Chapter 6: Grocery Tension
The line for the phone kiosk was twelve people deep, a slow-moving serpent of disinterested boredom. Levi assessed it from a distance, his expression flattening further.
“Unacceptable,” he stated. “Static positioning in a high-traffic choke point for an estimated forty-three minutes. We’ll come back later.”
“Or,” Aria said, nudging him toward a towering, brightly lit superstore that anchored the far end of the complex. Its automatic doors hissed open and shut like a mechanical lung. “We go in there, grab the phone, the creamer, the cold brew, and the foam, and be done in twenty. One-stop operational efficiency, Captain.”
He eyed the cavernous entrance, his gaze tracking the security cameras, the employee in a blue vest chatting on a headset, the flow of carts. “Fine. In and out. Stick to the perimeter. The interior aisles are visual dead zones.”
Inside, the scale was monstrous. The ceiling soared, stacked with industrial steel racks laden with pallets of toilet paper and dog food. The air was a cocktail of synthetic pine cleaner, popcorn, and faint plastic. A low, pervasive hum vibrated up from the floor.
Levi stopped just past the threshold, his body rigid. His eyes weren’t scanning for human threats anymore. They were wide, locked on the far wall of the electronics section.
It was a fortress of glowing screens. Dozens of them, all playing a cascading loop of the same advertisement: a drone’s-eye view of a forest, then a city, then a mountain range. Silent, sweeping, omnipotent visuals. Next to them, mannequins wearing virtual reality headsets stood frozen in poses of artificial wonder. Another wore a brightly colored smartwatch. Another was dressed in a cheap, polyester replica of a modern military uniform, complete with plastic medals.
“Levi?” Aria’s voice was soft beside him.
He didn’t hear her. His breath had hitched, just slightly. The wall of screens was a flashing, impossible cataract of information. The mannequins were mockeries of soldiers, of scouts. The uniform was a costume. A profound, visceral wrongness gripped him. It wasn’t fear of an enemy. It was the dissonance of a world that packaged surveillance and warfare as consumer leisure. That sold the aesthetic of authority stripped of all its bloody context.
His hand found the cold metal of a shelf bracket beside him. He grounded himself on its tangible reality.
“Levi,” Aria said again, her hand coming to rest lightly on his forearm. The touch was an anchor. “It’s just TVs. They’re just… pictures.”
He dragged his eyes from the spectacle, down to her face. Her brow was furrowed with concern, but not pity. She understood. She’d seen the real thing. This plastic-and-pixel pantomime was an insult to that memory.
“I know,” he said, the words tight. He took a controlled breath. “The phone. Where.”
She guided him, her hand staying on his arm, a point of contact as they moved parallel to the glaring wall. He kept his gaze forward, fixated on the hanging signs: ELECTRONICS, MOBILE.
The phone selection was another wall of choices. Aria went straight for the rose quartz model, plucking a box from its peg. Levi immediately took it from her, turning it over, examining the packaging. “The case,” he reminded her.
She found a sturdy, clear case and a screen protector kit. He nodded approval. “It maintains the device’s structural profile without adding bulk. Good.”
Then she led him to the grocery section. The chill of the dairy aisle was a shock. She moved with purpose, selecting a large bottle of Starbucks cold brew, a carton of sweet cream cold foam, and a jug of caramel creamer.
He picked up the creamer, reading the label. His nose wrinkled almost imperceptibly. “Natural and artificial flavors. Sodium stearoyl lactylate. Dipotassium phosphate.”
“It’s delicious,” she said, taking it from him and placing it in the cart he was now pushing with a soldier’s precise control.
“It’s a chemical engineering project. And ice? We have a freezer.”
“I need a bag for the car. You can’t just have a cooler without ice, Levi. That’s not how it works.” She tossed a bag of ice into the bottom of the cart.
He stared at the growing collection: the pink phone, the chemical creamer, the overpriced coffee concentrate, the bag of melting ice. His cart at home held rice, beans, vegetables, and protein. This was a cart of colored sugar and caffeinated luxury.
