Terms and Specific Conditions - Chapter 8

 

Horrible Idea, Validated

They didn’t talk about that night.

Not the rooftop.

Not the silence after.

Not the almost.

Instead, they did what they always did.

They hung out.

They made each other laugh.

They sat close.

But the comfort now came laced with tension–like wearing someone else’s jacket, familiar but tight in the sleeves.

It was a Thursday when it finally caught up to them.

Long meetings. Rainy morning. Someone brought donuts. Penelope took two and didn’t eat either.

Jack rolled up beside her desk just after lunch.

“Wanna hit the bookstore after work?” he asked casually. “I need to buy a gift. And someone to shame me into not buying a Star Wars mug.”

Penelope looked up. Smiled too quickly. “Yeah. Sure.”

He watched her for a beat. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

She always said that now.

He didn’t push.

Just waited outside when she clocked out, hoodie pulled over his head, rain speckling his wheels. When she saw him waiting, she felt something in her chest tug.

The bookstore was quiet.

Warm.

Safe.

Jack navigated the aisles like he knew them by heart. She trailed beside him, fingers skimming spines, not saying much.

She made him laugh once–something dumb about how every book cover looked like someone was mid-divorce–and his smile landed crooked and real. But it didn’t reach his eyes. Not the way it used to.

When their hands brushed near the fiction section, neither of them pulled away. Neither of them looked at the other, either.

Just silence.

And skin.

And the slow, aching realization that normal had stopped being possible.

In the car on the way home, Jack rode shotgun with the seat tilted back a little. His hand drummed on the center console. Penelope drove with one hand and a death grip on the wheel.

“Do you ever think we’re…” she started.

Stopped.

He turned his head slightly. “What?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

The wipers squeaked against the glass.

Jack looked out the window. “Feels like we’re pretending something didn’t happen.”

“We’re not,” she said too fast.

He looked at her again. “You sure?”

Penelope didn’t answer.

Because they were.

Pretending.

And the lie of it was starting to sour.

Outside his apartment, they sat in silence for a minute. The engine ticking. The rain soft now, like background noise.

Jack unbuckled his seatbelt. Didn’t open the door.

Penelope kept her hand on the key. “You want me to come up?”

He hesitated.

Not because he didn’t want to.

Because he did.

And he didn’t trust himself not to ruin it.

He looked over.

Eyes soft.

Voice low.

“Not tonight.”

Penelope nodded. Looked straight ahead. “Okay.”

But her throat was tight.

And he felt it.

He placed a hand lightly on her arm. Just for a second. Just enough to say I feel this too.

Then he twisted, hauled the stripped-down frame of his chair across his lap, wheels on in a couple of practiced motions, and a second later he was out–transfer smooth and automatic, like disappearing was the easiest part.

She watched him go.

And sat there.

Alone in the car.

Heart thudding.

Hands shaking.

Realizing she didn’t know how much longer she could not say it.

—

Time helped.

In the way a tight band helps–by holding the pressure in.

They saw each other. They worked together. They still made each other laugh. But now every joke felt like it had teeth, every almost-touch ricocheted.

They were back at his place. A bottle of wine open between them. Something dumb on TV neither of them were watching. Both trying to pretend everything was normal.

Jack sat angled slightly beside her, one wheel bumped up against the couch like he’d parked there on purpose and then pretended it was an accident. Penelope had her legs tucked under her, glass in hand, smile too tight–like her face was doing PR for her feelings.

They hadn’t touched all night.

Not really.

Not the way they wanted to.

Jack cracked a joke about the reality show they were half-watching. She laughed, but it came out too sharp–like a snapped rubber band.

He noticed. Of course he noticed.

“You okay?” he asked.

“You always ask that,” she said.

His brow lifted. “That a problem?”

She shrugged, eyes on her glass. “Feels like you don’t believe me when I say I am.”

“That’s because you lie.”

The words landed harder than he meant. He saw it the second they left his mouth–her whole body going still, like someone hit pause.

Penelope’s eyes flicked to him. “Excuse me?”

