VIRTUAL ENCOUNTERS - PART ONE

Author: Shelley
Rating: FRAO
Summary: Oliver was completely contemptuous of Sydney when he first met her; in the next episode, he told Duncan that Sydney was all that mattered. So what happened between "5D" and "Escape" to change his mind?
Disclaimer: VR.5 belongs to John Sacret Young and Fox television. I own naught.
Notes: This was written for the 101 Nights of Multi-Fandom Porn Challenge. The prompt concerned one lover teasing the other with different angles of penetration until his partner is desperate. I wound up going in a different direction, but there is still plenty of teasing going on.

Thanks to Misbegotten, who kept this fic true to the show, and to Taryn who told me what I needed to make the story comprehensible to people who have never seen it.


After the last several days, Sydney had expected to crash. She needed to crash. The problem was she was too tired to sleep. She was too tired to do anything but stare at a half-dozen computer screens and think.

Oh, not because she wanted to think. Shit no. She was simply too tired to chase the thoughts away, no matter how little she wanted them.

She refused to think about her father or her sister, but that just meant that more recent deaths crowded in that much harder. Less painful, perhaps, but sharper. Her experiences in VR.5 had brought some clarity to Daddy and Samantha’s deaths, but they were still old aches. Not like the losses she had sustained this week. Dr. Hunnicutt. Boothe. And God, every time she closed her eyes there was Morgan again. Always Morgan.

No. *Not* always Morgan. The Committee. Always, always, *always* the Committee.

They’d taken care of Cooper for her. At the time she’d been grateful, but now that she’d seen the Committee in action, she really doubted that that freak was serving jail time. Boothe murdered Morgan and Hunnicutt. Her Committee-appointed protector killed Boothe. Just how much blood did they have on their hands? How much did she have on hers?

Sydney put her head down on her arms, wishing she could sleep at her desk so she wouldn’t have to go to her bed. The moment her eyelids came down, however, there was Morgan, dying right in front of her, giving her an unsolvable puzzle with his final breath. //It’s not what you think.//

She forced that image away, and Boothe promptly took his place. She could still feel him collapsing on top of her, crushing her with his weight and the guilt of his blood. She’d held Morgan as he died, but knife wounds didn’t bleed nearly as much as gunshot wounds. Not that it mattered how much either man bled when they both wound up dead in the end, but somehow she couldn’t seem to stop herself from comparing the two deaths, from trying to quantify them both.

Morgan and Boothe weren’t completely dissimilar, of course. Both men knew so much more than she did, and both were so eager to give her a critical piece of the puzzle during his final moment. Boothe’s voice blew through her head, the words as ephemeral as his meaning. //I’ll tell you everything. The Committee…//

"The Committee… The Committee what?" Sydney mused aloud. "The Committee told you to kill Morgan? They tried to stop you? I can trust them? They’re going to kill me? They’re going to steal my work? *What* about the fucking Committee?!?" Her questions poured out of her, sharp and angry, until she was almost howling. They echoed around her cavernous apartment, //Committee, Committee, Committee.//

"Fuck this," Sydney said to herself angrily. Maybe she couldn’t figure out what Boothe meant, but she knew who could. The Committee might be hidden in the shadows, but it also had a human face. With a phone number.

She set up her machines quickly, determined to act before the logical part of her brain could talk some sense into her. This could be a colossal mistake and she knew it. Oliver Sampson was a cipher to her, but somehow she knew instinctively that he wasn’t the sort of person that would take kindly to having his brain invaded. If the Englishman ever discovered that she took him into VR.5 without his consent, there would be hell to pay.

So where to take him? After a moment’s hesitation she reluctantly decided to leave it up to him. It was always dangerous to allow the other person’s subconscious to determine the setting, but it was also the best way to learn the subtler details about that person. So all she needed to do now was put on her goggles and gloves and dial.

He picked up on the third ring, his voice as chilly and emotionless over the phone as it was in person. "Sampson," he clipped out. Heart slamming into her chest, Sydney crashed the handset down and then leapt into the screaming colors that marked her passage into VR.5.

When the stream stopped, Sydney found herself in a white room. No colors, no lines, no shapes broke the whiteness. She was there in a surprisingly slutty black leather dress, Sampson was there, dressed in a perfectly tailored blue suit, and that was it. "Jesus," she breathed. "You don’t give anything away, do you?"