“Plus I rarely drink hot coffee. I usually make my own iced coffee,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “Usually buy Starbucks cold brew from Target and Starbucks creamer and a thing of cold foam and bag of ice of course.”
He looked from the cart to her earnest face. A profound, bewildered fatigue washed over him. Not from the mission, but from the cosmos-spanning gulf between their two experiences of this world. He had learned its dangers, its infrastructures, its threats. She had learned its flavors.
“Jesus,” he muttered, the word escaping like a soft sigh. “You’ve become… spoiled.”
It wasn’t an accusation. It was an observation, tinged with a strange, distant awe. She had not just adapted; she had curated a life from this planet’s bizarre bounty.
Her smile faded. She looked down at the items, then back at him. Her voice was very quiet, meant only for him in the vast, humming aisle. “It’s just coffee, Levi.”
But it wasn’t. They both knew it. It was the difference between surviving and living. Between a fortress and a home. He had built one. She, alone, had built the other.
He gave a single, sharp nod. “Right.” He pushed the cart toward the self-checkout, his movements efficient once more. “Let’s move.”
Back in the car, the bags secured in the trunk, the silence was different. The tension from the wall of screens had melted, replaced by a contemplative stillness. Aria plugged her new phone into the car charger, the screen blooming to life with a soft glow.
“I’ll disable the trackers at home,” Levi said, pulling out of the parking lot. “There are… procedures.”
“I know,” she said, her fingers flying across the screen with a practiced ease that still seemed like witchcraft to him. She was downloading apps, signing into a universe of connections he deliberately avoided.
He drove, his eyes on the road, his mind circling the creamer, the ice, the easy way she navigated the glowing interface. Spoiled was the wrong word. It was inadequate. She was fluent. She spoke the language of this time in a way he never would, never wanted to. The realization should have been a wedge, a confirmation of their separation. Instead, it settled on him with a weight that felt like grief, and something else. Something like responsibility.
He couldn’t give her this world. He didn’t understand it. But he could, he realized, make sure nothing in it took her from him again.
“We need to talk about the doctor,” he said, his tone shifting into something low and operational.
Her fingers stopped tapping. “Okay.”
“He has leverage. Legal, systemic leverage. He can use the state to remove you if he convinces them you’re a danger to yourself or incapable.” Levi’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “Your established life in Binghamton is your best defense. Your job, your bank account, your apartment. They prove stability. We need to reinforce that.”
“I called my boss yesterday,” she offered. “Told her I had a family emergency out of state but that I’d be back. She was cool about it.”
“Good. That’s a data point in your favor.” He paused. “We also need a counter-narrative. A reason for your… disappearance from the hospital. One that doesn’t involve time-displaced soldiers.”
“What, like I just woke up and walked out? They’d never buy that.”
“No.” Levi’s mind worked, cold and logical. “But they might buy a story of coercion. Of a manipulative individual isolating you. If the threat comes from outside, it explains your erratic behavior to them, and reframes your departure as an escape to safety, not from it.”
Aria stared at him. “You want me to say someone was… holding me? Threatening me?”
“I want you to have a viable counter-claim if he escalates.” Levi’s voice was stone. “A shadow. A vague description of a person who approached you at the hospital, who made you fear for your safety, who prompted you to flee to a trusted contact—me. It explains why you ran, why you didn’t trust the system. It makes you a victim of a different crime, one they have to investigate, which buys time and muddies his water.”
“That’s… dark,” she whispered.
“It’s a tactical feint,” he corrected. “We create a shadow for him to chase. His credibility versus yours. And we back yours with your established, verifiable life. It’s not a guarantee. But it’s a defensible position.”
She was quiet for the rest of the drive, watching the identical suburban streets slide by. He could see her processing it, the barista who made cheerful small talk now being schooled in a very different kind of warfare.
Back in the apartment, the fortress welcomed them with its familiar chill. Levi locked the door, engaged the two additional deadbolts, and placed the bags on the counter with methodical care. He emptied Aria’s new purchases first: the phone, the case, the screen protector. He produced a small, sleek toolkit from a drawer.
