The Agency

Nope, it's not porn, sorry. Though it is a bit touchy-feely.



Jason peered in the viewing window of the research lab, where two techs in lab coats were puttering purposefully around a bank of monitors surrounding a single examination chair.

"What have you learned so far?" he asked quietly.

Dr. Nava tapped the screen of her computer with the stylus, though he suspected she didn't need to see her notes. She'd probably been figuring out what to tell him all afternoon.

"We had to recalibrate the assessment equipment," she began. "Normally we have SA-5 do psychic assessments instead of relying on computers. The computer is more precise, but it can't detect the fine differences in type of gift. For example, when you first joined the SA you were assessed by machine, right?"

"Yes."

"It classified your musical gift as 'other,' because it didn't recognize it. If Rowan had been the one testing you, he probably could have named it even if he'd never seen it before. But in this case, we need precision more than type."

"And?"

"We ran into some trouble. The program goes from 3 to 10, with 12 built in as an absolute theoretical maximum. 10 is the highest level known to exist in a living being, and there are only a hundred or so recorded instances in all of SA history, most among nonhuman races."

"I'm aware."

They watched silently for a moment as one of the techs fiddled with a sensor, and a light blinked, then went green; a needle jumped from left to right and was buried in the red zone, then with a pop, the sensor went dark again.

In the exam chair, wired up to a dozen instruments, Rowan sat calmly with his eyes closed, a half smile on his face. He didn't so much as flicker an eyelash when the sensor blew. The techs' anxiety didn't touch him.

Jason looked down at the ticker tape of the Elf's psychic output. The resting rate was already off the chart. Just sitting there, not doing a thing, Rowan was burning out the machines.

"When we first brought him to the base and had him assessed, he clocked in at a 9 on empathy, 6 on telepathy, and 5 in the 'general' or 'other' category. Going off the statistical averages, combining all his talents, he was an 8 overall."

"And now?"

She stared at her notes, doing math in her head, and bit her lip. "Before the last set of calibrations blew out? 17."

Jason let out a long, slow breath. "17."

"Yes. The problem--well, one problem--is that we've measured his empathy spiking at 12, and telepathy at about 10.5, but the majority of what we're seeing is simply not classifiable. We don't know what to call it, or even what to compare it to."

"Have you asked him?"

"He doesn't know either. Thank god this new talent seems to have come with a new array of shields. I don't want to think what he could do to this place if he lost control."

Jason crossed his arms, staring at his partner through the tempered glass, wondering if Rowan could sense he was there--of course he could.

"You can see why I'm reluctant to let him back out in the field," Nava went on. "Until we know exactly what it is we're dealing with, we can't be sure he's safe around a city full of mortals. If he had absolute confidence that would be one thing, but he's struggling with it too. He says he doesn’t know a tenth of what he can do yet."

He nodded. "I concur, Doctor. I'll sign the form to that effect, as long as you're not recommending anything like the house arrest we had Lex under."

"No, definitely not. But I do have a small monitoring device, built along the same lines as the inhibitor, that I'd like him to wear for at least a week, so we can get better readings. It's not designed to be as precise as these instruments, but more to get a graphic representation of how his power rises and falls throughout the day and night. I'd like your approval, if you don't mind signing here..."

Jason took the pen she held out and scrawled his name on the forms, eyes still on the slender figure in the chair. They had discussed the possibility that Nava would want Rowan confined to the base, or to run round after round of tests; Ness had said that before SA-5 could go back out in public she, the doctor, and Jason all had to sign off on it, and Rowan had accepted that without complaint. He knew very well how scary he was now.

"What about you?" Nava asked a moment later. "How have you been feeling?"

He shrugged.

"Any more chest pain, or sleep disturbances?"

He shook his head, though he was lying. There was nothing she could do; he already had drugs, and he'd been in for tests of his own since that night.

The evidence was clear: he'd had a massive heart attack in his sleep. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes and he'd been clinically dead. Though the stake had pierced his heart in a dream world, it had killed him in the real world, at least for a little while before Rowan revived him. The damage to his heart would have killed a human, magic or no magic; it had taken days to heal, and he'd been on painkillers and drugs to regulate his cardiovascular system for a week. Even Rowan himself had been reluctant to offer his newfound gifts--the heart ran on electricity, and he didn't want to make things worse by zapping it with what Sara called his "godling mojo."