Jack set his glass down carefully, like if he did it gently enough it wouldn’t count as starting a fight. “You’ve been weird for weeks. Acting like we’re fine when clearly–”

“I haven’t been weird,” she snapped, too fast. “You’re the one who’s been–” She cut herself off, jaw clenched. “Smiling at strangers and pretending we didn’t almost–”

Jack leaned forward slightly, eyes sharp now. “Almost what, Penelope?”

She glared at him. “You know what.”

“Say it.”

Her throat worked. “No.”

Jack laughed once–dry, tired. Not mean. Worse. Like he was worn out on pretending.

“What the hell does that mean?” she said.

“It means you get to play with fire but never own it,” he said, voice low. “You get to wear my hoodie and text me at midnight and look at me like that and then act like I’m insane for noticing. You get mad when I go on one damn date–”

“I saw you, Jack.”

He didn’t even pretend. “I know.”

Silence.

Heavy. Hot. Alive.

Penelope stood up too fast, wine sloshing. She planted herself in front of him, because she couldn’t not. Because if she stayed on the couch she’d have to keep pretending she wasn’t unraveling.

“This is stupid,” she said.

Jack didn’t move. Just looked up at her.

That was the problem. The angle of it–him sitting, her looming–made her feel too tall and too close and her whole body reacted. Too aware of the way he could stay still and make her feel like she was the one pacing a cage.

“You’re not mad because I kissed someone else,” he said.

“You didn’t even kiss her,” she said automatically.

He blinked.

She flushed, immediate. “I mean–obviously–I didn’t see anything–” 

Jack’s mouth twitched.

She pointed at him. “Don’t you dare.”

He grinned, slow. Dangerous. “You watched?”

“I didn’t watch,” she groaned. “I just…witnessed. Maybe observed.”

Jack started laughing. A real, surprised, tipsy belly laugh, like his body couldn’t hold the pressure anymore and chose humor as a release valve. “Penelope.”

She tried to hold her glare, but it cracked under her own laughter. “Shut up.”

“You were jealous.”

“I was curious.”

“You were deranged.”

She threw a couch pillow at him. “You were flirting with a human spreadsheet!”

“She had opinions about olives, I panicked!”

They were both laughing now–too hard. Out of breath. The kind of laugh that crashes into something else entirely.

Jack’s chest was still rising when he looked up at her.

Penelope was breathless, flushed.

Their eyes locked. And in the space between inhale and exhale–everything turned.

She leaned down into him fast.

Jack didn’t move, didn’t blink–just lifted a hand, ready, like he’d been waiting for this exact moment all night.

And she kissed him.

Hard.

It wasn’t sweet.

It wasn’t careful.

It was everything they’d swallowed, shoved down, twisted into jokes and half-looks and aching almosts.

His hands were in her hair instantly–greedy and a little rough, like he was scared she’d vanish. Then they slid to her hips and pulled, dragging her down onto him with this blunt, intentional need that made her stomach drop. Her knees hit the couch beside his wheel and she kept going, crawling into him, into all of it.

Jack groaned against her mouth.

She was everywhere–hands in his shirt, teeth against his lower lip–laughing into the kiss because of course this is how it would go. Chaos and wine and months of tension exploding like a match to gasoline.

“Jesus,” he muttered, kissing down her jaw, voice wrecked. “What the hell have we been doing?”

“Suffering,” she gasped, yanking at his collar. “Stupidly.”

“Never again.”

He kissed her like he meant it. Like the world had narrowed to just this.

And she kissed him back like she’d been waiting her entire life to get it wrong like this.

They didn’t stop right after the kiss.

They couldn’t.

Every time they tried to slow down, one of them moved a fraction closer and the whole thing caught fire again.

Penelope was in his lap now, straddling him, knees hooked on either side. She’d climbed into him like it was the most obvious thing in the world, like his body was just…available, apparently – and Jack’s brain had gone somewhere between this is a terrible idea and I will die if it stops.

Her mouth was on his again, hot and insistent, fingers in his hair. His hands slid under the back of her shirt, palms smoothing up the line of her spine, feeling each shiver like feedback.

“Pen,” he managed, but it came out more like a noise than a word.

“No,” she breathed against his mouth. “Do not be reasonable right now.”

