!" Petra is already gone. "Come on, puppy," she calls out to her companion. The dog barks, and she hops over the barstand and follows Petra into the Scotch.

----

She catches up with Petra in a long line to a nightclub in Edinburgh.

Petra's appearance had changed. Gone are the slacks, suit, dress shirt, and bow. Petra wears a biker jacket over a Balmain gold mini-dress with gleaming sequins, a single Chanel earring in her ear deliberately leaving the other ear bare, her pearl-colored prosthetic leg and the talons on Petra's foot throw back the warm colored lamp light. The jacket has the security tag still attached to it. Ari hisses at Petra, runs over, and rips the tag off the dress. "What have I told you about taking scores before a date? Are you kidding me?"

Petra wraps her arms around Ari and their lips close together, the taste of Petra's mouth a mix of fruit gloss and heat. There's an extra moment where Ari greedily answers the kiss for another moment, and then they pull away.

Petra's grin twitches from a breathless giggle. //"I'm just a gas to worry about, eh, macaan?[[footnote]] Somalian term of endearment, "Sweetheart" [[/footnote]]."//

Petra asks Ari if she meant it when she said she was boring.

"No, I'm so sorry."

Petra grins and says if ever there was a way to tell if Ari was dreaming, it's her offering a sincere apology.

"What are we waiting for?"

"It's the best club in Edinburgh."

"You paid for me to fly first class to Berlin so you could take me to a club? I'm not even dressed properly!"

Petra tells her not to worry about it.

Soon, the line recedes into the building until Petra and Ari are face-to-face with the bouncer. The bouncer looks the two of them over and tells them they can't come in.

Petra flashes him a bankroll of cash.

The bouncer says something vaguely racist, and asserts the money in there is 'small bills.'

Petra pats the bouncer on the elbow twice, thanks him, and saunters off with her arm around Ari's waist. She hears him complain about a splinter in his arm, and then the absence of his wallet.

And then she hears a thud. The crowd is murmuring about how the man had a heart attack. Petra points to his companion and notes he has the fallen man's wallet. The man indeed has the wallet but claims not to know how it got there. In the confusion, Petra drags Ari into the club. She buys Ari a drink and tips the bartender with a crumple of cash that likely had been in the bouncer's wallet. //"Sorry about the small bills."//

"Petra, you're coming with me!" Ari grabs Petra's wrist and drags her towards a dark corner.

Petra lets out a delighted peal of laughter, //"Oh dear, we going to the bathroom stall again?"//

----

They're in a bathroom stall now. Ari drags Petra in there so they can talk. Ari struggles to complete a sentence as Petra's lips and teeth massage her neck. Her knees buckle when Petra's fingers slip under Ari's shirt.

"Petra-"

Petra tells her not to worry.

"What did we just do?"

Petra suggests thinking of that as the foreplay.

"I'm not a sadist. That man could have died."

Petra says neither is she, but respect is everything.

There's a bark outside. "The dog," Ari gasps. Petra wraps an arm around Ari's neck, while her other hand slides under Ari's shorts and underwear. Her head is pressed to Ari's, and Ari feels Petra drinking the hunger on her face. "The dog followed us in here."

"The dog follows you everywhere, Ari." Ari feels herself bend over the stall. They know each other's bodies perfectly and what they like. She feels Petra's lips on the back of her neck, she feels embraced from behind, and then Petra's fingers, again, delicately tease moans out of Ari that are deeper and more feminine than she can recognize.

Petra asks her if she still deepens her voice so the guys will respect her.

"All this time," Ari whispers, "You still think I'm some performance. Petra tenses against her, leans forward, and Ari almost chokes on her gasp, then grits her teeth. "Yeah, I talk deeper than I sound, but I've been doing that since I was six." Ari's through playing nice. She reverses Petra's hold on her and slams Petra against the bathroom stall door. The dog whines. Petra smiles.

"Maybe we would have lasted a little longer if you didn't keep telling me I was fake."

Petra says Ari has her confused with //everybody//. Petra was the only one who had seen the inside of the husk. She's a lovely husk.

"You just wanted to fill me with yourself."

Petra says that's what fixing someone often is.

"I tried. That's why I hate you. I tried to do it, and you always said it wasn't enough."

Petra says it was always fake, just like the whore upstairs.

"He's enough for now."

Petra says he's the same kind of fake as she is.

"So were you."

Petra said that's a fair cop. She suggests perhaps 'fake' isn't the best term for it.

"So how would you describe it?"

Petra takes Ari's hands and places them over her own throat.

Ari grins and leans forward.

----

Ari grins and leans forward into the sand, seeing Petra's eyes slowly close, content, as Ari began to squeeze. Behind her the waves of the beach insistently paw at the shore, crashing a moisture carpet around Ari's thighs.

//"Dina!"//

Her dad is the only person who called her that-mostly because everyone else calls her Ari and he wanted it abundantly clear he was not everyone else.

Ari hops off of Petra and stands at attention. Under a red sky swollen with sun-cooked, shimmering air, she feels salt sting her eyes and sweat drip from her lashes.

"Sir!" Ari looks down at the black one-piece bespoke Moeva London she wears, Petra's gift. Ari let herself wear it on the trip Petra gave it to her for fun. Petra was on the ground, lying between her legs, her eyes closed, in a somewhat more provocative swimsuit. "Uh..." Ari had not felt this caught off guard since she was fifteen, "I can explain!"

Her father shrugged. "What you do for R&R is your business, not mine."

So why does she still feel like she had done something wrong?

Her father reminded her she was late to her mother's funeral.

"What are //you// doing over here?" Ari asks.

Her father says the funeral was not quorate. No one else had come. He'd be all alone.

"You've always said you were okay with that."

Her father says that is true.

"But it's not, is it? Especially since Alex enlisted. You don't have anyone anymore. You were bad at making friends, too."

Her father says that is true as well, but it is irrelevant.

"What if we both die? Then you'll be all alone!"

Her father asks if she's any better off.

"I wasn't any better at it than you were."

Her father says she's always reminded her of him.

"Why do you say that like it's a bad thing?" Ari feels tears sting her eyes.

Her father looks away from her into the red-hued dusk and the inflamed water splashing against the sand.

//"How'd you turn out like this?"//

"I don't know," Ari hears herself say, "Just don't expect any grandchildren from me."

Her father laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs. Ari doesn't like the sound.

The dog behind her barks, and she turns to see him lay on his side, somehow gazing into her with his patched-up missing eye. "Dad. There's this dog. He's dumb as nails, he hasn't been housetrained, and I'm pretty sure he's got fleas. Can I keep him?"

Her father frowns, asks her why she wants to.

"He's got nowhere else to go."