“Sit,” he said, nodding to a stool.
She obeyed, watching as he slit the phone box open with a precise blade. He removed the device, powered it on, and without looking at the setup prompts, began his process. He inserted a thin cable from his own laptop, his fingers flying across the keyboard. Lines of code scrolled on the screen.
“What are you doing?”
“Bypassing the proprietary setup. Disabling location services, diagnostics, ad tracking, cloud backups, and any unverified background processes.” His eyes never left the screen. “Installing a basic security protocol. It will now operate as a communication and research device only. Its digital footprint will be minimal.”
He then opened the screen protector kit. With a surgeon’s steady hand, he cleaned the glass, aligned the film, and applied it in one flawless, bubble-free motion. Finally, he snapped the clear case into place. He handed her the secured, sanitized phone.
“It’s clean.”
She took it, her thumb brushing over the perfect screen. “You’re really good at that.”
“It’s a simple procedure.” He turned his attention to the grocery bag, removing the cold brew, the creamer, the foam. He inspected each, his critical eye scanning the refrigeration instructions, the expiration dates. He opened the creamer, sniffed it, and his lip curled again. “This will be stored here,” he said, placing it on the top shelf of the fridge with clear disapproval. “Contaminated.”
“It’s not contaminated, it’s caramel,” she laughed, but it was a tired sound.
The sound of her laugh, even a tired one, did something to the quiet, sterile space. It left an echo the room wasn’t built for. Levi finished putting the items away, wiped down the countertop where the bags had sat, and washed his hands thoroughly.
When he turned, she was still sitting on the stool, looking at her new phone, her new, grey-clad reflection in the dark oven door. She seemed suddenly small, adrift between the two worlds.
He walked over and stood before her. He didn’t touch her. He just stood there, an immutable fact in the clean, cold light.
“It is just coffee,” he said, his voice low. “And the phone is just a tool. And the clothes are just fabric.” He paused, choosing his next words with more care than he’d used on the phone’s operating system. “But you choosing them matters. Your… fluency here matters. It is a strength I don’t have. We will use it.”
She looked up, her eyes searching his. “And the shadow? The story?”
“We’ll craft it. Together. It’s just another kind of cover.” He reached out then, not to pull her close, but to gently tap the phone in her hand with one fingertip. “For now, use your tool. Reconnect to your life. Show the digital world you are present, and functional, and exactly where you choose to be.”
He turned and walked to the sink, filling a glass with water, giving her the space to move, to breathe, to be the person she’d become. He listened to the soft taps of her thumbs on the screen, a new and familiar sound in his quiet fortress. It wasn’t an intrusion. It was an update. A notification from the world she carried within her, proof that she was, against all odds, still here. And still, irrevocably, herself.
Her thumbs moved across the screen with a fluid confidence that was foreign to me. This was her terrain, this glowing rectangle of connections and coded signals. I watched from the kitchen, washing the single coffee mug I’d used that morning, the steam rising in the sterile air. Her face was lit by that pale blue light, her expression shifting—a small smile at a message from her boss, a slight frown at something else. She was rebuilding her perimeter in this digital space, and I was the static sentry at the edge of it. The weight of the small, discreet box in my pocket felt suddenly immense, a secret orbit pulling at my gravity.
It had been an impulse. A lapse in operational discipline. While she’d been comparing phone cases, my eyes had scanned, categorized, and dismissed the surrounding retail landscape until they landed on a particular display. The toys were garish, ridiculous things. But one item, sleek and silicone and a soft, dusty pink, had made my mind go blank and sharp all at once. I knew that color now. Rose quartz. The memory of her whispering it was a hot wire in my spine. I knew her body, its rhythms and its hidden, hungry preferences better than I knew this century. Before logic could intervene, before the soldier could scoff at the emotional compromise, I’d plucked it from the shelf, paid for it separately with the last of my cash, and slid the box into my inner pocket. It had burned there ever since, a secret more intimate than any battle plan.