Jason had only been cleared to return to duty himself that past Monday, and so far things had been back to normal...sort of.

As much as he wanted to mourn the "normal" that he'd longed for those weeks Rowan had been away, he knew that things would never be that way again. They might be better, or they might be worse, but never the same.

As if picking up on the thought, which is probably what he did, Rowan's eyes opened, and fixed on Jason's even though he shouldn't have been able to see through the glass. The Elf smiled at him lovingly, and Jason felt a pulse of emotion from the Elf's heart to his, gently reassuring and comforting.

Another sensor blew. The tech cursed loudly.

Rowan smiled and closed his eyes again.


*****

"Shit."

Rowan looked up. "Why did you stop?"

"It broke."

"Do you have another one?"

"Yes...it's in the other room, though. I'll be right back."

"Damn...I was really enjoying that."

Jason sighed and put the violin down. "Me too."

When he returned from his bedroom, Rowan peered at him over the book he was reading. "You've broken quite a few strings lately. Is everything all right?"

The vampire looked thoughtful as he turned the peg to release the A string, and Rowan watched, fascinated, while Jason threaded the new string and tightened it without even looking at his hands. Aside from being dead sexy, that kind of manual dexterity was a mystery to Rowan, who had embarrassed himself during his preliminary typing test years ago and had a tendency to kill off video game characters in spectacular fashion. He could do a lot of things with his hands, but they involved skin and muscle, not buttons and keys.

"Everything's fine, just..." Jason picked up his bow and tested the string, made a face, and adjusted the peg. He could also tune perfectly by ear. "Back when I was first learning to play I broke a lot of strings because the power running through me kept spiking until I could control it. It feels the same now."

Rowan closed the book, considering, and reached over to the coffee table for the glass of iced tea he'd forgotten. "What do you think has changed?"

He smiled. "You."

Rowan frowned into his glass, a discomfort settling in his chest that had become a familiar feeling since he had walked back through the Dreaming Gate to lay his hands on Jason's lifeless body. It was what he sensed when others looked at him, like Nava, her eyes full of faint awe when she scrutinized the endless printouts telling her that yes, it was possible, and yes, it was real.

Jason shrugged, his attention on the Tempest. "When you and I first got together I started teaching myself to work with this talent. I had more energy available through you, and I was able to do more than before. After you came back from Clan Yew, once we'd woken up that weird death connection thing we had, I got even stronger. Now...I'm leveling up again."

"I'm all right with that if you are."

"Definitely."

Rowan watched Jason again, smiling to himself. Some things, while different, were better. He was thankful for that...although there were still nights that Jason woke shaking, reaching for him in the dark. He wasn't used to being in constant pain, and had never been afraid of death before--actually dying, Rowan had heard, had a way of changing that for people, but usually for the better. It was different for the deathless, like them. Mortality was not something they really understood, especially after a few centuries.

Jason felt Rowan's gaze on him and looked up again, and Rowan's breath hitched in his chest at how perfectly blue the vampire's eyes were; tonight they were the grayish dark shade of the chenille blanket Rowan had wrapped around him against the chill. Jason tended to run the AC at a sub-Arctic level; about the only regular argument they had was over control of the thermostat. Shortly before he’d left for Clan Willow Jason had bought him the blanket as a peace offering.

Moments like this--the two of them spending a quiet evening at home, each doing what he liked but doing it together, were Rowan's most treasured memories, then as now. He loved simply having Jason near him, close enough to look up and watch from time to time, or on the couch beside him where he could lay his hand on the vampire's thigh and just enjoy the solid muscle under his palm.

He'd been such an idiot to run away...and he was trying, night by night, to make amends.

"What are you looking at, good sir?" Jason asked politely, a spark in his eyes.

Rowan smiled. "I am looking at the man I hope to bed tonight."

Hands moved up and down strings, checking their tightness, tilting the violin at different angles to sort out some arcane musical geometry Rowan was not an initiate of. Bow slid along string, the way he imagined Jason's hand sliding along his back.

"I see," Jason went on, still holding back a smile. "And what assurance do you have of this man's desire to tumble into your bed?"

Rowan grinned and pushed himself up off the couch, moving slowly around behind where Jason stood before the stand of sheet music where, after years of Beck's prodding and Rowan's gentle suggestion, he had finally started writing some of his compositions down. Rowan circled around behind him and took one of his arms, lifting it as Jason lifted the violin into position, and ran his fingers over the silver at his wrist. "I have this assurance," Rowan said. He then drew his hand down Jason's arm, along his side, over his belly, and down into the waistband of his jeans. "And I have this assurance." He squeezed gently.

