Chapter Five
“Out there?”
Lance nodded. “As in not in here.”
“And I take it that no one is exactly volunteering to go out and get some more firewood?”
“Well, hey, if you have a death wish…” Callaway said from his chair, resituating himself and getting more comfortable. He pulled his blanket tighter around him.
JC looked at the dying fire and then longingly towards the back door. Maybe if he ran really fast…maybe the Cougar had fallen asleep, being outside in the middle of a blizzard and had died of hypothermia…maybe…
“Sit down, JC,” Lance ordered. No matter how cold it got inside, no one was going outside to try to get more wood and be gunned down by the Cougar. No way, no how.
Grumbling, JC grabbed a couple of blankets and sat back down next to Devon, who had been watching the exchange with interest. He tried handing her a blanket of her own, but she shook her head.
“Oh, hell no. I’m from Vegas; do you know how easily I get cold? And I’ve read enough books to know that body heat is best. You are not sticking me in a blanket all by myself.”
JC gave her a small, half-smile. She was so darn cute when she got sassy and bossy. Normally, he didn’t like bossy girls, but since Devon WAS right most of the time she was ordering people around, this was one case where he could overlook that quality.
One case? he wondered as he wrapped the two blankets around the both of them. Well, yeah, he had only known her for a few hours, but she was definitely one of the more…intriguing girls he had ever spent time with. And with her, he had skipped all the small talk and some how delved deeper into both of their personalities. He supposed that might have something to do with the slightly desperate circumstance they found themselves in.
“What are you thinking?” Devon asked as she snuggled even closer to him. JC guessed that even in HIS sweater she was still cold, having lived in the desert for most of her life.
“Just wondering what it might have been like had we met under different circumstances.”
Devon looked thoughtful at the idea.
“Oh, please, spare me!” Callaway muttered from his Lazy-Boy.
“Shut it!” Devon said glaring at him.
“I would be happier if you two were the ones to go silent. I’ve had to sit here for the past couple of hours watching you two just…TALK…and get all…mushy,” Callaway complained.
“And you think that’s so bad?” Devon argued. “You think I felt any less sick to my stomach watching you hit on Melinia a week after we broke up? Ewwww. You could have at LEAST gotten some new lines so I didn’t have to listen to recycled material.”
Callaway smirked. “What can I say? Melinia was the only girl left in the Vegas office I had yet to screw.”
“You’re SO disgusting,” Devon said, her voice going lower when she noticed that Joey and Mike both looked to be on the verge of waking up. “At least Melinia was smart enough not to fall for all that crap. So your perfect record was broken.”
JC watched them arguing, surprised at the past that they DID have. He had thought it was just a regular break up, but apparently not. He waited for Callaway’s retort, thinking that if the Agent hadn’t been so pale from blood loss and pain, he might have gone as red as Devon had when they started sharing their private business.
“Do you ever wonder, Devon, what would have happened had I chosen to go after Melinia first? I mean, you two did show up at the office around the same time…I really don’t think you would have been smart enough to…resist me, even AFTER I had finished with Melinia.”
JC saw Devon’s eyes go wide, before they narrowed dangerously. He was suddenly desperately wishing the stick-up-his-ass Mendoza was still around, playing referee. It didn’t seem like in the three years since they had broken up that their arguments had ever gotten this far.
“Here’s something that you wouldn’t understand, Callaway. It’s called friendship. Even if you had gone out with Melinia first, she would have told me what a slime ball you were, the same way that I had warned her.”
“Will you two knock it off? Some of us are trying to SLEEP through this mess!” Mike growled from underneath his blanket. JC was supremely glad that the gruff, commanding bodyguard had woken up and put an end to their arguing.
Devon looked surprised for a moment, then extremely embarrassed, finally realizing just how public their argument had become. JC could imagine how embarrassed she felt; thus far, he had gotten the idea that she was a very private person, for the most part.
“I can’t believe I just…said all that…in front of, like, seven perfect strangers. I am SO sorry,” Devon whispered, leaning even closer to JC.
He couldn’t say that he exactly minded the extra closeness. “That’s alright. It seemed like you two needed to say all that, be done with it. I’m guessing that Mendoza was always around to break the two of you up?”
“Yeah. We run into each other every once in awhile, since we DO work in the same building…but it doesn’t happen too often. So wait, you were saying…”
“I was saying…?”
“You know, about meeting under different circumstances…” Devon said suggestively. She looked ready to beg for JC to continue with his thought, and JC finally took pity on her.
“I was saying that I had been wondering””
“Dude, why is it so cold in here?” Joey grumbled as he sat up. He looked around grumpily before grabbing one of the nearby unused blankets. He lifted his head up to look at the fire. “Lance, man, put on some more firewood.”
