The door of the apartment clicked shut behind him. Leo stumbled and took the elevator down.
The elevator opened onto a lobby that looked empty until it wasn't.
The receptionist's desk had a man behind it, technically. His upper half was inside the mailboxes along the near wall, head and both shoulders swallowed by whichever box he'd gotten into, his bottom half sticking out awkwardly.
Leo heard a low, coaxing whisper.
"That's it. Come on. Take it, little guy. Take it."
Leo slowed his walk.
The whisper continued, intimate and encouraging, directed at whatever was inside the mailbox with full sincerity.
Leo shifted his weight to the right, kept his bad leg as quiet as a bad leg could manage, and began the longest fifteen feet of his morning. He had no desire to find out what exactly was happening.
But his injuries betrayed him. He stumbled a little.
"Hello? Hello? Is there someone there?" The man tried to pull himself out but couldn't. "Hold on, I'm a little stuck."
The man's attempts only made Leo push himself harder until he reached the door.
When he finally walked through, the man said something behind him that Leo decided, on reflection, was something he did not need to retain.
Now outside, the sun hit him at the wrong angle — too bright for the kind of afternoon he was having. He squinted, set his shoulders, and started walking.
He quickly learned his left leg wouldn't take it. He shifted most of his weight to the right and let one hand graze the brick of the building for the first ten feet, until the wall ran out and he had to commit to open sidewalk with no support.
He really wanted to get home. As he oriented himself, he was happy to find out he was actually not that far.
His thoughts strayed as he walked.
His kidnappers were upstairs, somewhere behind him, in whatever state he had left them in. It all hit him. Their bodies, their actions, his actions, his words, what happens when they get free.
'Oh, god.'
His mental state during that process was really not at it's best. He wanted to forget it all. He filed all his thoughts, sealed it, and told himself he'd deal with it later. Maybe never.
'I doubt I'll ever see them again. They have nothing to do with me. I bet nobody I interact with even knows them.'
Leo tried to reassure himself.
Besides, right now he had to get home and deal with the tutoring and Marge. He didn't want all his careful planning and efforts to go to waste.
He took another step. The leg buckled and caught.
In his struggles, a car horn tapped behind him, twice.
He turned slower than he should have. The neck pulled where something in it had decided to seize up over the last hour. A blue sedan was idling at the curb two car-lengths back, the driver's window rolled down.
Edna Krabappel was leaning across the passenger seat with the door already open.
"Get in."
It wasn't a question. He thought about explaining and decided against it. The door was open.
He got in.
Sitting hurt in a way standing hadn't. The seat caught his lower back at an angle his ribs didn't like. He tried to mitigate the pain with a hand on the dash. The door shut beside him.
Edna stared at him. It seemed like she had questions.
"Got a little banged up," he said, before she got there. "It's nothing."
Edna nodded. It seemed like she had more important matters to address. She put the car in drive, checked her mirror, pulled into traffic. The opposite direction of his house, by the way.
Leo hadn't been near Edna in a long while. He looked.
The green sweater. The same one, or another out of the same drawer; it didn't matter. It was stretched across her chest the way it had been the first time, double-E on a frame built for less, the cable knit pulling at the seams under the arms. Pencil skirt rode up an inch from the sit. One arm draped on the wheel, the other hand resting flat on her own thigh.
The closed window concentrated her smell of cigarettes.
She drove a block in silence. Then, apparently she decided it was time.
"Skinner."
"Hm?"
"Skinner. He's the reason I pulled over."
"Ah."
Her eyes stayed on the road. "Boo."
"…What?"
"That's what he does. Strike's over. I run his sponsorship program like we agreed. And the man stands behind me in the hallway and goes Boo."
"Isn't that normal behavior for him?"
"Kind of. But now it's different. He sits next to me at the long faculty table during announcements and scoots his chair an inch closer every couple of minutes. He stands in my classroom doorway during my free period and says nothing for ten minutes. He brings me coffee. From the lounge. Unprompted. I don't drink it. He brings another one the next day. He walks me to my car three days a week now. Times it to my last bell so I can't beat him out of the building."
"Sounds charming."
"It's not. It's like an obsession with me all of a sudden. He's scheduled a four-thirty in his office today. Door closed. To 'review fundraiser allocations.' I have already done the allocations. He even invited the donors. He doesn't need to be in that room if that's what it's really about. We both know it."
Leo nodded once. He kept his face still.
"The second I start bringing in money he can't sit more than five feet away from me. I think him seeing me with more power and influence is either scaring him or it's making me seem very attractive. Maybe both. I don't know what he's planning."
She glanced over.
"Luckily… I saw you. And I thought… what if you walk in there at four-thirty. The man whose calls built the whole sponsorship program in the first place. Honestly, you have this aura. Skinner feels threatened when you're within his presence after what you did. I can tell. So… five minutes. Just a handshake. Maybe a question about how the funds are being allocated. A comment about how lucky the school is to have me running it. That's all. He'll know you're paying attention. He'll have to."
Edna kinda wished she could also say, 'And to top it off, maybe a kiss in front of everyone.' Locking this handsome man down to herself was something she really wanted.
Leo took a slow read of his own pulse.
He did not like other men touching things that belonged to him. But it was very bad timing at the moment.
"That's not the only thing." Edna continued.
"No?"