He huffed a laugh that turned into a groan when she shifted, settling her weight more fully on him. He tightened his hands at her waist automatically, steadying both of them.

Some distant, still-functioning part of his brain whispered: you have a job, you have meetings with this woman tomorrow, there are HR rules, and then she nipped his shoulder just enough that his head tipped back.

“Okay,” he rasped. “We’re definitely getting fired.”

She smiled against his jaw. “We haven’t done anything fireable yet.”

“That,” he said, voice fraying, “is a bold interpretation of events.”

She laughed, and he felt the sound all the way down.

Her hands fumbled at the hem of his shirt. “Can I–?”

“Yes,” he said, too fast. “Yeah. Please.”

She tugged his t-shirt up, and he dragged his arms back long enough to let her peel it over his head. The room felt immediately cooler on his skin, her hands immediately hotter.

She sat back a little to look at him, hair mussed, chest heaving. Her gaze slid down from his face, over his shoulders, the curve of his chest, the faint line of a scar that disappeared under his waistband.

And that was the moment.

The little oh, right siren went off in his head.

He knew this part. He’d lived this part before: the pause, the recalculation, the way people’s eyes caught on what was different and didn’t know where to land next.

He felt his stomach clench, hands going a little stupid on her hips.

“Hey,” he said quickly, defaulting to the joke because that was what he knew. “Look, I know, it’s a lot of sexy medical history all at once. We can dim the lights, pretend I’m just a floating head–”

Her eyebrows shot up, amused. The corner of her mouth betraying her. “A floating head?”

He seized on it. “Yeah. Very mysterious. No torso, no notes.”

“Jack,” she said.

Just his name, but it cut clean through the spiral.

He shut up. She wasn’t looking away. Her gaze was still on him – on all the parts he always assumed came with a disclaimer.

“I’m looking,” she said, like it was the simplest explanation in the world. “I’ve wanted to look at you for months. This is literally the good bit.”

He searched her face for the usual tells–pity, second thoughts, the flinch people tried to tuck behind their teeth.

Nothing.

Just focus.

Heat.

Her thumb brushed along the line of his ribs, slow, like she was soothing something skittish.

“And if you start apologizing about your body,” she added, “I swear to God, I will walk out on principle.”

He stared at her, pulse loud in his ears, something tight in his chest loosening a notch.

“…okay,” he said hoarsely. “Message received.”

“Good,” she said. Her mouth curved. “Because I’m currently losing my mind.”

He made a helpless sound. “Jesus Christ.”

She leaned back in to kiss him, but he put a hand on her hip, stopping her for half a second.

“Wait,” he blurted.

Her eyes flicked up, wary-soft. “Too much?”

“No,” he said quickly. “No, this is–” He gestured vaguely at all of her. “This is, like, peak experience. I just–”

He swallowed, then laughed once at himself.

“Okay, rapid disclosure,” he said, words starting to stack. “My legs are basically decorative, they’re going to do whatever weird angles they feel like, they will absolutely not help, ten out of ten useless. If I ask to pause, it’s logistics, not me freaking out about you. If some part of me does something strange, you’re allowed to laugh, I promise I won’t crumble. And I am–obviously– completely gone for you, which is not a medical issue but feels relevant to the situation.”

She blinked, then bit back a smile. “That’s a lot of footnotes.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a complex text,” he said. “I just–” His fingers flexed on her waist. “I don’t want you wondering if you’re doing something wrong if I have to rearrange an elbow or whatever.”

Her expression flipped from amused to impossibly fond so fast it felt like whiplash.

“Jack,” she said softly. “If at any point your elbow is a problem, I trust you to tell me.”

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Also, just…for the record?” She smoothed her hands over his chest like she couldn’t not. “I’m very clear on one thing: you are frying my brain. So maybe let me enjoy that.”

His laugh broke on the way out. “Okay,” he managed. “Cool. Great. No notes.”

“Good,” she murmured. “Now come here.”

She kissed him again, deeper this time, and his brain finally stopped trying to write legal disclaimers.

At some point, the chair stopped being viable.

She broke away for air, forehead pressed to his. “Bed,” she said, voice rough. “Please.”