Her father suggests he raised her better than to be someone's caretaker.

"Maybe playing house with a homeless dog is fun for me, okay?"

Her father begrudgingly agrees and suggests maybe the dog can keep her company at the funeral.

"Let's not talk crazy here, dad."

Her dad also warns her that if the dog goes rabid, she'll have to put him down.

"I can handle my business, dad. Like I'd let you down."

Her father asks why what he thinks matters at all.

"Because you're the only friend I got."

----

It's a brisk walk from the shore back home for the funeral. At the last intersection before the address for the burial, she takes a left turn instead and she's back at the bar. She lets herself in—as before, the bar was deserted. Her footsteps were very loud, squeaking sounds like a trampoline greeting her every step.

She only made out the face of the bartender when she reached the stools. She smiled. It wasn't Petra.

"Hi, Mom."

Her mom asks her what she's doing here when she's supposed to be in Balochistan.

"Why else do I like lucid dreaming? I stick around long enough to see you again."

Her mom points out that's what memories are for.

"I don't remember faces very well. I don't remember yours."

Her mom suggests she may just be a weirdo.

"Don't talk like that. You never talked like that."

Her mom suggests she felt like that.

"I know you do."

Her mom reminds her that she's dead.

"I know."

Her mom asks her what's wrong with her.

"I don't know."

Her mom asks her if she can see her arm for a moment. The dog is on the stool next to Ari, lapping from a glass of Scotch again. Ari lays her arm on the table.

Her mom grabs her arm, scans it quizzically, then flips it around, grabs a knife, and plunges it into Ari's wrist.

Ari doesn't feel anything. "Mama...why?"

Her mom doesn't respond, instead dragging the blade along the vertical of her wrist. What bursts out of the wound is straw, lots of straw.

"I see."

Her mom says it's not her fault she was made like this.

"You two tried your best."

Her mom agrees but asserts it's still her dad's fault.

"What does Dad have to do with any of this?"

//"The only pure thing in his fucking life is carrying his disease,"// her mom says. She says that Ari's soul is as damaged as he was.

"He was kind of sad about how I turned out, huh."

Her mom shakes her head. She says //she// was sad about how Ari turned out. Her father is proud. Proud that she's the same husk as he was.

"Stop it. You were never this mean."

Her mom says she did try her best, and her best was enough, wasn't it?

Ari looks at her mangled arm, bleeding straw. "How do I fix it?"

Her mom says she can't fix it.

"So then what?"

Her mom invites her to watch, then pulls out a pillow case, then stuffs the straw from Ari's arm into the pillow-case. There's a surprising amount of straw, and the pillow becomes quite plump. She throws the pillow on the ground.

The dog jumps down, rests his head on the pillow, and sleeps.

"It's gratifying, I suppose." Ari shivers. "I'm cold."

Her mom says she can fix that. Ari hears the loud snapping sound, the scent of phosphate, and then her mom's hand putting something in her straw. The fire ignites her arm instantly, and the whole bar is aglow, she feels a searing pain in her thigh

Like melting-point metal teeth are sinking into the wound,

Her screams from innumerable occasions alone in basements

Bellow out of her mouth,

And then she feels cold water put it all out.

It is a curtain of rain smashing through the roof. The water gathers around her feet, her waist, it's cold, it's filling her mouth and her nose.

And she feels good again.

----

+ Scene 4: Help me to breathe

Ari wakes up and feels wet.

Her eyes flutter open as trickles of warm water cascade down her brow. The way they drip from her lashes reminds her of the beach, the way the drops caress the bags under her eyes and roll into her mouth...something more humbling.

In front of her, behind the barstand, frowning, is Farhan, letting water drip from his palm onto her forehead. He's wearing a t-shirt. A towel is thrown over his shoulder in a pantomime of a bartender at a greasy dive. He's smiling apologetically.

"What are you doing?" She smacks Farhan's hand out of her face.

"It's something we do at ORIA when we're waking up somebody who's seen combat and might be armed. Best way of avoiding flashbacks."

"Cute." Ari yawns, and then her senses catch up with her and she recalls the way they'd parted. "Wait a second, did you stalk me?"

"Naturally." Ari opens her mouth to shout at him and he quickly corrects himself. "I //shadowed// you."

"That's a distinction without a difference!"

"No, shadowing is solicited by the principal."

"I didn't solicit anything!"

"The door."

"The what?"

"You left the door five inches open when you were running away," Farhan says, turning away from Ari to gather some things from the liquor cabinet, "It's a cut and dry duress code, don't you remember?"

"Not only no, Farhan," Ari lets her hands fall to the bar surface with a smack, "But hell no."

"Am I lying about the duress code part?"

"I mean, not exactly."

"Not exactly, or just not lying?"

"Whatever. What about my body language or voice tone suggested I wanted you to shadow me? We're not in the battlefield. Or does ORIA not do social cues?"

"They don't, funnily enough," Farhan finishes wiping a glass and then fills it with water, reaching into a nearby fridge and dropping ice into the water. He slides the glass of water in front of her. "Please drink that."

"You better check it for crumbs or anything, Farhan, because if I taste anything that's not water I'm shooting you before it kicks in."

Farhan winks and downs fully half the glass, sliding it back across the table so it almost falls off, but doesn't. "Satisfied?"

She remembers him back on the bed. "No." She drinks the water, and then realizes how thirsty she has been and finishes it.

"Do you believe me that I genuinely thought you needed a detail? You were jogging at four in the morning!"

She scrunches up her mouth in a look of pouty incredulity. "Whatever." She is mad at herself. Why //did// she jog out of her own apartment and leave a total stranger there instead of kicking him out? Why would she fail to shut the door on her way out?

//Wait a minute, why would it matter how much I closed the door? The intruder is in the damn apartment to begin with!//

Ari covers her cheeks and then rubs her eyes.

//Just what was I thinking? What am I thinking?//

Instead of vocalizing any of that, Ari points to the liquor cabinet. "Aren't you going to offer me a drink?"

//Why does all this feel like a pleasant surprise?//

She tries imagining waking up in the bar alone: //Boring.//

She decides she is glad he's here.

"Certainly." Before she can say a thing, Farhan gets to work throwing together a drink. His deft hand flies across the ingredients— simple syrup, rose water, orange water, gin— pouring them together as the other hand squeezes lemons and lime. His metal index finger scrapes the mixer as he wildly shakes the ice and melange. An egg cracks, and its yolk follows heavy cream into the mixture. The shaking resumes with gusto. Farhan lets the mixer fly in the air, catching it at the end of its gleeful parabola. Not a moment after it lands, he strains the mix into an ornate oblong cup.