"Is there any reason I should?" he asked with cool curiosity.

"Everyone else has *something* here. A photograph, or a knick-knack, or a religious symbol, or *something* with an emotional significance. But you…"

"I am someone who can’t afford emotional connections," he said harshly. "Given my line of work, they will only get me killed." An odd look crossed his face, and he added softly, "Or get someone else killed." A framed photograph of a woman appeared in his hands and then disappeared just as quickly. "This is VR.5, isn’t it?"

"Yeah," Sydney acknowledged. "If you’re going to be my new contact with the Committee, I figured it might be a good idea for me to get to know you better."

"You couldn’t have asked me out to lunch?"

"Would you have come?"

"No," he admitted. "But that isn’t why you’ve done this. You want to ask me something but you don’t want me to remember the question."

Sydney blinked, surprised by his perceptiveness. "You’re right. Okay. Did the Committee kill Morgan?"

"I already told you that we didn’t," he said mildly.

"Yeah, but I wanted to ask you in here. It’s impossible to lie in here."

"Is it indeed?" Sampson studied her with impersonal interest. "That’s good to know."

"Thinking of ways to use me?"

"I’m thinking of many uses for you," he told her suggestively. Sydney blushed, causing Sampson to shrug. "In the interests of truth-telling, of course."

Sydney’s cheeks had taken on a neon glow that was only possible within the confines of VR.5. Still, she pressed on doggedly. "You haven’t answered the question. Do you know of any Committee involvement with Morgan’s death?"

"No."

"How about Hunnicutt?" she persisted. "Did the Committee tell Boothe to kill Hunnicutt?"

"Not to my knowledge," he told her. "No."

"Then how did you know to look for me there?" she asked.

Sampson sighed. "I’m your protector, Sydney. It is my business to know where you are."

"My protector, huh?" she breathed. "Would you protect me from the Committee if they decided they wanted me dead?"

Sampson smiled cruelly. "And that’s what this is about, isn’t it?"

"Me wanting to know whether or not you’re planning to slip a knife in my back? Well, yeah. That thought had crossed my mind."

He glided up to her, suddenly invading her personal space. "And what else do you think about when you wonder about your safety, Sydney? Can you speak those thoughts aloud?"

She wanted to pull away from him, but it was impossible. His green eyes pinned her in place and forced their way into her soul. She tried to bluff out her discomfort, but her voice sounded weak even to her as she said, "I have no idea what you’re talking about."

"Don’t you, Sydney? You forget, I went over your files very carefully before I ever met you. I know exactly why you’re here, now, with a man whom you know to be a killer."

"But you’re not-" Sydney gulped, suddenly afraid. "You just said-"

"That I had nothing to do with Morgan’s murder?" He gave her a tight condescending smile. "That’s true. But you watched me shoot Jackson Boothe just a few hours ago, didn’t you? You know that I’m capable of killing; you’ve seen me do it. And yet here you are."

"And you know why that is," she challenged.

"Indeed. According to your file, you haven’t had a romantic relationship for almost three years. Given your habit of renting pornography on a regular basis, frigidity seems unlikely." Sydney reddened again and started to object, but he didn’t give her the chance to speak. "All the evidence suggests that your friend Duncan is in love with you, but you never considered him or anyone else as a possible sexual partner. Scott Cooper was the first man you attempted to date since you were in college, and he turned out to be a serial killer."

"Yes, but-"

"Not long after your narrow escape from Cooper, Dr. Morgan asked you to go into VR.5 after Stuart Fisher. You were reluctant to go in until after Fisher tried to kill you; after that, you went to extraordinary lengths to help him."

"I didn’t understand him at first," Sydney said earnestly. "He was just a kid and-"

"And then there was your relationship with Jackson Boothe. According to Dr. Morgan’s reports, you called him far more often than you needed to." She nodded confirmation. "Why was that?"

Before she could formulate an answer, the white expanse of the room was suddenly broken by an old-fashion projection movie. To her shame, Sydney watched splotchy visions of Boothe holding her, grinding against her, trailing kisses down her neck. Movie Sydney clearly loved the attention and the real one was getting turned on watching herself.