“Yeah,” he said immediately. “Yeah, okay, bed, yes–”

He wheeled them down the short hall to his bedroom, her weight fully on him, half on the chair, his hands working double time on the rims. It was clumsy and ridiculous and so insanely hot he almost laughed.

When they reached the bed, he glanced up at her, a little sheepish.

“I need, like, ten seconds,” he said. “You might have to dismount.”

She huffed a laugh, sliding off his lap to sit on the edge of the mattress. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll wait. Very impatiently.”

“Motivating.”

He lined his chair up with the bed, planted his fist, and lifted. Upper body doing the work, hips sliding across the gap, his legs trailing after. It was a move he’d done a million times, muscle memory and angles–but he could feel her watching, and that did something new and terrifying and good in his chest.

He settled on the mattress, legs out in front of him.

He glanced over, half expecting her to have gone vague and careful.

Instead she was looking at him, a slow, knowing smile spreading at her mouth.

“That was hot,” she said, completely earnest.

He choked. “Penelope.”

“Shut up and let me climb you.”

She knelt between his legs on the mattress, hands braced on his thighs for balance. Her fingers pressed into denim where he couldn’t feel, then drifted lower. He watched, helpless, as she nudged his knees a little wider, calmly making space for herself as she moved up.

Something in him shorted.

“Okay,” he said weakly. “That’s–you can’t just…do that and then expect me to remain a functioning organism.”

She smiled, flushed and wrecked and delighted. “You’re doing great,” she said, and swung one leg over to straddle him again.

From there, it was just…them.

Kissing, and breath, and the brush of her hair against his cheek. Her hands on his shoulders, in his hair, mapping him like she was memorizing a route she planned to take again.

“Tell me if you need to move,” she murmured.

“I will,” he promised, and he meant it.

He talked, because that’s what he did when his brain was too full.

“Yeah, that–” breathless, when her mouth found the place just below his collarbone. “That’s…very good data.”

She laughed against his skin. “Data?”

“I’m benchmarking the experience,” he managed. “Very important work. Oh my God, Pen–”

Her hands slid down his torso, exploring, and he told her what was what in real time, not clinical, just honest.

“Can feel that,” he gasped when her nails skimmed the edge of his sensation line. “Jesus. Okay. That’s like–really sensitive. Don’t stop.”

“And here?” she asked, lower.

He swallowed. “Less…direct,” he admitted. “More like–my body knows it’s happening even if my brain doesn’t get the memo right away. But you–” He broke off as she shifted against him. “You doing anything is…ridiculously hot, so the specifics are kind of–” He gestured helplessly. “Overwhelmed by the Penelope factor.”

“Oh,” she said, eyes going darker. “I like that.”

“Good,” he said, trying to sound cocky and landing somewhere in the vicinity of wrecked.

Clothes went. Not all at once, but in stuttering, impatient bursts–her shirt here, his pants there, socks kicked away and forgotten. There was nothing smooth about it; they kept laughing quietly when they knocked into each other, got tangled, then going honestly, desperately serious again when they found each other’s mouths.

At one point she paused, hovering over him, breathing hard.

“You sure?” she asked, eyes searching his face. “We can stop at any level of this, by the way. I’m already…” She shook her head, at a loss. “I’m already gone for you. I don’t need… all the way to prove a point.”

The phrasing hit him somewhere deep.

“I want all of it,” he said, no hesitation. “With you. Whatever that looks like. If something doesn’t work, we call an audible. You will not hurt my feelings by saying ‘this angle is a war crime.’”

She made a small, helpless noise that sounded suspiciously like affection.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Deal.”

The rest blurred in that way where he knew he’d go back later and pick it apart frame by frame, but right now it was just sensation and sound and the ridiculous, overwhelming fact that Penelope–Penelope–was moving over him, around him, with him, like there was nowhere else on the planet she’d rather be.

He hooked his hands behind his knees and pulled his legs in, folding them under him in one smooth, practiced motion. Then he was over her, steady and close and very, very sure.