Jason's eyes drifted shut under Rowan's ministrations, and he let the Elf stroke and caress him, both below and up along the length of his outstretched arm, poised to lower bow to string. Finally Rowan withdrew both hands and moved them around Jason's waist, leaning forward to rest his head against the vampire's back while Jason resumed his stance and began to play--first a few single notes, checking the tuning; then, satisfied, a slow and romantic song, the sort that would play during the scenes of American romance films where the heroine and hero both stand on their balconies, each dreaming of the other, separated by a New York Borough and whatever third-act complication had arisen to break them apart before the final reunion.

Elf and vampire stood that way for a long time, swaying slightly back and forth while Jason played, Rowan listening both to the music and to the heartbeat beneath his ear that served as a metronome. He felt currents of energy eddying around him, lathing away the accumulated tension of the week.

He was about to move his hands back down and see how long it took to make the vampire lose track of what he was playing, when there was a knock at the door.

"Shit," Jason said. "I’m just not destined to finish this."

"I'll get it." Rowan might have been puzzled--they rarely had visitors--but he could already sense who was outside, and hear a double heartbeat just below the surface of audible sound.

"Why didn't you use your key?" he asked Sara, who stood uncertainly in the hallway wearing what he had to assume were maternity jeans and a t-shirt that was working very hard to cover the waterfront. They'd only been back from Clan Willow for two weeks, and her belly had doubled in size.

"I thought you guys might be naked or something," she said with a shrug. "I didn't want to intrude."

He ushered her into the living room, and she sat on the couch with a grunt. Rowan had seen her a few hours before, at dinner, and she'd mentioned she was going out of her mind with boredom now that Nava had put her foot down and denied Sara active duty. She could still be called up for psychic missions, but no patrols, no action, nothing dangerous or overly stressful. He and Sara both thought Nava was being paranoid--the tramera was fine, they could both feel it--but there was no arguing with the chief medical officer. Sara had moaned in despair that this was going to be the longest year of her life.

Rowan could only hope she was right, and that things wouldn't be interesting enough to make time fly by. Interesting, for them, usually meant "tragic."

Jason had put down the Tempest, and asked, "Drink?"

Sara nodded. "Scotch on the rocks with a twist."

Jason handed her a bottle of juice. Sara rolled her eyes, but took it.

"So, what's going on?" Rowan asked, sitting down on the floor cross-legged in front of her and taking one of her sneakered feet, relieving it of its shoe and rubbing the arch. He was reluctant to use much magic right now, but he'd learned reflexology in his old calling, and his limited experience with pregnant women told him she'd appreciate it.

Some Rethla specialized in pregnancy; his area of expertise had been trauma. The irony had not been lost on him.

"Since I can't do much else I've been getting off the base a lot," Sara began, sighing and leaning back into the couch cushions with a sip of her juice. "It's funny how different this city is during the day, you know? All the normal people come out."

Jason made a faintly disgusted noise from where he was making notes on the piece he'd been working on. "You mean, like, heterosexual SUV drivers with children?"

"Like people who don't sacrifice bunnies or have 'aconite' on their grocery lists. Believe it or not, they do exist. Some of them have tans."

Rowan smiled. "And?"

"Well, I stopped by one of the Pagan supply stores in town. The Silver Cauldron caters mostly to the white-lighter crowd. Wiccans, various flavors of NeoPagan, people who are into gardening and massage therapy rather than conjuring things that eat babies. I hadn't been there in over a year. It's kind of weird, seeing the stuff we see, remembering that there are people who only do positive magic."

"True," Rowan said wryly. "I know last time I was conjuring a Baby Eating Demon, I thought much the same thing."

She looked sheepish. "Okay, present company excepted. But you know what I mean. The quiet, devoted Pagans living good lives aren't the ones we run into. There are Witches here on staff, but I haven't had time to really get to know anyone since I made SA. Sage took over the group here a few months back and she keeps bugging me to come to an Esbat, but you know how Full Moons are for Agents. Anyway, I was looking at the bulletin board for upcoming events, and you'll never guess what I saw."

"The point of this story?" Jason asked hopefully.

