Title: overtones
Author: agent blakeney
Disclaimer: My initials are not ABC. I own nothing.
Summary: V/S. A vingette. much angst.
Rating: PG
authors note: my first fic! i'm an engineer and a musician... bad combination.

italics indicate flashback

His eyes bored into her left shoulder. Her gaze was locked on the hinge of the warehouse cage gate above and behind his right ear. They had been standing this way, like cowboys at a high-noon standoff, for several minutes, each stabilizing their own breathing.

All he could hear was their breathing, shifting in and out of phase. He couldn't tell whose was whose and it didn't matter, because the breath rhythm was synced with heart rhythm and body rhythm and for one glorious moment there was resonant harmony.

"Vaughn." She spoke first, acknowledging his presence, nothing more. The hinge on the gate was rusty on the top, but not on the bottom.

"Agent Bristow." A muscle in her jaw jumped as she reset her teeth. Her eyes remained fixed, steady. Controlled.

He'd never seen her like this. She was losing control and it made her so human - so undeniably human. The superhero was gone and the woman was here, with him. He was making her lose control and was rapidly losing control himself. And he knew they both needed that.

She'd suppressed her wince as he bit off the syllables of her name. "This bug will allow us to listen in." He extended his arm to full length in her general direction and dropped the ziploc baggie into her hand. "Put it somewhere on your person...

The small of her back. The valley under her shoulder blades. The bend in her knee. The irregular fold in the lobe of her left ear. He explored them all one by one.

"...and then read back the code when you've got it. Photograph the portrait and then get out."

She had left the hinge alone and was studying the bug in her hand. "Right. I can do that. I'll let you know when I'm clear then." She should have left at that point. They were finished.

So this was what completion felt like.

"Sydney --" he started because she hesitated. His voice almost cracked but didn't. She looked up with the same set of her jaw. Back to the hinge, which at one point had been painted green.

"We're not going to do this," he said to her shoulder, his voice low and dangerous.

Her eyes snapped to his for the first time.

He was drowning. He was sure that whatever question life threw at him, every answer was right there in her eyes. He wanted to close his own, to focus on the sensation of her, but he knew that her eyes would be the only thing to keep him from believing that this had all been a dream.

"Of course we're not." Back to the hinge. Same dead set of the jaw. And then deliberately she stepped around him and walked out. She didn't look back. He didn't watch her go.

But the moment that she brushed passed him, the hum of his body jumped up the octave. It sang for a split second before everything shattered. She was ringing in his ears. He sank to his knees and let the tears come. And after he had wept for her, he filled out his report, and returned to the reality that was theirs together. And if they couldn't share anything else, they shared that.