“Hey, Joey, we were waiting for you to wake up so you could add the wood,” JC called out quietly, grinning. Joey gave him a dirty look before getting up to put more wood in. Realizing the pile was empty, he turned back to JC.
“Dude, that’s mean. Lemme guess, no more firewood inside the house?”
“Right.”
“So we have no other way to keep warm? What kind of modern cabin did you score for us, C?”
“Hey, if I recall, you all thought the whole ‘rustic’ thing was going to be cool for this MTV Christmas special,” JC defended himself.
“Aww, man!” Joey said, wrapping one of the blankets around him as he laid back down. “This never happened on Scooby-Doo!”
“Welcome to reality,” Lance said dryly.
JC smiled. “Hey,” he said to Devon. “Do you think Kevin Williamson would be willing to buy this script?”
“Yeah, right,” Joey piped up. “I already told you guys: I’ve seen this movie before!”
JC rolled his eyes as he got more comfortable, leaning against the front of the couch and wrapping the blanket tighter around Devon and himself. He and Joey made eye contact as Joey looked from JC to Devon.
“Dude, I need to get me one of those,” Joey complained under his breath, pulling his blanket tighter around himself. JC made a face at him, but ignored Joey. Looking around the room, he watched Lance grab a blanket and lay down with his son on the couch. Mike would move around every once in awhile, obviously unable to sleep yet. Callaway appeared to be dozing, but JC would bet against that being an actuality. Joey was staring off into the fire, and JC didn’t even want to know what he was daydreaming about.
“Okay, get back to what you were saying!” Devon instructed in an impatient whisper, elbowing JC in the side at the same time.
Giving her a slight elbow back, JC finally continued. “Just thinking about what it would have been like if we had met under different circumstances.”
“And?”
“And what?” JC asked in a teasing voice.
Devon elbowed him again in frustration. “And what do you think would have happened?”
“I don’t know; I think it would depend on WHERE we had met.”
“Okay, say we had met in the middle of a Las Vegas casino, what do you think would have happened?”
JC thought about it for a moment. “I would have asked you out to dinner. Or asked you to join me at one of the card tables, because you would no doubt bring me some good luck.”
“You would have asked me out to dinner? Even if we had never met before or even talked before?”
“I’d like to think so. I don’t want to think that I would have passed up a chance to get to know you.”
“But if we’d never me before, why would you want to get to know me?”
“Because I like your freckles,” JC said, adding a nod for confirmation. And he really did. They added something to her face, making her seem more innocent, more honest, in the ugly world he and the rest of the guys had been living in since the first February kidnapping. A world where they generally shut out strangers because they had no idea who the Cougar might be.
“My freckles? My freckles?!” she repeated incredulously. “Do you know how long I’ve been struggling to hide these with make-up?” she asked, pointing to the freckles that spread across her cheeks and on the bridge of her nose.
He leaned down and placed an innocent kiss on the feature in question. “Don’t hide them. They’re cute.”
“Great. Twenty-five and cute.”
“Okay, now it’s your turn. If we had met…in…D.C. Say you were there for some FBI training or a conference or something, and we ran into each other on the street. Or in a store. What do you think would have happened?”
“Well, unlike YOU,” Devon began, and JC could tell she just couldn’t help herself in making a dig at him. “I would have had to actually hear you talk, or have talked with you before I asked you out to dinner, or to go for a drink.”
“You’re so sure about that?”
“Yes. Because what first drew me to the reports, besides the feeling that there was something there that I should have been figuring out, was the argument you had with the Vegas office when our office was first contacted about you being in our territory. When you refused to let them decrease the number of agents or bodyguards on duty.”
“That? That argument was the first thing you noticed? Of all things, why that?” JC was confused. He had behaved like a belligerent jackass during that first interview and he knew it. Although, hindsight HAD proved him to be correct.
“Because no matter how much debate went on about the security detail, you didn’t back down. You stuck with what you knew or felt. I liked that. A lot. In fact, that was what caused me so much…confusion about those case files.”
“Confusion? About what?” JC asked. He could almost feel Devon distancing herself, like she had when she’d first confessed to knowing all this stuff about him. He tightened his arm around her, just in case she decided on some physical distance, which he didn’t feel all too agreeable about at the moment.
“I don’t know. It was bugging me, because I didn’t know…I wasn’t sure if it was even possible to fall for someone like I did for you, just from reading their FBI files. It was driving me crazy, before I came up here.”
“And now that you’re here?”
“You were the only one that noticed that I was cold when I first showed up. I decided then that maybe it was entirely possible to get to know a person, and fall for them, without ever meeting them, with only their case files to go by.”
JC felt her almost petting the sweater she was still wearing. He was glad she was so attached to it. Although he had to admit, it was kind of odd to see a girl dressed in his clothes from head to foot, without a sexual explanation being behind it. And though he was not exactly used to it, he also had to admit, he liked seeing Devon in his clothes. It was definitely something he COULD get used to.