The show gives Ari a pleasant light feeling. Words are hard, she can barely get out a 'thank you'. Her skin feels like a continuum between warmth and a creeping ticklishness.

And then she realizes why this drink looks familiar. She looks at him. "Where's this come from?"

"It's your favorite drink."

"It is not my..." Ari drifts off as she tries to sort out her thoughts on the issue. "It's...okay, wait-" She waves her hands in front of her face like she is fending Farhan off. "It's-it's not my favorite drink, alright? //Fuck,// I'm tired." She rubs her eyes again, mostly to avoid further eye-contact with Farhan.

"You ordered it three times in a row last night."

Something loosens her tongue, and it isn't liquor. "Gods dammit, alright, it's not my favorite drink, it's my ex's!"

"Uh huh," She pokes through her fingers to see Farhan's face remain impassive, but for a raised eyebrow. "Okay, it wasn't her favorite drink, either. She just liked making it for me. I like watching people make drinks. That's a fun routine. The sounds, the flurry of movement, the liquid—"

"Is that what's going on with the gun-stuff earlier? ASMR and a tactile thing?"

"Yeah. She'd make the drink for me because I liked watching her work."

"Was that the only reason she'd make the drink?"

"No, no, she wanted to get me drunk."

"To hook up?"

"Hook up? Christ, no." Ari laughs, "No, she'd insist on doing it sober, which was fine by me."

"So why the drinks?" Farhan asks, raised eyebrow replaced by genuine confusion.

"She didn't get me drunk to hook up. She was getting me drunk 'cause she wanted me to tear shit up. I think she wanted to recruit me for a heist." //She kept trying to open me up. She kept telling me I was repressed. She kept telling me I was a coiled spring. She always thought I was deadpanning. The same as everyone else. I can't simply be Ari. I have to be an enigma. There's no way I'm just weird.// She wants to say any of what she is thinking out loud, but she can't.

"A heist..." Farhan wrinkles his nose, "Good god, Ari, so you did date a criminal."

"She wasn't a criminal." Ari looks at her hands. She really is tired. "She //did// get sacked from the Foundation for selling anomaly access for cash she'd donate to charities for fun, and she //did// almost certainly moonlight by robbing GOIs for profit." Ari takes a sip of the drink.

//Tastes just like 2023.//

"//Mashallah//, so what is she, some kind of terrorist-for-hire? "

Ari shakes her head, "No, an edgerunner."

"The hell is an edgerunner?"

"Mercenaries get paid to fight in armies. Tactical by nature. Edgerunners get paid for strategic stuff. Stuff you would normally do with drone strikes or B-52s. Raising hell. Bombing. Smashing. Grabbing. GOI mass casualty events. Mayhem with a purpose. They get paid with their own loot and backdoor intel. They don't get orders—written ones, anyway. Most of the time, there's an unaffiliated fixer who deals with them. You point at the target, give them your wishlist, pull the pin, and try not to get hit by the shrapnel."

Farhan whistles. "You really know how to pick them, eh?"

"I didn't freaking know she was one! You're going to tell me you didn't screw anybody on the naughty list?"

Farhan laughs, but she notices he wipes his mouth with his hand, something her dad does whenever she asks him about his military service in Mogadishu. "Yeah, but I don't work for the //Foundation!// How'd you even get away with that?"

//Who said I did?//

Ari changes the subject. "Where'd you learn how to make this drink, anyways?"

It is Farhan's turn to look sheepish. "About fifteen minutes after we met."

"Huh?"

"I...I like knowing how to make the drinks of women I think I'm going to see again." He looks at the glass.

"'Think you're going to see again'-Farhan, when would you have had the time to learn this?"

"I'm a quick study."

"A Muslim born mixologist?"

"Fine." Farhan raises his hands in the air in mock surrender, "You got me. I memorized the directions on my phone when I was in the bathroom shortly before we went to your room."

"Aha! I knew you were up to no good."

"Then why didn't you do anything about it?"

"Psh," Ari dismissively flutters her hand at him, "You seemed harmless." //Certainly compared to when you're asleep.// She takes a breath, and then says something that's been on her mind all night: "And now, you seem sad." He reaches for her glass, and she pulls it away from him. "You're sad."

"I'm not sad."

"You seem sad right now."

"I can't be sad." Ari takes a longer drink.

"You look so sad. That's why I always feel like making you a drink."

"No," She chuckles. "I've got //no// problems. None. I'm problem free."

"Oh yeah? How long have you been in the MTF?"

"Four years. Why?"

"Ari. //You've// got problems."

Ari bursts out laughing. It is a surprisingly high-pitched peal of laughter that goes on for thirty seconds longer than her lungs can comfortably bear, and then she snorts.

She slaps her hands on her mouth. "Gods dammit." She looks at Farhan. "What?"

Farhan stares at her, but she doesn't see ridicule in his eyes. The muscles on his face are relaxed. His eyes are hooded and calm. His breathing looks quietly rushed.

He's smiling. He's happy.

She realizes she has never //really// seen him smile before, any more than he has ever seen her laugh. Whatever his mouth did before, that wasn't as real as what's on his face now. Where does this leave them?

"Uh..." Ari swallows, "Problems."

//Right, this schmuck trying to tell me he's fine. Why don't I just call him out? Would he believe me? Why do I care?//

"You were pretty quick to try to tell me I had 'daddy-issues.' Sexist ass." She pushes the glass towards Farhan. "Projection, much?"

"Oh me?" He grins. "Oh, I've got daddy issues."

"Excuse me?"

Farhan shrugged. "He was a Moradi, and Moradi men don't make good partners. He'd gamble his salary on his way home. Mom had to walk him home on payday.”

//You're a Moradi, though.// "Like she didn't have enough going on." //That supposed to be a warning?//

"Well, he told me that since he had a job, it was her job to clean up after him. He had a way of saying it where I was sure he was joking."

"He sounds like a bastard."

"The joke was he wouldn't let her work. Said it would make her look bad." The way Farhan is laughing is more like he's exhaling a grunt. //How often is this man pretending to laugh?//

"What was his problem?"

Farhan frowns, “In retrospect, I don't think he was up to the task of being an adult. He got along much better with me than my mother, and she was too worn down putting out his fires to fight for my attention. I thought she was an asshole. She thought I was on his team. And I was. I thought my dad was great." Farhan closes his eyes and shakes his head. "He was a shit husband. He was a shit for her. I haven't met a friend like him."

Ari clears her throat. "Okay."

"Okay?"

She shrugs. "Why are you telling me all this?" //This is why I hate having friends. You can't just exist. You have to throw the right feelings at people.// Ari wrinkles her nose. //Fuck, are we friends?//

"We're just talking here. What's wrong now?"