Sampson moved closer, subtly copying Boothe’s movements as he leaned into her ear. "Tell me, Sydney. Was this before or after you learned that Boothe was an assassin? Before or after he murdered Morgan?"

"I don’t-"

"I know," Sampson asserted. "It was after, wasn’t it? You knew what Boothe was, and yet you still wanted him. That’s *why* you wanted him. You’re attracted to killers, aren’t you Sydney?"

"No," Sydney yelled. Or tried to yell. She wished she knew whether she was trying to convince Sampson or herself.

"And now that you know that *I’m* a killer, here you are. Ostensibly searching for answers, but actually on a virtual ‘booty call’." Sampson spoke the last two words in an outrageously awful imitation of an American accent, but Sydney had never felt less like laughing in her life. When he went back to his usual clipped tones, Sydney knew that she was in trouble. "What do you think, Sydney? Am I dangerous enough for you?"

"You’re wrong," she whispered weakly. "I like men with principles. With consciences."

"I have both," he assured her. "My work for the Committee negates neither. That’s why I work for them, in fact. And that’s why you’re trembling for my touch."

Sydney wanted to deny it-would have given anything to deny it, in fact-but she couldn’t. Partly because it was damn difficult to be dishonest here, but mostly because her desperation for his touch was overriding her innate shame and modesty. "Please," she begged weakly. "Please-"

She got no further before Sampson crushed his mouth down onto hers. He dug one hand into her hair and used the other to tug at the dress-length zipper on the back of her dress. Faster than she would have thought possible, her dress was off. Curious to see what sort of underwear her subconscious might have conjured for herself, Sydney broke the kiss and looked down. She was both scandalized and titillated to realize that she wasn’t wearing any at all.

When she brought her eyes back up, she found Sampson looking down at her with cynical amusement. "It may have been a while since you’ve seen it, but you have a beautiful body buried beneath those hideous lumberjack shirts you normally wear."

"So what do you have hiding behind your perfect designer suits?" she asked breathlessly.

He buried his face in her neck and began leaving a trail of kisses downwards. "Why don’t you find out for yourself?" he whispered silkily between kisses.

She froze for a moment, but when Sampson brought his mouth to her breast, her instincts took over. "Get up here, Sampson," she growled at him.

"Oliver," he gasped. Sydney was pleased to learn that she wasn’t the only one made breathless by this encounter. "Call me Oliv-"

She cut him off with a searing kiss. Her hands began clawing at his jacket and shirt, and they both disappeared as if by magic. She wanted to draw back to look at him, but she wasn’t ready to take her mouth away from his. Besides, he still wore his perfectly creased pants and that wouldn’t do.

She brought her hands down to his crotch and was gratified to feel the highly ample evidence of his arousal. He broke off their kiss with a gasp and immediately attacked her neck again. She trailed her hands upwards until she found his belt. Slowly, oh so slowly, she brought her hands together until she found his belt buckle. She felt the cold metal of the buckle and…

And she was suddenly overcome by streaming lights and howling colors. She was back in her own body.

Oliver’s metal belt buckle had been the escape key, the always unpredictable object that would throw her out of VR the moment she touched it.

"SHIT!" she screamed in frustration. She was more hot and bothered than she had ever been in her entire life, and there was no one to give her any relief. Normally she would just take of herself, but looking at her old ratty jeans, oversized flannel shirt and huge hiking boots wasn’t doing too much for her confidence in her own sexuality.

She didn’t want her own hand in any case. She wanted a man. She wanted Sampson. Oliver.

She grabbed the phone in order to call him back immediately, but then thought better of it. "Let’s set up things better this time," she said aloud.

She rolled her chair towards the keyboard and began furiously plugging in variables. She brought up the program for her loft and began modifying it, scattering roses, candles and champagne glasses throughout the apartment. It looked like a brothel, much to Sydney’s satisfaction.

She didn’t program in clothes for herself, deciding to trust her subconscious in that area, but she did input data with regard to Oliver’s clothes. She programmed in a navy blue silk gown for him, careful to ensure that he wore nothing that might be interpreted as an escape key should she touch it.

When she was certain that everything was set up properly, she dialed Oliver again. He picked up on the first ring. As soon as he said, "Hello," she slammed the phone down and underwent the familiar transition to VR.5.