She sighed, a soft, tired exhalation, and set the phone face down on the counter. The sound drew me from my thoughts. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “My boss is cool, but my rent is still due in Binghamton,” she said, her voice muffled. “I can’t just… stay here forever.”
“You can,” I said. The words were out, flat and absolute, before I could temper them.
She looked up, her expression unreadable.“As what? A guest? You’ve got one coffee mug, Levi. This isn’t a place for people. It’s a bunker.”
“It can be adapted.” I dried the mug, placed it perfectly in the center of the drying rack. “The logistical concerns are secondary. Your safety is the only operational priority.”
“Safety,” she repeated, as if tasting the word. She slid off the stool and walked to the window, peering through the slats of the blind at the parking lot below. The electric glow from the lot painted stripes of artificial light across her face. “Safe is a boring word. It feels like waiting. I spent two and a half years waiting. I’m done with it.”
A current moved through me, swift and dark. She was vibrating with a restless energy that the sterile walls of my apartment couldn’t absorb. I’d seen it before, in the days before a mission she wasn’t allowed on. It was a energy that needed direction, or it would find its own, more dangerous, outlet.
I crossed the room silently. She didn’t turn, but her shoulders tensed, sensing my presence at her back. I didn’t touch her. I spoke into the space between her neck and the window glass.
“What do you need, Aria?”
She shivered. “I don’t know. To feel something that isn’t fear or confusion or… this quiet.” She finally turned, her back against the blinds. Her eyes were searching mine, fierce and lost. “Make me feel something else.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a challenge. And it bypassed every protocol, every careful layer of control I’d built. My hand came up, not to caress, but to cradle the side of her face, my thumb brushing the apple of her cheek. Her skin was so warm. “I can do that,” I said, my voice dropping into a lower register. It was the voice I used only with her, in the dark, when the world was just a room and the only mission was her pleasure. “But you have to tell me what you want. Use your words, sweet girl.”
She swallowed, her defiance softening into a different kind of heat. “I want you to fuck me out of my own head. I want to not think for an hour.” Her gaze dropped to my mouth, then back up. “I want you to remind me who I belong to.”
A sharp, possessive thrill cut through me. That was a language I understood. My other hand came up, framing her face, holding her look. “You know who you belong to. Say it.”
“You,” she whispered, and the submission in it, the trust, was the most potent thing I’d ever felt.
“Good.” I closed the last inch and took her mouth, not with tenderness, but with a consuming claim. My tongue plunged past her lips, tasting the faint sugar of the creamer she’d sampled earlier. She met me with equal hunger, her hands fisting in the fabric of my shirt, pulling me into her. The kiss was a battle for air, for dominance, for the sheer physical proof of each other’s existence. I walked her backward, never breaking the contact, until her legs hit the edge of the couch. I broke the kiss, my breathing ragged. “Clothes off.Now. I want to see you.”
She didn’t hesitate. She pulled the grey sweater up and over her head, her hair catching in the fabric for a moment before she shook it free. The lace bra she’d bought was a pale pink, a stark, beautiful rebellion against the drab apartment. Her fingers went to the button of her new jeans. I caught her wrists. “Let me.”
I undressed her with a slow, deliberate purpose that made her breath hitch. Each button undone, each inch of skin revealed, was a reclamation. The jeans pooled at her feet. The pink lace pantries followed. She stood there, shivering slightly in the conditioned air, bathed in the sterile light from the kitchen. She was a vision of softness and color in my monochrome world. My gaze felt like a physical touch.
“Turn around,” I said, my voice rough. “Bend over the back of the couch.”
A flicker of surprise, then understanding, and then pure arousal darkened her eyes. She obeyed, presenting herself to me. The curve of her ass was perfection. My hands settled on her hips, my thumbs stroking the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. I leaned down, my mouth close to her ear. “I bought you something today. When you weren’t looking.”
I felt the slight tremor run through her. “What?”