"You telling me this much about yourself. It sounds unbelievable. Or insulting." She opens her eyes and locks her gaze with his. "Either you're lying to me to play me, or you're confessing to someone you know can't possibly use the information."

"//Ey Khoda!// [[footnote]] Farsi: Oh God! [[/footnote]] You're a paranoid woman."

"It's not paranoia if it's a reproducible pattern."

"There's a third option." Farhan moves his hand closer to Ari's, and Ari pulls hers back under the counter and lets it rest on her concealed needle full of neurotoxin in her pocket. "And what's that?"

"Maybe I was hoping you'd tell me something about yourself in return! Ya Allah, does everything have to be spelled out like this?"

"Yes!" Ari tightens her fingers on the weapon. Then she wavers. “Wait-//you// want to know something about me. As in, like, about //me//."

"Yeah."

“This is a psy-op."

"Ari, you field-strip guns for fun. I don't think there's a shrink in the world who could figure you out."

"Why do you sound so excited by that?"

"I don't know!" Farhan sounds genuinely confused. To her satisfaction, he also has trouble maintaining eye-contact with her, which is what she does when she's stressed too. All that aside, he was right. This couldn't be a honey-pot. She is a non-com officer in the MTF. Her security clearance is good for mission briefings and a discount at the in-house Shwarma restaurant. There were //janitors// worth more for their intel than her right now.

She lets go of the weapon. She can't play his game. She has no tragedies or traumas in her life. Her father was there for her growing up. Her Mom was considerate enough to wait until after Ari was old enough to drink to die.

"I was there when my dad fell off the wagon," she says. She bites her tongue. Hard.

"Fell off the wagon?" Farhan looks at her glass. "So he was an alcoholic?"

"Recovering all my life. Never touched a drop before mom died."

"Did //you// take painkillers?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because he didn't.-Gimme that-," she takes a deep gulp of her—his—their drink.

“How’d you tell him you were leaving the Rangers to join the MTF?”

"I may have implied that Delta Force poached me shortly after I got my tab."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"It didn't to him either, but he said he didn't care and he trusted me."

"You just lied to him, though."

"I think his exact words were, 'if you're doing it, it has to be done'."

"That's sweet of him."

"He did say drinks were on me though. Anyways, the big thing is, he wanted to grab a drink with me before I went off to ‘selection’. Never drank with me before. I think he thought me being there would keep him from going overboard. And it did, that night. He drank just enough to talk more than I'd ever heard him talk."

"What did you two talk about?" Farhan's voice dims to a whisper. Ari senses he is trying to draw her into discussing more. She doesn't mind. Embarrassing as it is, she can't think of any opsec concerns.

"Ninety-nine percent of it was him talking shit about the Army because of course."

"Why would he talk shit about the Army? Isn't that a different branch of the same military?"

"On the battlefield, sure. Off it, they're like divorced parents with joint custody. You should hear my dad sound off about it."

"So you're a second generation soldier."

"Yup."

"Why?"

"Funnily enough, he asked me the same thing."

"Oh yeah?"

"His voice was shaking," Ari does not know why that detail sticks out to her as much as it does. "Just asked me, the first time he ever did, 'Why'd you follow me?'"

She takes another drink. She notices a small white fluff on Farhan's shoulder and plucks it off. A pause shoves its way between them yet again until Farhan clears his throat. "You're not going to leave me hanging there, are you?"

"What's there to say? I told him I felt like it. He asked me why, I said it made sense. He asked me why did it make sense, and I said it's what he did, and it sounded like I'd be good at it. Then he stared at me for a while. It looked like he realized something."

She notices something shift about Farhan's expression. The knitted brow, the way his blinking slows, the frown. It almost seems like concern. She is annoyed by it. Her eyes begin to itch and she rubs them irritably. Breathing gets heavier.

Ari pushes past it. "He was...he said, 'I'm sorry.' I asked why, he said he wasn't sure he wanted this for me. By the way, this is where his drinking really picked up. I was tipsy myself, which is why I think I asked him a really stupid question. 'Did I do something wrong?' He said no, he was proud of me, which I knew. He said he was sorry he didn't show me how to be happy."

"Did you agree?" Farhan's hand slides over hers. For some reason, she likes the feeling enough not to yank it away. //We've done a lot more than that, after all.//

"Didn't know what to say, so I said the first thing that came to mind. I said, 'You did your best, I know you did. Just don't expect any grandchild on my end.' Then he laughed. Like, if you know my dad, he doesn't really laugh, and he just burst out laughing. It sounds like a bark. I didn't like it. Still don't like to think about it."

"What happened then?"

"We drank in silence."

Ari takes another sip, feels something in her wants to talk more, likely to fill the silence. "It didn't entirely come out of nowhere."

"You mean you picked up on it?"

"No, I didn't have to. Look, my parents were good to me, but they had trouble getting along. Most of the time, I could tell they were arguing but they kept their voices down. The one time they didn't was when I told them I was joining the Army. They didn't look happy right off the bat. I thought dad was pissed at me for not following him into the marines."

"It wasn't that, was it?"

"I heard them in their car in the garage, arguing. Mom isn't home very often, I was looking for her to take her out to lunch. I heard her voice, listened at the garage. I heard just a few things and I decided I didn't want to hear anymore."

"What'd you hear?"

"She said he killed me. She said he was cold and angry all the same and it infected me. The thing I really-oh for //fuck's sake// what keeps getting in my freaking eye?" She slams the table and points to a box of brown paper-towels by the liquor cabinet. Farhan obliges her and she rubs the rough textured paper over her eyes and cheeks. "She said 'She's the only pure thing left in your fucking world, and she has your disease.' I was like, 'way above my paygrade,' and bounced. Later that afternoon I tried my first blunt. Threw up. I don't really like getting high these days."

"Neither do I."

"Not much a fan of drinking either."

"Neither am I." Farhan holds her hand tighter, and Ari feels like it helps somehow and closes her eyes. "What disease were they talking about?"

Ari thinks back to Farhan, his screaming, back to those nights at home, huddled behind a locked door, hearing her dad scream, sometimes thrash at night, sometimes making out names of dead men, sometimes it is just babbling. The way she has to avoid making loud noises around him or else he'd freeze or shout at her only to apologize immediately afterwards. Him telling his wife he didn't need therapy, that he could handle 'it'. The nights he chose not to sleep at all, where she'd go to the kitchen for a midnight snack or a glass of water, and find him sitting on his armchair staring out the window onto the moonlit cul-de-sac, and she'd sometimes sit there with him, and at some point he'd stop telling her to go back to sleep.

