I Came Out of the Wilderness
Chuck, Bryce/Sarah, PG.
Somewhere between Palestine and Finland, they have a few days off, apart, and she spends most of it curled in bed, wrapped around herself or Bryce alternately.
"Licking your wounds?" Bryce asks. He's shaving, neck pulled long, taut, his jugular standing out like a pulled violin string, and she follows it down to his exposed collarbone. She could kill him like this, easily, painlessly. She lets her eyelids flutter shut, an uneasiness unfurling in her belly.
"Something like that," only not really. It's more like piecing herself back together, trying to remember which parts of her are her alone, and which are Beth Langston, Rita Heller, Sarah Walker.
"I had this roommate in college," Bryce says, and he's grinning now, something loose and easy, fond, and it's out of place on his face, doesn't work, and she tries not to think about how she doesn't see it all that often. "He like. He couldn't hold his liquor at all, and he'd always crawl out of bed the mornings after and talk about how he felt like he didn't fit in his skin, like a shapeshifter or whatever, and he was some asshole wearing his own body instead of living in it. I can't even imagine how he'd feel playing us."
There's something in his expression that makes it look like he's telling the truth, and Sarah wonders if this is too close, if he's opening himself too much to this, to her.
"You could tell me something," Bryce says finally. "Anything."
And she sits up a little better, props herself on her elbows and watches the flick of his pupils, the brightness of his irises and opens her mouth to say, iI know/i, but kisses him instead, feels him breathe against her, into her like she's something to be trusted, wanted, even when she's not.
Later, he'll pull on a blazer, colour contacts and a tie, step into Alistair Simons like they're one and the same, and she'll wriggle into Monica Langseth like she's a size too small, wrong and too-tight and straining against her breasts and her stomach, and all she can hope is that the seams don't give when there's no one there to help sew her back up.