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the small box, and set it on the couch cushion beside her hip. She twisted her head to look. Her sharp intake of breath was all the confirmation I needed. “Levi…”
“You love this,” I stated, my voice a low rumble against her spine as I traced the line of it with my lips. “You love when I open you up, when I fill that tight little hole until you’re begging. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” she breathed, the word a shudder.
“Then be still.”
I opened the box. The plug was a sleek, graceful curve of shimmering pink silicone. I squirted a generous amount of lube onto my fingers, warming it. I didn’t tease her outer folds first. I went straight to the furl of her asshole, circling it with a slick, insistent pressure. She jerked, a muffled gasp catching in the couch cushions. “Relax,” I commanded, pressing one finger slowly, inexorably, inside. The tight, hot clutch of her was exquisite. She was so fucking tight here. I worked my finger in and out, coating her inner muscles, feeling them spasm and gradually give way. “That’s it. Take it.”
When I added a second finger, she cried out, her back arching. “Levi… fuck…”
“You can take more,” I murmured, scissoring my fingers gently, stretching her for the toy.“You will. Because I want to see this pink jewel buried in your ass while I fuck your perfect cunt. I want to see it every time I push into you.”
The filthy words, the stark image, made her moan into the cushion. Her hips pushed back against my hand, seeking more. I withdrew my fingers, picked up the plug, and coated it thoroughly. The tapered tip pressed against her. “Breathe out,” I ordered, and as she exhaled, I pushed the tip inside.
Her whole body went taut, a strangled sound escaping her. I paused, letting her adjust to the initial stretch. “Easy,” I soothed, one hand rubbing her lower back. Then I pushed again, slowly, firmly, watching the silicone disappear into her until the flared base rested snug against her, the pink jewel a shocking, lewd ornament against her skin.
She was panting, her knuckles white where she gripped the couch. “It’s so… full.”
“I know.” I ran a possessive hand over the curve of her ass, over the base of the plug. “It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful like this.” I undid my own pants, freeing my cock. I was painfully hard, aching. I smoothed lube over myself, then guided my tip to her other entrance, dripping and ready for me. “Now for the main event, sweet girl.”
I notched the head against her soaked opening and pushed inside in one long, relentless stroke. The cry she let out was pure, raw pleasure. The sensation was overwhelming—the incredible tight, wet heat of her cunt, and the firm, unyielding pressure of the plug inside her right next to it, making every internal contour impossibly vivid. She was unbelievably tight around me, a silken, clutching vice.
“Oh god,” she sobbed, pushing back against me. “Levi, it’s… it’s too much…”
“It’s exactly enough,” I growled, setting a brutal, deep rhythm. Each thrust drove the plug deeper, made her gasp. The filthy, wet sounds of our joining filled the quiet room. I gripped her hips hard, my fingers sure to leave bruises, marking her as mine. “This cunt is mine. This ass is mine.You feel that? You feel how full you are?”
“Yes! Yes, I feel it, please!” Her words were a broken chant.
I bent over her, my chest to her sweaty back, my mouth at her ear. My thrusts became shorter, harder, piston-like, aimed directly at that spot I knew would unravel her. “You’re going to come on my cock with that plug in your ass. You’re going to show me how much you love belonging to me.”
The command, the overwhelming stimulation, tipped her over. She screamed, her inner muscles clenching around me in a violent, rhythmic pulsing that milked my cock perfectly. The sight of her coming undone, the pink jewel glinting between her cheeks as she trembled, shattered my own control.
I followed her with a raw, guttural sound, my hips slamming into her one last, deep time as I emptied myself inside her. The orgasm was a white-hot wire stripping me bare, a torrent of possession and relief so profound my vision blurred at the edges.
We stayed like that, locked together, breathing in ragged unison. The only sound was our gasping breaths and the distant hum of the refrigerator. I could feel the base of the plug pressing against my pelvis with every slight movement. Slowly, carefully, I pulled out of her. She whimpered at the loss. I turned her around, pulling her against me, her sweaty skin sticking to my shirt. I kissed her forehead, her temple, holding her up as her legs shook.
Her face was buried in my neck. “I’m not… thinking anymore,” she managed, her voice wrecked and satisfied.