"There's a room at the school. Closes after three. Used for storage. I have the only key. Empty rolling carts I can push out of the way. More room than the back seat by a long way." Her eyes stayed on the road. "The car was the car. I can do better than the car."
This was the moment he wanted to say yes the most.
'Marge or Edna?' Leo weighed it in his head. It was hard. But deep down, Leo knew. He had already fucked Edna. And Leo loved the chase. The process was always so fun.
"Edna —"
She didn't let him finish. Her hand came across without warning, fingers walking slow up the inside of his thigh, and the look on her face was the kind of grin a woman wears when she already knows what she's about to get out of a yes. Playing with him.
Her hand kept going. Her fingertips grazed the inseam, her palm started to slide up to the front of him, and her wrist came up across his side as she stretched to make the reach.
The wrist caught the ribs.
The breath went out of him before he could shape it. Sharp inhale through his teeth. The whole left side of him pulled away from her hand on its own, his shoulder hitting the door before he could stop it.
She yanked her hand back like she'd grabbed something hot.
"Jesus, what was that."
"Sorry."
"Don't sorry me. What did I just hit? I know you said you were banged up a little… but that was not a little."
"Yeah, I might've downplayed it a little. Ribs."
The grin was gone. She checked her mirror, signaled, and pulled the sedan over to the curb, the engine still running. Her hand stayed on the gear shift. She turned in her seat to look at him properly.
"Hospital?"
"No, no… it's serious but I don't need the hospital at the moment."
She let the silence sit for a second. Leo took advantage of it.
"Actually… that's why I can't do today. I really want to help you but I can't. I can barely sit in this seat. If I tried to walk into the meeting like this I might be sending the wrong message."
She nodded.
"You know what, forget what I said. About Skinner. About the storage room. All of it."
"Edna —"
"No. Listen. I'm sitting here asking you to walk into a meeting for me when you can't even take a hand to the leg without flinching. You already did the heavy lifting once. The strike. The sponsorships. My whole new title. I got everything I asked for and now I'm pulling you in again for round two before the ink is dry on round one. That's not who I want to be." She shook her head. "Forget it. I'll handle Skinner. I've been handling Skinner since before you moved to this town. I'll come up with something."
"I know you could." Leo added extra emphasis on his regretful tone. "You're smart enough that you'll come up with something on your own. You don't actually need me in that office to keep him off you."
Even though he was basically agreeing not to help her, her heart still fluttered with his compliments.
"... But I'm still going to handle it. Not today. Another day. Don't worry, I'll make sure Skinner is handled. I promise. The whole thing ends after that."
She let that settle.
"Why."
"Edna."
"Mm."
"You remember the car?"
"Do I remember the car." She let that sit. "Leo. You ruined other men for me in that car. I have not been with anybody since. I don't even want to be. I touch myself every single night thinking about it. Every night. Without fail. Your hands, your cock, the whole thing. I get myself off remembering what you did to me back there and that's the only way I get to sleep. So yes. I remember the car."
Leo allowed himself a small, slow smile.
"Good. Because that wasn't a one-time thing. You're mine now, Edna."
"…Am I."
"You are. Skinner doesn't get within five feet of you. Nobody does. I'm not going to share you. You belong to me now."
Her hands settled in her lap. Her heart fluttered even more.
"Okay."
That was all she said. He took it.
She let the engine idle for another moment. He watched her process. Her shoulders shifted once. The angle of her jaw softened.
"Then let me do something else instead," she said. "You're the one who's hurt. I've been a wreck almost always. Today you let me handle things. Right after my meeting, let me stay with you. I'll be your nurse."
Leo loved the offer, but Manjula was currently at the house.
"I can give you special treatment," she elaborated. "I read once that the right kind of stress relief speeds up tissue recovery. I can give you something reallyyyy special. You'll heal faster."
"Oh? You read something like that?"
"I'm a teacher, Leo. I read."
"Mm-hm."
"Take the treatment."
"All right. But it can only be late. After ten. My place."
"All right." She paused, then realized. "I don't actually know where your place is."
"Right." He gave her the address. She nodded, repeated it back once under her breath, and committed it.
"Got it."
"One more thing. You can't come in the front."
She glanced over.
"I have a couple of out-of-state guests at the house this week. Senior people from a partner outfit. They've got the upstairs guest rooms through the end of the week. Bringing you in through the front door while they're under my roof reads as disrespectful, and these are not the kind of people I can afford to offend right now. So we keep the front clean. It's nothing about you, it's about them."
"What does your business even do that you've got business people sleeping at your house?"
"Industrial contracts. We're in the middle of a long retrofit in some places near here and the vendor reps are always flying in to review specs and walk the site. Their company picks up per diem. Putting them up at my place saves them a hotel bill, gets them to the site faster in the morning, makes me look like the good partner who took care of them on the trip. Everybody comes out ahead."
Lying was second nature.
She let that sit a second.
"Huh."
"That was it."
"That was it."
"I'll leave the back door unlocked. Once you're in, the hallway runs straight past the kitchen. But you don't need to walk that far. Just go in the first door to your right when you enter. Try to be quiet."
"Got it."
She put the car back in drive, checked the mirror, and pulled out from the curb. The few blocks left to his house went quick.
...
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[A/N]: Sorry my house blew up, my cat died, my job fired me, and then I got sick. I feel like these fanfic writers just come up with random excuses for fun because there is no way that all happened.
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