And then the reasons why kids thought she was weird, where she acted just like he did. Quiet, taciturn, watching, playing just a little too hard in physical activities, always the last to laugh at a joke she didn't realize was supposed to be funny. How she would find out to her shock that her friends were not really friends but found her a curiosity more than anything else.

It is belatedly she realizes her mouth is moving and these thoughts are pouring through it, and she is rambling in circles as she returns to her dad's screaming. "Night terrors. They were night terrors." She looks at Farhan. The sense-echo of his rough hands on her arms burns in her brain, the plastic look in his eyes when he was inside of her. "Do you know what I mean?"

"What's that?" He has been listening, but he isn't expecting to participate, clearly.

Ari's hand reverses the grip he has on hers, then traps it beneath her palm.

"Do you have night terrors, Farhan?"

Farhan stops. He still breathes, he still takes a drink from Ari's glass, his eyes still move, but she can tell he freezes as something starts to gnaw and claw at itself in his head. She sees his shoulders rise and fall driven by harsher breathing. She sees his remaining eye swivel back and forth. No 'uhs', no 'ums'. Instead she stares at him, relaxed, without judgment, sees the cogs in his head turn. Is he trying to come up with a lie? Is he trying to bring himself to confess? Or does he recognize what she really means?

His hand squeezes hers. It is painful, and likely unconscious, but all she does is tilt her head. It is unusual to see someone just stop like this, but not to withdraw. She feels like she is watching someone try to climb uphill a sharp slope. She feels like he will fall.

The eyepatch over his left eye. The fake skin on his back. His screaming. His soulful glances when he thought no one was looking. The way he likes to watch her laugh. The smirk of triumph whenever she smiles. The way he interprets a dangling door as a call for help. She straight up ditched him earlier in her apartment, but he doesn't recoil from the emotional rough-housing. The level of immaturity she has shown this night alone is humiliating, but like a loyal puppy he trots along in her wake, the way she lets herself get towed along by the slipstream of his damage like debris amidst tidal waves.

He acts like someone would if they cared.

//He's a weirdo.//

He stammers a lifeless and blatantly unconvincing, "No."

//He knows I know. He lies to me because if he says yes he'd talk about where he got his from and he would never stop.//

Somehow, she just knows in that moment if she presses him //once// he'll break.

//Just like me.//

She doesn't think that phrase often //at all//. She can count it on her hand. She can count it on a few fingers.

"Uh-huh." She grabs the glass, half-full, and tips it into her mouth. One, two, three—the drink disappears in her mouth. Her eyes tickle in a more familiar way. The glass hits the table. She exhales with a hiss. "Dead." She looks at where she thinks she sees a clock. She can't make out the time. "It's late."

"Yeah, I know."

"I've got..." her hazy, sleepy brain grasps at slippery words, "morning things in, like, four hours."

"Yeah, early flight to...someplace."

"It was nice...hanging out, Farhan."

"Yeah, same."

"Where are you...staying...?"

"Got a hotel room. I'm set."

"Sure you are, Farhan."

"You alright walking back to your place by yourself?"

"We //just// deployed in a crazy kill-or-capture mission thirty-six hours ago, and you're acting like I've never seen a day of combat in my life."

"I don't usually spend this much time with a..."

"Fellow operator?"

"Spook, not since I was in ORIA."

The whistle of a door's opening.

"Oh, you're a gentleman now?"

"Sometimes."

A hiss as the door shuts. The cool skin-tickling of moon-cooled desert air.

"Ari, has anyone ever told you you're funny?"

"You, like, five times tonight."

"I don't mean that like a bad way."

"I can't think of how it might be good."

"I think the better word is you're //fun//. You always surprise me."

"'I'm not like other girls,' is that it?"

"You're not like other //people//. I feel like there's no lying in you."

"Wish I could say the same about you, Farhan."

"Say, I've been curious about something, I think I noticed something on your leg..."

"Changing the subject, eh?"

"Yeah, but I'm genuinely curious."

"Ha, alright. Gimme a hand. Like, palm up, need you to catch my foot."

"How's this?"

"Farhan, how stiff do you think I am? Like a foot higher than that! Okay, thanks!"

She lifts her foot in the air and lets it rest on Farhan's hand. She sees his eyes trace the taut sinews and curves of her calf and thighs. She smirks, then pulls back tight fabric of her shorts up a few inches so he can see the Texas-shaped patch of membrane on her inner thigh.

"Ok, you see that?"

"Sure."

"Dad had chronic pain, right? I didn't know what that was like, not until—" She lifts her leg and peels back her shorts to show him the scar on her inner thigh, “—I got this from a hazmat munition from a SORAYA Commando." Ari knows her train of thought is derailing itself, but it seems Farhan is following her just fine.

"Holy shit, that must have been a //bitch//." His eyes widen. "That's a pretty sensitive spot, too."

"Wouldn't you know. I knew my dad dealt with chronic pain from his tour of duty. I don't know how he did it all those years without painkillers or falling off the wagon. Like, all those years of quietly putting up with it. Still don't know how to tell him..."

"Damn, Ari, I don't know whether to say that's badass or stupid."

"Uh huh." A pause. "Okay, lift it by another bit..." Farhan obliges, "Okay, hold it for thirty seconds."

"Why?"

"I need a stretch. Just pause there."

"I got better things to do with my time."

"And half are going to be you thinking about my legs, now shut up." Another pause. She lifts her foot and lets her leg drift to the ground, a perfect display of control.

"You're so vain, Ari."

"Competitive, more like."

"Hey, Ari."

"What?"

"About the night terror thing. Uh, maybe I'm //not// so sure about the..."

"Don't worry about it, Farhan."

"No, look, it's just I don't remember the last time I've spent the night with someone, it's not like I record myself after all—"

"Farhan, really."

"Ari."

"//Farhan//. It's okay. Don't push it. It isn't like that."

"You're sure? Oh, what, are you serious?" Ari skips past him and holds the next door for him.

"Age before brains, dude."

"Vain and petty. Is this like a glow-in-the-dark setting for you?"

"What, you're gonna tell me I'm secretly some kinda mega-bitch?"

"You're not secretly anything, Ari. You're you. You're always you."

"That a problem?"

"That's the fun part."

She stops. Clears her throat.

"Ari? Ari, where'd you go?"

"Gimme a second."

"Are you //blushing//?"

"Screw you." The squeal of another door.

"Are you seriously taking the stairs? I thought you were tired!"

"You can take the elevator if you want."

"Race you."

"That's ten flights."

"Ready, set,—"

There is a rush and—

"Dammit, Ari, how do you keep doing that?"

"Skipping stairs, bitch. What's the matter? Need a second to catch your breath?"

"I got the door this time, Ari."

