terms
This is what treason will taste like.
"I want no concessions," he informs her straight off the bat, low, business-like. "Not from your Agency, not from you."
Curtly nodding her acquiescence: "Understood." They are both experts at lying through their teeth.
Seven weeks after the much spoken-of escape she will arrive home to find him waiting in the unlit bedroom, and with frustratingly little preamble she'll lower her guard and let him fuck her. Sark is the same, hungry and unsatisfied; it almost frightens her, knowing that there is feeling dammed up within her violent enough to act as his foil. After, in the cooling half-light, she will make them both pasta, studiously ignoring the guns he has left -- out of simple courtesy; no prowler or bored assassin, he -- in the kitchen, drawer second from the top, unloaded. Next to the red wine, which he uncorks.
"Cooking, I see, is not one of your many talents."
He will play with the sleeve of his shirt. It is fresh-smelling, like leaves and the slightly caustic blast of powder; and too-large, draped on her naked frame. She turns her nose instead and burrows in the salty warmth of his hair. Sweet tang of tomatoes and oregano on his tongue will taste to her like a minor victory. She seals her coup by leading him back to her bed.
When the dry whisper of his breathing has been slow and steady for forty-two minutes, she will reach for her cell phone. It will be nothing less than what he expects.
Sark will have his back turned to her side of the mattress. His sinewy neck smoothed in sleep; one of her arms will be caught, but loosely, beneath one of his; their mutual fingers knotted in one fist. She thinks about the terms Sark gave her, about what her father and the CIA would demand. She has given them all so much already.
The long moment will bleed out, taking of all her strength with it. Then without dialling, she will push the phone away slowly until she hears the drop. Despite the thick carpet, it lands with a deadened crack, just as Sark catches her shivering, pressed against him. The hand grasped in his now ice-cold as if its life had been spirited away and only just returned.
"Shh... It's all right, Sydney." Calm and awake, he looks into her dark panicked eyes.
"I know."
Perhaps it is what you do, rather than what you say that matters.