“So…after we had met, in D.C. or Vegas,” Devon continued. “Then what? One dinner? Then I would go back to Vegas, and you would go back to…everywhere else in the world, I guess. Interesting, how circumstances can decide everything.”
JC could tell there had been an undertone to what Devon had been saying. That in other circumstances, nothing would have worked out between them. That even in these circumstances, she was going back to Vegas, and he was going back to D.C. Or Orlando. Or wherever his music took him. “I don’t know. That would be another reason I’m not in a near-marriage relationship, or even in a serious one. It’s hard to make long distance relationships work, if both people aren’t…as willing to make it work.”
“And you have yet to find someone willing to make it work? I find that hard to believe…I mean, you’re JC Chasez, you’re hot, talented, caring, sure of yourself, you actually WANT a family, you’re sexy as all hell…what more could most girls ask for?”
“Yeah, that attracts a girl into a long distance relationship for all of a few weeks, until she gets bored, because she never actually wanted to make a go at it in the first place. I’m a novelty, Devon. They’re excited by the prospect of dating me, until it becomes a reality, and then they’re never willing to make it work.”
“And you are?”
Damn, was she a mind reader or something? “Alright, I admit. Lately, I’ve given up on even TRYING to find someone who would want to make it work.”
“So if we had met in Vegas?”
“We would have had dinner, and I would have walked away. Like I said, I get tired of trying. We, me and the guys, talk about it sometimes, the effort of making a long distance relationship work. They’ve all had a serious relationship or two, found someone special enough, who loves THEM as themselves enough, to make it work.”
“But you haven’t.”
“Not really, no. But I will. I just…it just takes so much effort, and I want to make sure I’m putting forth the effort with the right person, with someone who’ll meet me halfway.”
They were silent for awhile. Well, nothing like talking about a serious relationship to kill a conversation, JC mused. He wondered what they could possibly talk about now. Thus far, they had managed to have so many serious conversations, talked about serious stuff. He kind of wondered what she really WOULD have been like out on a date, whether she was really charming and witty under normal circumstances, or whether she was morbid and depressing. What kind of a sense of humor did she have, or what kind of restaurant would they have been eating at…
“So, if we’d met in D.C., where would we be eating dinner?”
“What?”
“Come on, play along. Where would we be going on a date, what would we be doing tonight?”
“Tonight? We would have been watching Friends, while I got on the phone with Melinia during every commercial so we could gab about the episode.”
JC rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay. What if it was a Friday night? C’mon, Dev, I just want to figure out what kind of food you like, what you would have ordered, stuff like that.”
“Oh,” Devon said, now that the question didn’t seem so out of the blue. “Well, I probably would have taken you out for…I don’t know.”
Giving her a look, JC gave her a nudge with his elbow. “I can tell that you had the answer right there, so spill. Where would we have gone for dinner?”
“Well, would I be wanting to impress you or would we be out on a comfortable date?”
“That’s for you to decide,” JC said cryptically, wondering which she would choose. Impressing him, or being comfortable with what they were doing. That kind of a decision usually set the tone for the dates he had been on before, with girls who knew him as the *NSYNC member, JC.
“Alright then. I would suggest going to Subway.”
JC stared at her for a moment. He had thought she meant comfortable as in a small, lesser known restaurant, in the middle of some chic area of D.C. He had yet to have a date take him or be taken to a place like Subway.
“What?!” she asked defensively when he still hadn’t said anything after a few minutes. “You said I could choose whether or not I wanted to be comfortable or if I wanted to impress you. Subway’s my favorite place to eat. It would have been a quick, comfortable, easy-atmosphere date. If we were in Vegas, I would have suggested getting ice cream and walking down the strip after we finished our sandwiches. But I can’t think of any exciting places to go in D.C. while eating ice cream in December.”
“Walking down the strip, eating ice cream. I kind of like that idea,” JC said. Once the idea had been planted in his head, he had to admit, it had some definite possibilities. And just the idea of her date carried a million and one suggestions about what she was like as a normal person, under normal circumstances, with someone she regarded as a normal guy. Wait a minute… “Have you done this with Callaway or someone before?”
“With him?” she asked, trying to contain her laughter, her words muffled by the hand she had thrown over her mouth. “You’ve got to be kidding me! He always insisted on fancy-pants places; it’s all part of his wine-and-dine routine. And as for other guys, no, I’ve never done that, because I’ve never been comfortable enough to do something so casual.”
“But with me you would have been?” he asked disbelievingly. “Why?”
“Why? Hmmm…I guess it would be your hair.”
“My hair?!”