"Fine, whatever."

There is a mumble.

"What was that?"

"I said I may have thrown that one to look at your ass."

"I can look at your assets just fine from the front, bro."

"Thoughts?"

"You go too hard on proteins and lift strength. I can tell you need work on your explosiveness, and don't get me started on your quads. Your turn. Got any feedback for me?"

"Do you always go jogging without a sports bra?"

"I'm wearing one!"

"I couldn't tell, Ari."

"Okay, Farhan. Guess your mouth works just fine when you're not..." She rummages through her pockets. "Where'd I put my keycard. Did I seriously leave it in the—"

"Here."

"See, told you that wasn't a duress code. I meant to leave the door open."

"Whatever."

They file inside the living room and Farhan closes the door behind them and throws the keycard on the counter. Ari slumps onto her chair at the table, her Beretta 92SF in one piece. "Did you seriously assemble my gun without permission?"

"Haven't seen that for a while. Didn't it get phased out in the early 2000s?"

"Yeah it did. That's my dad's."

"Family heirloom."

"Yup."

There is a pause.

"Wait a second," Ari rubs her eyes and looks around the apartment. "How'd we get here?"

Farhan looks equally baffled. "You said it was late, and then you kept walking."

"Huh. I thought //you// said it was late, I figured I'd walk with you to wherever you were—"

"So we were..."

Ari crosses her arms. "Did you //really// have a hotel room?"

"No, honestly I wasn't planning on sleeping tonight either."

Ari frowns. "I'm sleeping with a bum?"

"You're sleeping with an insomniac." He corrects his grammar. "//Were// sleeping with an insomniac."

"Looked pretty asleep to me back there."

"Yeah, how about that?"

Another pause. Then Farhan whispers. "What now?"

[[include component:image-block name=https://i.imgur.com/N7RHEaO.jpeg|caption="A nice view from inside the downward spiral."|width=400px]]

Ari shrugs, then walks over to her liquor stash, wrenches off the cap and throws it on the countertop. She tips the bottle into her mouth and lets a shot glass worth of liquor fall into her mouth, then flips it the rest of the way and lets the drink pour over her head, soaking her hair, flowing down her skin, splashing her shirt. Cool rivulets of cheap spirits swirl down her belly and legs. Farhan's mouth hangs open in shock. The bottle makes a loud clanging sound as it tumbles into the sink.

Dripping with scotch and giddiness, Ari grabs Farhan by the back of the neck and forces her lips onto his and he replies with gusto, tongues dancing in the few moments their dripping mouths part for breath before they go right back at it. Ari's leg is wrapped around Farhan's thigh and she feels like he's holding back for some reason, as though in disbelief this is happening despite everything. He pulls her head away from his with a fistful of her hair in his hands. His eyes look lost.

She smiles, unable to hide her teeth. "Tell me I'm funny again."

He sweeps her off her feet and carries her to the bed, but this time, when he is just inches from the bed and about to let go, she grabs his arm, throws her legs over his shoulder and locks it—as expected, the threat to his arm catches him by surprise and she drags him to the mattress in a breathless drop, splashing together. It doesn't matter if he can lift two hundred pounds or three, his arm is hers.

"Hey. I've got a parameter from here on out." Her voice is business-like, professional, how she sounds when in the field.

"//Ouch//, ya Allah, what the hell—"

"Shut up, you big baby. Moving forward, any time you're inside of me, you're looking at me. If a jarhead out in the field wants to be an asshole, that's their business, but I'm not taking disrespect in bed. You got that?"

"Uh, what do you—" She grits her teeth and applies a newtonian dollop of force and he growls, "Okay, okay! Sheesh. A simple talk would suffice—"

"Would it?" She hums quizzically, "Would it really? Smartass like you?"

Farhan sighs. "It would now. It does now."

"Uh huh. Another thing. If at any point you don't feel like doing it, you can stop. I don't want you going on auto-pilot."

"F-fuck! Fine!"

"Alright?" //I am being a bit of a hypocrite, considering tonight is the first time I'd thrown a fit like that.// She frowns. //He really does bring out the weird in me.// "//Alright?//"

Farhan sighs. "Alright."

She weakens her grip on one leg from around his arm, and he is pulling her legs and then she feels her shorts and underwear peel away from her thighs, legs, and then her feet. Then his lips replace the shorts and make their way up her thighs. She feels a chill from the air and what he's doing to her clit.

And after a few minutes she can tell he's not getting her off this way. Maybe Farhan was just bad at going down on women. She fakes an orgasm—not that it would have worked on Petra, but Petra had a perspective Farhan didn't—and then he's back on top of her.

They kiss, Ari not minding the taste of herself on him. Somehow, the frenzy in the way his lips search for hers, the way their tongues dance and their mouths fit together, is sexy as hell.

"The hell are you looking at?" Ari asks. Farhan's hands are on either side of Ari's head, and he kisses her again, and she bites his lip as he slides inside of her. She really, //really// tries to choke the sound, trying to squeeze its way out of her by burying her mouth and tongue in his, but it is from way too deep in her throat, and she hears him chuckle. His hands slide under her shirt, and she lets his fingers crawl their way up his belly for a moment before she firmly, if shakily, pulls his hands back out of her shirt—and then they are immediately on her chest anyways. "Fuck."

Even without the nerve endings there, something about it all still makes her see pink. She really wants to feel the hair on those immaculately shaped pecs and abdominals tear at her bare skin. She's really tempted to let him have her shirt already, but that was never going to happen.

//I'm a tactile person.// She never knew that about herself before. //He's nothing if not instructive.//

He breaks off their kiss, and their mouths are bridged by saliva. He looks at her like her face has changed. She wonders what her mouth and eyes are doing to make him look like that. Her cheeks feel tight in a good way. Her hands slide over her mouth, nose, eyes. "Stop staring, you creep." She feels him move inside her, caged quite comfortably by his thick arms to the left and right of her head.

"Give me something better to do." He says.

One after the other, she pulls one hand and then the other and lets them fall around her throat. "Shut up and fuck me, you—" She feels the breath driven from her mouth and his hands tighten around her neck and his hips start moving, she feels him slick between her thighs as her legs tighten around his waist and feels self-conscious that she hasn't showered. There is a mix of satisfaction and a je ne sais quoi as she sees his eyes firmly fixed on her thighs, and the friction and anger of his thrusts inside her send her cresting closer and closer to a better and better high and—

She taps him on his hands. He immediately slackens his grip and he starts to slow down—"Don't you dare stop—" his pace resumes and he tilts his head to one side, "Two. Uh. Two things. One, you're tested, right?"

"Yeah." His eyes narrow. A question that only just occurred to him as well. "And you...how's your um...are you on the..."