Sara flipped him off and said, "A woman who goes by Aradia. Someone I knew from Dallas."

That got the vampire's attention. "As in, your old coven?"

"Exactly. She's starting up a Wicca 101 class here in town."

"Do you think it's a front for Blue Moon?" Jason asked.

"Might be. Or she might be a refugee like me. Aradia and I weren't that close--she was in one of the dedicant classes that started just before I left, so she might not have gotten too far in before she realized they weren't what they seemed. Or she might be here recruiting for them. Either way, I figure she might have information. We haven't exactly made a lot of arrests."

Rowan heard the bitterness in her tone, and he sympathized. She had never been satisfied with the Agency's handling of the Blue Moon case, after the SA had so violently disrupted her life for it, but he'd explained to her that she was the only lead they'd had, and the key players had since gone underground or been model citizens. Without evidence, there was nothing they could do, and Blue Moon was covering its tracks very well, including hiding the Reaping Sphere. "Have you made contact with her?" he asked, switching to her other foot.

"Yup. Email. She seemed happy to hear from me." Sara saw the look on Jason's face and said, "What am I, a rookie? I used a dummy account at the public library and told her I was an admin tech for the Justice Department. I wanted to give her just enough info that if she's working for them she'd be interested, but nothing true. I also forwarded our entire conversation to you about an hour ago. We're meeting for coffee tomorrow evening. Public place, yadda yadda. I thought you might want to wire me or something."

"Damn right I do," the vampire replied. "That's why we have Ears. Take one of the camo receiver covers--the ones you snap on to make it look like a cell phone. Keep the earpiece in your pocket or purse and set the whole thing to Record. All you'll have to do if there's a problem is hit 'talk' on the fake phone and it'll send out a distress call."

"Gotcha." Sara pulled her foot reluctantly out of Rowan's grasp and started to get to her feet. "Anyway, I'm headed to bed, I just wanted to fill you in." She let Rowan replace her shoes, and for once didn't wave away Jason's proffered hand up. "I'll let you guys get back to your adult shenanigans."

Rowan grinned as he showed her to the door. "What makes you think there was anything adult going on?"

She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head at Jason. "Your husband’s pants."

To Rowan’s vast amusement, Jason self-consciously stepped back behind the music stand until the door was shut and Sara was gone.

“You really need to teach me that thing you do that keeps your parts under control until you want otherwise,” Jason muttered, closing the Tempest in her case.

“Absolutely not,” Rowan replied. “I like watching you squirm.”

“Sadist.”

“Horny teenager.”

“Come here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rowan slid happily into the circle of Jason’s arms, laying his head on his lover’s chest, just listening for a moment. Everything sounded fine. “How are you feeling?”

Jason sighed. “I could use a good day’s rest. I’m feeling a little frayed around the edges.”

“I know.” Rowan took him by the hand and led him toward his bedroom door. “Let’s see if I can do something to help you get to sleep.”

Jason paused and tipped Rowan’s chin up to look him in the eye. “What about you? How are you feeling?”

As Rowan spoke, he moved his hands up between them and slid Jason’s shirt up over his middle. “I hate to even say it out loud for fear of jinxing it, but…I’ve never felt better.”

“Good,” was the reply, a bit muffled as there was a t-shirt being yanked over his head. “You deserve to feel well after all of this. It’s the least these gods of yours could do, if they’re going to turn you into some kind of Mega-Elf.”

“Mmm.” Rowan drew his hands along Jason’s shoulders, down over his arms; he leaned in and flicked his tongue delicately along the outermost line of the vampire’s tattoo, and the dragon shivered under the touch.

Smiling inwardly, Rowan lifted his mouth to Jason’s throat, kissed where he could feel the pulse beneath the skin, and placed a solid bite at the juncture of neck and shoulder.

The effect was as lovely as it was predictable. The Elf found himself turned and shoved back against the wall, and he might have laughed at Jason’s urgency except that there was a tongue in his mouth, nails in his arms, and hips pressed hard into his, and all of Rowan’s faculties were occupied.

As soon as he managed to break free, Rowan dragged Jason to the bed, stripping clothes off as they went, and proceeded to ensure they were both so thoroughly exhausted two hours later that neither so much as twitched until the following sunset, when they both showed up half an hour late for duty, Rowan’s hair still wet from the shower and Jason’s shirt on inside out.

Overall, not a bad end to the week.