“Hey, if you can answer my ‘why?’ with my freckles being the reason, why can’t I say your hair? It has this look to it, even though I imagine it must be high maintenance in reality, like you just rolled out of bed, or as though you run your fingers through it when you get stressed or worried or just as a habit. As though you don’t particularly care what it’s doing or what it looks like. It looks casual enough for my dream date.”
“So you would have been comfortable enough with me to go to Subway, because of my hair.”
“I’d like to think so. But we’ll never know will we?” she asked, a touch of regret in her voice. He wondered what could cause her to pull away from their daydream date like she just had.
But she appeared to be making an effort to brighten up, because she then turned to him, and asked the same question. “Where would we have gone to dinner?”
He smiled. Maybe she wouldn’t be such a bad date in real life, after all. Maybe she wouldn’t be so serious under normal circumstances. “All right, if my hair makes you relaxed enough for that, I have to say that your freckles would have encouraged me to ask you to dinner in the hotel or casino restaurant. That is, if we had met in a Vegas casino.”
“The restaurant at the casino…imaginative.” She looked deep in thought as she contemplated the possibility.
“Yes. For one thing, I’m not as shallow as I might have appeared, asking you out because I liked your freckles, or because you’re hot. I would have wanted to talk to you, the sooner the better. And the casino restaurant would be convenient, quick, and likely a place where a celebrity wouldn’t have attracted as much attention.”
“Quick and convenient, huh?”
“Yup. Because if you had turned out to be an airhead, or a self-centered celebrity attachee, then it could be quick and convenient to excuse myself,” he teased.
“And leave me at the table alone to foot the bill because you ordered before you realized I was an idiot?”
Trying not to smile, he shook his head in mock outrage. “Of course not. In all likelihood, we would be at the casino in the hotel I was staying in, and I would have had them charge it to my room. You would have gotten a few minutes with your celebrity date, a free meal, and maybe even a picture in the tabloids.”
“Ooh, what more could a girl want?” Devon asked wryly.
And so their dream date conversation and their more casual talk went, for hours into the morning. It seemed to JC that they talked about everything. It was weird, how easy it was to talk to Devon, and how easy it was to listen to what she had to say. They talked about their childhoods, Devon’s growing up with her grandmother, her aversion to guns after her mother’s shooting suicide, her odd attentiveness to the moon phases, college on the east coast, and the following FBI training. And even though Devon already knew all about him, she said that she still wanted to hear it from him, and not through an Agent’s eyes or ears. How he had gotten the scar underneath his chin, from falling out of a tree he and a friend had been climbing, how he had originally gotten into show business, onto the MMC, his move to Orlando, his years with the group, his embarrassing stories about each one of the guys, even himself, what it was like to live on a bus, what he did during his vacation time.
By the time morning rolled around, it seemed to JC that he had never known anyone as well as he knew Devon, or she knew him. He wondered if there was anything that they HADN’T talked about. Doubtful.
JC cracked his neck as he checked his watch. Wow, it was already 7:30 in the morning. They had made it through the night. Devon got up, stretched and went to the back door, cracking it open and peeking outside.
“Damn, the storm’s still going. So how long do you think it will take for the FBI to plow the roads and get their sorry government butts up here after it stops?” Devon asked, turning and making her way over the still sleeping bodies back to JC.
Callaway groaned from his chair. “You two are still up? Jesus. And to answer your question, Devon, they will get their… ‘sorry’ butts up here as soon as they can. Might take them half an hour after the storm stops for them to follow behind the plow.”
“And they couldn’t step it up any?” JC asked as he opened the blanket to let Devon back in. The room had grown frigid over the hours without the fireplace going. She shivered as she got comfortable in the blankets again. Comfortable in the blankets…somehow, that had always carried a different connotation for him. But with Devon, this new implication wasn’t so bad. The same as seeing her in his clothes. Something that he could get used to.
“That IS stepping it up. They have to know that something is wrong by now; neither Mendoza nor I have checked in all night.”
“So we still just sit around and wait,” Devon finished with a great big sigh.
“And hope we don’t hear from the Cougar again before they get here,” JC said, as they both got comfortable again, still waiting. He kind of thought they were like big red targets in their not-quite-a-fortress cabin. Although, he was glad that these targets could at least defend themselves, thanks to Callaway’s ankle holster gun, that he was now pulling out.
“What are you doing?” JC asked, confused. Why was he pulling out his gun NOW, hours after the Cougar had been shooting through the windows?
Callaway took his time answering, as he checked to make sure the gun was loaded and that he had an extra clip in his belt. “I’m just thinking that with the sun coming up, that…blood moon going away, and the storm soon to be stopping, the Cougar’s got to know that reinforcements are coming in. And since he’s off his perfect record and agenda, thanks to Devon’s warning, I just want to be prepared for any…desperate measures that he might come up with.”
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