"What?" Ari laughs. "Please, I had that taken care of the same day I signed on with the Foundation. You?"

He looks away from her. His remaining eye closes. "Yeah, it's...it's handled on my end, too."

//It wasn't up to him, was it?// Ari looks at the patch on his left eye, remembers his flayed back, the systematic web of scars all over his body, the way they flow into hers. She is no detective, but for a moment, she feels like they are fucking amidst the still smoldering debris of whatever crash-landing Farhan's life has made, the darkness in his expression, him threatening to slip back into the crater.

She yanks his face towards hers and they're a tangle mouths, breath, kisses, the taste and scent of scotch on her body blending with the cologne and sweat on his and they're both dripping and slick with each other. She lets her tongue and lips trace his jaw, her cheek graze his stubble. A thought emerges in the haze, and she chokes it out in between gasps.

"Safeword. Like. Might as well." Her lips breathe next to his ear.

"What?"

"We need a safe word."

"What. What did you have in mind?"

"Farhan, I know you didn't. Didn't just. I'm not doing creative thinking. Off the clock. //You//."

Farhan whispers something in Farsi in her ear.

"That had better be unique to me."

"I've never had. A safeword. Before now."

"You fuck nasty, dude. How?"

"Never had the same partner. That long."

"Should have a safeword."

"How about you?"

"Yeah, once."

"What was yours?"

Ari thinks for a moment. "Tides."

"What? Why?"

"Because the bitch always said I'm like the tides!"

"Why?"

Ari groaned. "Just flip me over, dude—OOMPH—" Her face is back into the pillow, and she feels empty again for barely a second before his dick is inside of her again, and he pounds into her from behind.

"If I catch you looking at the wall again—woah—" she feels Farhan's nails scratch her scalp, and he grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks her on her hands and knees, pulling her face towards his. Her eyes meet his—she's his whole world now—

"Ow!" She feels her butt sting as his hand collides with it. "Damn! What the hell?"

Farhan tsktsks. "You were lying about getting off earlier."

//Shit.// She scrunches her mouth, chagrinned. //That's a fair cop.// "Yeah, so?"

"I thought we weren't lying to each other!"

"When did I say that? Ow!" That one fills the room.

"That's the vibe. Talking about wanting to know how I feel, all the confessionals, your dad—"

"Dude. I like you. But that's not. What this is."

"Don't fake orgasm with me—wait, what was that you said?"

"Screw you. //OW!//"

"You like me?"

"Uh."

"Gonna punk out right now? You afraid? What did you say?"

"Fuck yourself," she snarls, "I like you!"

"What's that?"

"I like you." He spanks her again. Now, she can't stop saying it. "I like you. I like you. I—"

And suddenly, she flows

and her

legs and arms

they flow too

into the mattress, she feels herself pool like a twitching puddle. Controlled breathing. //Well that's new.//

//Fuck.//

She feels empty. The mattress shudders slightly as Farhan falls on his back.

"Me, too." He grunts.

"Did I tell you to stop?" Ari grumbles.

"Giving you a chance to recharge."

"Did I tell you to stop?"

"I'm not fucking a ragdoll."

"I'm not a ragdoll."

"Every nerve ending of yours is pretty damn sensitive right about now. Lots of women need the break."

"Lots of women also don't tend to get off without doing anything with their clit, and you clearly got around doing fuck all with that—"

She turns around and gets her first clear look at his full length.

Something doesn't math.

"You look confused." Farhan chuckles.

"You aren't that big." Ari mutters.

"Sure, whatever."

"No, seriously, what's that," she points. "That's gotta be not much more than six inches! How'd you make me come?"

"I've never had anyone ask me that before."

"Now I know I'm not the only woman's ever faked with you." //Where did this come from? Why do I want to do it again?// "Alright."

"Alright?" Farhan says, "What—", and Ari is under it, crawling on top of him, letting herself fall //on top of him//. "What?"

"Let's do this like it's real." At that point, Ari doesn't even know what she is saying.

"Like what?"

"Like it's real." When he's inside of her again, she feels electric, full of heat, just way too hot, and she loves the way his skin looks sheened with their shared sweat and she loves the way he's looking at her chest like he's trying to undress her with his eyes and something in her takes over and she rips her shirt off and throws it on the floor. //Uh, wait.//

Her heart is in her throat thinking about what he's looking at now—the patchwork of scars over her abdomen, the patches of artificial membrane over her belly, and—the 'best' part—the ivory-colored mockup where her left breast should be, neatly highlighted by the the shoulder-to-belly scar bifurcating her body.

It's just been forty-seven minutes, but she feels like she's known Farhan forever. She searches for alarm, fear, detachment, disgust, anger—she finds none of those. It's...she smiles—it's a look Petra reserved for her and only her, one that Ari never could conjure the words to describe. He slowly lifts a hand towards her fake breast and with a look, asks her permission.

She nods, and Farhan's fingers reach up to trace the path of her surgical scar tissue. They tremble in a way that makes Ari feel correct in a way she rarely ever does.

"You're beautiful." And by now, she knows he means it.

Time gets slippery. It could be ten minutes or fifteen; it doesn't matter. She does not stop riding him, and she doesn't break eye contact with him. She looks down at him, and he looks at her, and she stops herself from saying a lot of stupid, boring things about a stupid boring future they'd both be too dead before long to enjoy together. She bucks, he touches her, they moan. Farhan says a //lot// of things in Farsi Ari should be more worried about but she's vibing too much to care.

Closer and closer—she kisses him with more passion and happiness than she knows she has, and she feels him shiver under her touch.

He comes, and then she does.

The rattle of the lamp from her riding him rings in her ears. She feels like her nerves have melded with the bedsprings.

Like a bubbling brook stream over jutting rocks, Ari falls, crumpling beside Farhan in the narrow negative space left on her small bed.

The hair on Farhan's chin looks very interesting to her. The look on his face, the shock of what she did to him, is very interesting, and she lets her fingers play with his short-cropped beard.

Whatever secret she's discovered about herself, it seems like he has arrived at the same epiphany.

"Fuck," she says, to hear his voice as much as anything else.

"Fuck." And he obliges her.

She inches away from him so her skin can take a break from his.

[[include component:image-block name=https://i.imgur.com/ZUE7Clm.png|caption="Our paperwork said we were far from home but it doesn't feel that way."|width=400px]]

+ Coda: I have lost it all

An hour later, Ari gets up from the bed, grabs a fresh shirt and underwear from her dresser, her personal phone from her nightstand, and slides into her bathroom, locking the door and checking the knob to confirm the seal. From some sense of paranoia, Ari makes her way to the far corner of the room and slides to the ground, the floor stings her skin with cold. The only discernible sounds are the hum of generators and Farhan's razor-wire snoring.

