We all fall down

[neverwrongagent]

Carrie would remember the next few days as some of the best of her life. She was living with a man she was more comfortable with than she could have imagined, working together for a common goal. Even the visit with his kids went well. She gave him most of Saturday with just them, showing up at dinner time with pizza and cookies. They played board games and chased around her little house until it was time for him to take them back. Then it all went to hell.

They finally found evidence that Walker had met someone on one of his random seeming runs around the District. Before they could act on it, a series of small bombs took out three Metro buses as they approached the city center. A half dozen people were killed, twice that were injured. Had it been one bomb, it would have been bad enough, but three in a concert was particularly frightening for the city. It also put CIA on high alert. The work they'd been doing before was nothing compared to the sudden anger and frustration everyone showed. Plenty of people looked at Brody, and Carrie, as though they'd done something wrong. Brody should have come forward sooner. Carrie shouldn't have trusted him so much. Maybe if they'd come up for air this wouldn't have happened.

Carrie though all that and more, although she never really blamed Brody. At least, not any more than she blamed any of them for missing it. They'd messed up, not gotten to the answer fast enough. For her, everything else fell away. The work was everything and she spent as many hours as she was allowed at work. She had to be shoehorned out of the building to go home and rest, but when she was there she didn't sleep. She only ate when someone put food in front of her. This was the Carrie Brody had never seen, that her family worried about, that Carrie held on a tight leash.

She paced her dining platform, looking at the notes and schedules she had posted to her wall, sure she was still missing something crucial. She had music playing, the kind of jazz that normally settled her, but it wasn't doing shit and she could feel her skin start to crawl, but she had to work, had to figure out where they'd gone wrong.

Comments

[neverwrongagent]

His tease made her clamp down around him and grind against his hand. That drove him deeper into her, almost painfully. She wasn't going to last much longer and she told him so explicitly, warning him how tightly she would hold him when she came, how loud she was going to be.

[posterboymarine]

Since not a bit of that sounded like a bad thing, he just chuckled roughly and nodded, before pressing harder against her. The more he got from her, the more he'd give her, he'd have no choice.

[neverwrongagent]

It was almost a challenge and she took it without hesitation. Grinding against him, she told him with gasps and shudders just how close she was until she shook with her release. She stayed pressed hard against him, closed tight around him, until the strongest pulses were done. Then she found her breath again to tell him how good it was, how much she loved it.

[posterboymarine]

When she climaxed, he went still, feeling every moment of it. Even as she told him what she was feeling, he added his own words, his own feelings. And when she finally settled, he started to move again.

[neverwrongagent]

Her tremors didn't fully stop because of his movements. She wanted to give him what he'd just given her. Not only the physical, but the sense of freedom that came with it. "Come on, baby, let go. Please, let me feel it."

[posterboymarine]

He didn't need her words to let go, but they went a long way toward speeding the process. He clung to her hips for only a few more moments before his whole body convulsed under her. He moaned her name and held her hips hard enough to leave fingerprint sized bruises. And he moved until he was past the point of being empty.

[neverwrongagent]

She moved with him, wincing slightly at his grip even though she craved it. As he slowed, she sank down onto him. "See, now, whenever you want to do that? Fine with me. Really." She groaned weakly. "Any time."

[posterboymarine]

He laughed roughly as he hugged her to his chest. "Good to know. Cause I'm pretty sure I'm going to want to do that again soon."

[neverwrongagent]

She lay in his arms, panting roughly for a long while. She wasn't over thinking, wasn't thinking about work, in fact she wasn't thinking about much of anything. All she was doing was smiling and enjoying his arms around her. If she were asked, she'd say she was happy. Really, simply happy.

[posterboymarine]

Listening to her breath lulled him into a dreamless sleep. All things considered, with all they'd been through in the last few days, dreamless was damn near a miracle.

So his phone ringing in the middle of the night was certainly less than pleasant and he snarled as he searched for it.

[neverwrongagent]

Even from her solid sleep, Carrie knew the difference between her phone and his. That didn't mean she wasn't fully awake by the time he had the phone and was making unhappy noises. She didn't want unhappy noises when things were momentarily so good. Giving him room, she sat up and turned on a side table light, then waited to see what was going on.

[posterboymarine]

The phone conversation spent a few moments as a growled argument, then ended with an agreement for him to meet someone. When he hung up, he stared at his phone for a few moments, then he looked at her.

"Wake them all up."

[neverwrongagent]

She was moving before he finished his sentence. She dialed Saul, not stopping to wait for an answer before she started getting dressed. She glanced at Brody. "What do I tell them?"

[posterboymarine]

He sighed as he got up. "Tell them to meet us at the safehouse in an hour. I have a meet with Walker in two hours."

[neverwrongagent]

Carrie blinked, hard, then nodded. A moment later, as she yanked on her pants, she was repeating that to Saul. He had questions and so did she, but she put him off until they could all be together. Answering the once was more efficient. She made one more call, to someone who could put together the team, then she sat down to pull on her shoes. "They couldn't have fucking waited for us to get a decent night's sleep?"