She started to push up to meet him, and he just…stopped her. His fingers slid around her wrists, pressing them gently into the mattress above her head. He shifted his weight through his arms, testing his balance for half a second, then dipped to kiss her like he’d already decided this was happening and the rest was just details. Every time she tried to chase his mouth, he held her there–just enough pressure at her wrists, just enough distance to make her feel how completely pinned she was, how much he liked her like that.

Her hips kicked in on instinct, restless, trying to negotiate with gravity. There was nothing to push against under him, so she went hunting, one knee sliding out until she found the narrow line of his thigh. She hitched herself closer, using that small ridge of him like it was the only solid thing in the world.

He felt the shift in her weight, glanced down, and saw where she’d angled herself. The sound he let out was half laugh, half groan.

“Jesus, Pen,” he muttered into her neck.

He tightened his grip on her wrist but didn’t pull her away; his free hand slid to her hip and hauled her that last inch, lining her up more deliberately. He couldn’t push back, but he could anchor. He held her there–steady, unyielding, giving her something to work against while she chased the exact angle that made everything spark.

Her breath went short and messy against his throat. Every small drag of her body caught on him, those first chaotic shifts sharpening into something focused and greedy. He couldn’t feel exactly where she was using him, but he could feel the way her weight moved, how every pull ran straight through his core; he could feel her ribs slam into his, her chest rising fast under his.

Her hands scrambled up his back, needing somewhere to put the overload. Nothing, nothing, nothing–and then her nails skimmed a narrow band just below his waist.

He swore into her skin.

His back tried to arch, like his whole upper body was leaning hard into that strip of feeling. With his legs locked under him and his hands full of her, the only place the reaction could go was his chest; it dropped harder against hers, solid and heavy, pressing her deeper into the mattress with every tiny jolt.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Okay. That did…something.”

“Yeah,” he said, voice shredded. “That–do that again.”

She did. Slow, testing. Fingertips skating over that band, nails catching just enough.

He made a sound she’d never heard from him before, low and punched-out, forehead dropping to her shoulder like he needed somewhere to put it.

“Too much?” she panted, even as she did it again, chasing the way his chest pressed down and the way his hands held her exactly where she wanted to be.

“No,” he ground out. “Don’t stop. Please.”

The please did something to her.

Her hips fought his grip for every bit of friction; her fingers kept working that edge of sensation, back and forth, until her own muscles shook with the effort. He anchored her there, arms burning, pinning her right where she was trying to get, and every time she moved he answered–chest dropping, breath stuttering, voice breaking.

“It’s like my whole body’s trying to catch up,” he managed, words rough against her collarbone when she pushed him. “Like it’s…jumping the signal. I can’t get in front of it.”

She let out a thin, disbelieving laugh. “You have no idea what that does to me.”

“Tell me,” he said, stubborn even now.

She forced the words out between the grind of her hips and the press of his hands. “It feels like I’m wired straight into you. Like every time I move, you answer. Even when you can’t.” Her throat tightened. She pushed through it. “And I can’t think past it. It’s just heat and your stupid weight and your hands not letting me cheat.”

He swore under his breath, fingers flexing hard enough on her hips that she gasped. “You like that?” he asked, hoarse. “Me holding you there?”

“Yes,” she said, because there was no point pretending otherwise. “Don’t let me run away from it.”

“God–okay,” he said, voice wrecked. He pinned her hips a little harder, forcing her to work against him for every bit of friction.

Every movement turned into a deliberate fight–her muscles straining to drag herself along the angle he held her on, his arms shaking to keep her there. Her hand stayed pressed to that band of skin on his back, nails tracing it again and again, pulling full-body shivers out of him that he couldn’t hide.

“God, Pen” he blurted, mouth brushing her jaw, words fraying. “I am so far gone on you right now it’s fucking ridiculous.”

It hit her like someone yanked a cord in her chest. Her hand dragged harder than she meant to over that line; his whole body jolted, elbows nearly buckling as his chest dropped harder against hers. She chased it–hips grinding down, fingers raking that strip again, feeling every jump she wrung out of him like feedback.

Everything stacked–the weight of him, the way he kept her pinned exactly where she wanted to be, his voice breaking in her ear, that frantic little lift of his chest every time she hit the line–until the feeling in her snapped tight and then broke open, hot and helpless. The sound it tore out of her didn’t have a name.