She opens her phone and scrolls to Petra Shahi's name on her contacts. It has been //years// since she said her name out loud, let alone looked at her contact info.

Fifty missed calls, and that was before she blocked her. //She probably got the hint five calls in and had a bot do the remaining forty-five.// Ari hopes that is the case. Petra was a petty, spiteful, arrogant, and shallow person for whom thrills were everything. Ari is a grunt who dresses like shit and has the self-described personality of an armadillo. There is nothing real there. There couldn't have been.

There was an unopened message from Petra's number in her voicemail box. Ari had chosen to keep it but didn't open it either, avoiding the way her heart would answer if she heard it. Something about tonight makes opening it feel...right.

Something about tonight makes Ari want to close the book on Petra.

When Ari first hears Petra's voice, she smiles with a mix of nostalgia and relief. And then she registers what's being said:

"I'm so sorry, Ari."

//Petra never apologies.//

"I think about us a lot when you're gone. There's one time you let me take you to my favorite club, the one where the drag queens dress up like the tarot. I got dressed up, you wouldn't, because of course, you're //you//. I did get you to wear a skirt for the first time with those designer boots, but the way you comported yourself made it all seem like I'd put you in a Halloween costume. I recall acting rather cross with you over that."

Ari remembers that day too, but mostly the smell of mingling perfume and sweat and smoke, and the lights. Words, people, all tended to vanish in the haze of her waiting for the commotion to stop.

"You danced with me then. You aren't the most coordinated, you wouldn't talk to any of my friends, you wouldn't drink as much as I did, and I told you you kept stepping on my feet. On our way home, I told you off."

//Your exact words were, "You're so weird. Do you just not like people? Like you think you're cooler than them?"//

"I want you to know I...loved every bit of you that night."

"Come again," Ari says to the shade of her past lover—it comes out more as a gasp.

"Your hard eyes, your wry smirk. Your sweat because you refuse to wear perfume. I loved the way you let me cling to you when I was drunk. I loved your lips. I loved tasting them. I loved your...unbreakable amour-propre. If I'd had it I probably wouldn't have fucked it all up. So many wasted evenings. So many fights. I should have shut up and drank in your eyes. I should have kissed you instead of wasting my breath on bullshit. I should have...every //second// I had with you...encased in amber...."

A stutter and gasp that splits itself. Ari realizes Petra is trying not to cry.

"I want you to know that there's a moment that night where you said something funny and I laughed and you laughed with me. I never made you laugh despite my best efforts, but you laughed because I was laughing. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful, and that's the image I'm focusing in my head now. I...I want to say something else, but...unreciprocated...I'll not...it'd be gauche. I hope—"

The call cut off.

"Petra—" Ari covers her mouth with her hand, tries to steady her breathing, tries to keep her voice down. "Petra, wait—"

She tries to call Petra's number. It is no longer in service. She tries again.

Whatever happened to her those years ago, she's gone.

"Okay." Ari nods. There's a part of her brain screaming questions, demanding action, but whatever this was, it was years ago. It's a part of her brain she's used to denying. She's left wounded on the ground while it screamed in her ear. Why should tonight be any different? //This is the life we all choose.// She looks at Farhan. There's a body bag waiting for him too. "Okay," Petra was just one more body she leaves behind tonight.

When she returns to Farhan, she tries to keep her distance, but he pulls her close to him. She lets him. This time when he talks in his sleep, he smiles.

----

Five years later, Ari floats on stranger tides.

//What looks like a blazing magenta sunset in a sickly sanguine sky rots like the cheeks on a damp corpse. She drifts, buoyed by the warm swells of the restless fluid. When she closes her eyes and lets herself breathe, she wonders if the serenity and viscousness of the sensations along her bare, cool skin is what resting in a womb feels like.//

//When she decides to move her head to the side, she notices the liquid has the exact color and even texture of air-flushed blood and muscle. She takes note of her gently swaying companions: bobbing and swaying and ebbing computers, statues, bullets, and bombs. And bodies. Lots of bodies, bodies wearing Site-7 and STAG uniforms, a drifting wheelchair, a disused eye-patch. A swarm of vultures preys on the charnel harvest.//

//Then the fluid begins to pull her under.//

//She desperately writhes amidst the waves of gore as they crash down upon her. Booms and shots and cracks echo in her ear.//

**//After some time she makes it to the shore and crawls, only to see a curtain of fire advance towards her. She screams, again and again and again, a name she hasn't heard in years. She looks for him everywhere, and then her arm explodes and she howls.//**

She wakes up.

She is at Site-7, curled up in a corner. Her bedsheets are on the ground, drenched in her cold sweat. She's cold, shivering, She can't remember why, but her heart wants to pound a hole out of her ribcage, her breathing feels more labored than if she'd tried to outrun a wolf. She tries to wipe the sweat from her brow with an arm she remembers is no longer attached to her, the replacement something that won't follow what's left of her into the ground when she dies.

"Fuck!"

Knives and acid stream into every inch of that missing arm. The phantom pains really buckle her when she isn't flooded with adrenaline. She growls and bites her tongue, trying to eat the pain.

There is a window if she wants to look at the water, but the roaring ocean of the Bering Strait is savage. No succor to be had there.

Her dog is shivering on the other side of the room.

Her whisper is shaky. "PC! PC?" Sometimes, he'd jump on her bed and fall asleep with her.

Today, when she tries talking to him, he lets out a sad whine and retreats into the other corner of the room. "PC?" She walks towards him, and he instantly recoils in fear. "What's wrong? What's..." //He's scared because I've been screaming again.// Ari makes a note to ask someone if they have a drug for that.

Ari grabs her phone, crawls as close to PC as he'll let her, and curls on the ground. Whether it was the floor or the mattress would make no difference to her now. She is not sleepy or tired; she is just bored.

Maybe PC will join her if she waits long enough here.

On evenings like this, she would play games until she fell asleep. Tonight, she tries to remember the Arabic on Farhan Moradi's back tattoo. A stupid part of her thinks that if she could touch his back again, the boredom would stop. Or maybe if she could just remember what he sounds like when he giggles. He was quiet, and the pain is always too loud.

//There's so much less of me every day,// she thinks, looking at her stump, thinking about how much of her body was metal or lab-grown meat by now. //I wonder how much more I can live without.//

[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-17007002/like-it-s-real#post-6754819 She watches PC fall asleep in his corner and waits for the sun to rise, but there is no light. ]

[[div style="text-align:center"]]

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##darkred|"The trick, Dina, is not minding that it hurts."##
[[/div]]

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