[posterboymarine]

His laugh was bitter at that. "I never get that much sleep when things are in play. You mean you do?"

After he dressed, he armed himself. The hairs on the back of his neck had been standing up since the phone rang. He was not going to be caught off guard.

A coat went on last and he headed downstairs, slipping into operational mode.

[neverwrongagent]

She didn't ever sleep, that's why she was so pissed off. Brody was spoiling her. Seeing him suit up this way, just him away from all the teams, gave her a little shiver and she couldn't figure out if that was good or bad. It was a reminder of just how very competent he was, at least. They took his car because he couldn't exactly go on from the safe house in hers and she would probably be in some Agency van. With grumbling co-workers.

She glanced over at him. "This could be it, the end of all of it."

[posterboymarine]

He raised his eyebrow at her and nodded. "Yes. It could be. Or it could be just the beginning." At a stoplight, he looked over at her for a long moment. "How far are you willing to go?" Even he wasn't sure if he meant her, as an individual, or the whole team, or the whole of the CIA.

[neverwrongagent]

She got the levels of his question immediately and didn't answer for another few lights. She couldn't answer for an entire government agency, not even for the intentions of her immediate supervisors, so she left that one unanswered. She shrugged slightly. "I said I wouldn't leave again."

[posterboymarine]

He gave a sharp nod. That was the answer he was expecting and hoping for. "Then let's do this thing."

They arrived at the safehouse and were greeted by a group of frantically working agents. He nodded to those he'd been working with and eyed the few new faces. In this, he didn't immediately trust anyone he didn't know.

He waited, rather impatiently, for the briefing to be called, pacing in the only unoccupied space in the big room.

[neverwrongagent]

Nothing really happened until Saul got there and he was always the last there. Carrie thought he planned it that way because he hated waiting for anyone else. He didn't like repeating himself or missing anything. For her part, she wasn't any happier about the new faces than Brody was. Too many variables, too many agencies. And watching him pace wasn't doing her mind any favors.

Saul finally strode in and looked around the room. His gaze slowed over Carrie and even more over Brody. "All right, what do we know?"

[posterboymarine]

Brody gave Saul a nod, then grabbed a map and laid it over the biggest table. Before speaking, he marked off the bombing locations and the meeting point Walker had picked. It was outside the radius formed by the explosions, which meant it had not been searched in the aftermath.

When Brody started speaking, he was looking at Saul, but addressing Carrie. The phone conversation had been short, but it had been heavy with information. He dispassionately described the argument he'd had, which had involved collateral damage and pointless showmanship. That Walker was willing to claim any sort of ownership, much less enough that he was upset with Brody for not appreciating it spoke to the other man's confidence in his mission and that he could bring Brody over to it.

Clearly, even now, Walker thought of Brody as an ally, which meant that Brody was being watched better than he would have liked. Walker knew he was getting back up to fighting weight and he believed that it was so that he could join his former partner in jihad. Brody knew that saying any of that put him right back in the suspected terrorist crosshairs, but there just wasn't time to fuck around.

"So, all that being said, he wants to have a chat, to see if I'm with him. And if I'm not, he's not going to let me walk out of there alive." Brody knew those were the rules of engagement. That was the business they were all in.

[neverwrongagent]

Carrie listened to every word, but she could follow him half asleep with her eyes closed. She was more focused on the others in the room and how they were taking his news. Most of the people who'd worked closest with him since just before the bombing had built up some respect for him. Saul still wasn't sure, but Carrie thought that had more to do with her than anything rational. Then there were the guys who'd brought him in on this in first place. She didn't real care what they thought.

It was the FBI who worried her. They hadn't liked any of this from the start and she could see they were looking for any excuse to put an end to it. If they were responsible for any part of protecting Brody, it could end badly.

Saul nodded slowly. "Then you'll have to be with him, won't you?"

[posterboymarine]

He looked at Carrie, to gauge her reaction as he answered. "الحمد لله رب العالمين*"

He looked around the room after his statement, looking for those that would be a problem for him.

* Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds

[neverwrongagent]

It took Saul a moment to adjust his reaction from surprise to acceptance. Brody's answer was the right one, the one that would get them somewhere, but both he and Carrie could see that it didn't sit well with the Feebs. He caught Carrie's gaze and within an instant, knew she'd spotted the same issue. Of course, one of their analysts was translating the Arabic, so that was a fairly obvious sign of fail on their part.

The next step was setting up a reliable system for tracking Brody and Walker's meet. They wasted a good half hour with the FBI insisting that Brody be treated like an enemy combatant, not that they said it quite that way. Finally Saul, who would have loved nothing more than to have the Marine out of his protege's life, put a stop to that. They'd committed to him, he was their play. What he couldn't control, unfortunately, was that most of the on the ground would would be the FBI.

The one thing Carrie wanted to do, that she thought she wasn't going to be able to for a while, was touch Brody. Even the smallest contact would help.