He went with her. She felt it in the way his grip on her hips clamped down and then shuddered, in the rough, disbelieving curse he breathed against her mouth as everything in him locked and then shook apart.

For a few long seconds there was nothing but that–her nails still pressed into his skin, his body shaking against hers, both of them hanging on like they were riding out the same wave from opposite sides.

When he hit the point where words started breaking–sentences dissolving into half-formed curses and her name–she was right there, voice low in his ear, like they were in this weird conspiracy together.

The actual end was messy and imperfect and somehow perfect because of it–breaths stuttering into each other, hands scrambling for purchase, that final, ridiculous rush that took his brain offline.

For a moment afterward, all he could do was lie there, eyes closed, the world narrowed to the weight of her on him and the sound of them trying to remember how to breathe.

“Wow,” he said eventually, because his mouth moved before his brain could veto. “Okay. That was a lot of…everything.”

She laughed weakly and dropped her forehead to his shoulder. “That’s your review? ‘A lot of everything’?”

“I’m overwhelmed,” he complained. “My adjectives left the building.”

She laughed, the sound muffled against his skin. He felt it, again, all the way through.

–

Later–how much later, he had no idea–the room was dim and quiet. One of them had managed to wrestle the covers up over their tangled legs at some point. It smelled like her shampoo and sweat and his sheets and something warm and new he didn’t have a name for yet.

Penelope was draped half across his chest, an arm flung over his ribs, fingers idly tracing lines. Her leg was thrown over his, the deadweight of his own limbs a familiar absence under the surprising, grounding weight of hers.

He stared at the ceiling, completely wrecked in a way that had very little to do with his body and very much to do with the fact that his entire life had just quietly rerouted.

“Stop thinking,” she muttered into his sternum. “You’re doing a lot of thinking. It’s loud.”

He huffed a laugh. “You can’t even see me.”

“I can feel it,” she said. “Your whole chest gets…thinky. It’s unsettling.”

“Sorry,” he said. “My bad. I’ll turn my brain off, one sec.”

She poked him lightly in the side. “What’s the panic headline?”

“We have to work together tomorrow,” he said, because apparently his self-preservation instincts had gone home for the night. “In a room. With people. Who have eyes.”

She cracked one eye open, looked up at him. “Mhm.”

“That doesn’t freak you out?” he asked. “At all?”

She thought about it for maybe half a second.

“I mean, sure,” she said. “Terrifying. Horrible idea. A+ bad decision. Love that for us.”

He snorted. “Comforting.”

“But also,” she went on, shifting closer like she was settling into it, “I like my horrible ideas. And I like you. So.”

Something warm and stupid flared in his chest, so sudden it nearly hurt.

“So,” he echoed.

She watched him for a beat, face a little more open than usual.

“This isn’t just…” She struggled for the word, hand absently smoothing over his chest. “You know this isn’t a…thing, right? A one-off. I don’t–this isn’t casual for me.”

His throat went tight.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Same. Not a thing. Definitely not one-off.”

A slow, relieved smile tugged at her mouth. “Okay,” she said. “Cool. Great. Horrible idea validated.”

“Glad we could align on our poor choices,” he said.

She dropped her head back down, nuzzling into the hollow of his shoulder like it was hers now.

“Good,” she murmured. “Now shut up and sleep. We can panic in the morning.”

He lay there for another moment, feeling the weight and warmth of her, the quiet of the room, the strange, steady sense that somehow, against all statistical probability, this was where he was supposed to be.

“Pen?” he said softly.

“Mm?”

“If I start spiraling tomorrow,” he said, “about…work, or HR, or the fact that I’m going to look at you in standup and remember all of this in HD…can you just…do that?”

She didn’t move. “Do what?”

“Climb into my lap and tell me to stop apologizing for my own body,” he said lightly. “It’s weirdly effective.”

He felt her smile against his skin.

“Yeah,” she said. “I can do that.”

“Okay.”

He finally let his eyes close, his hand resting between her shoulder blades, and for the first time in a long time, the part of his brain that usually ran worst-case scenarios in the dark had nothing useful to offer.