Light at the end of the tunnel.
Sometimes when you are used to living in constant darkness it is easier to finally see the light.
Annie is pure, radiating warmth. Like the feel of a midafternoon sun on a cool spring day, searing his skin with every fleeting touch. He takes it all in, tantalizing slow motion, savoring the feel of her beneath him, her golden hair smooth as silk as he runs his fingers through it like a man worshipping a goddess with the utmost reverence- her name a prayer. His hands skim carefully across the slope of her hips, the flat plain of her stomach, and she gives to his touch like a rampart shattered from a once strong cliff face and into a storming, roiling ocean below.
It is all he can do to fall into place right beside her, helpless, all the broken pieces and shattered fragments of their past finally mending themselves amidst the chaos of this one moment. August Anderson cannot recall the last time he had been at a complete loss for words, but here, now, in her bed, was definitely one of the few.
Annie's touch elicits a trail of fire as her nails wreak havoc down the length of his shoulder blades, traveling with calculated care to his lower back, her lips determined and precise and unbearably needy in their assault on his mouth- not that he minds. Annie Walker has always been fierce, demanding, unrelenting. Now is no different. Auggie is on the verge of being overwhelmed by all of this – all of her – and he can only imagine what the sunshine blonde of her hair must look like splayed across the fabric of her pillows while he hovers over her. Are her eyes bright, wild? Is she looking at him?
His own name is a breathless, wanton whisper of release as she buries her face into the curve of his neck, and she says it over and over, again and again, a plea of some sort that he does not quite understand.
Despite the shadows that remain like a veil, the emptiness that consumes what his eyes cannot show him, he knows that he does not have to be able to see to conclude that Annie Walker is indescribably perfect.
Columbia has left a bitter taste in his mouth. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with the country's fine taste in coffee.
Rather it is a combination of things that have collected in the racing, raging thoughts that occupy his brain. Calder Michaels' arrogance being one thing. The metaphorical ticking time bomb that is Teo Braga being the other. Even long after he and Annie have returned state side from their Columbian perusing, the events of the past days linger and pace restlessly at the back of his mind despite his best attempts to assuage his own discomfort. All to little avail. The ghosts of the past insist on rearing their ugly heads.
He wanders through his apartment with agitation similar to that of a caged animal, everything that had happened in Medellin playing back through his head like a bad film reel, his sore shoulder aching, one more not so pleasant reminder. Usually he would have a record spinning, music to fill the background of his more often lonely and unoccupied bachelor pad, sounds to distract him from his encyclopedic and sometimes waywardly rampant contemplations.
But tonight is different.
He makes his way back toward the bedroom after waltzing through the living area and circling the kitchen a few times for good measure. The sound of his shower a distant waterfall accompanied by the familiar trill of Annie's voice. She is singing lyrics to a song that he does not recognize. Despite the stress, the anxiety that threatens to disturb the small fragmented piece of normalcy he has found since that night in her garage apartment, he cannot help but smile.
He would never have the heart to actually tell her, but there is something oddly endearing about a beautiful woman that sings off key.
Delving into a relationship with Annie Catherine Walker has presented a whole new set of challenges for Auggie that he has not encountered before, despite his other varied and interesting previous pursuits.
One of these challenges is the occasional case of insomnia.
Too many times over the course of the last twenty four hours he has found himself on the verge of succumbing to heart attacks of various sizes. He hated the helpless feeling hanging up the phone left him with, knowing that Annie was thousands of miles away where there was nothing he could do if trouble came calling. And without fail it had.
Between ACL bomb threats and Teo Braga's unpredictability, the idea of balancing work and a relationship with Annie Walker is made difficult due to her overzealous penchant for delivering justice. Henry Wilcox has pulled all of them into his game, unsuspecting lambs into the fold. Until the man got what he wanted, life would remain less than comfortable for all of them, and more than likely taxing. Whatever it was that Wilcox wanted, revenge, blood, or both, Auggie feared the worse.
But what he fears most is not being able to stop him.
He was the last one to the leave the DPD that evening, staying perched at his computer long after Annie had called to inform him she had boarded her flight from Columbia for the second time that week. Now he rests on the couch in his living room, the T.V. playing some mindless late night chatter to fill the void solitary confinement has created, waiting not so patiently for that tell-tale knock of her arrival.
He cannot help the over eagerness with which he navigates toward the door when it finally comes.
He can feel her presence before the door slides open, his own personal golden ray of light in a too shaded world. He is met with comfortable silence as he leans against the door frame, except for the gentle sound of her breathing, the rustle of her feet across the hallway floor. The smell of her perfume mingled with red-eye flight no-time-for-a-shower-sweat is enough to elicit a crooked grin across the man's face.
"Can I have my shirt back?" He teases.
His question is answered by said shirt being tossed in his general direction. It is not in his hands long though before Annie has him wrapped up in her embrace, soft lips on his skin, her laughter like wind chimes, cool and clear to his ears. Deftly he slides the door shut behind them and allows the shirt to fall to the floor, his own laugh accompanying them as he permits Annie to lead them toward his bed.
Losing sleep becomes the least of his worries, because in these rare moments she has become his escape.
"You've got to make a choice, Auggie."
Her words are like a knife to the heart, and she has him cornered with nowhere to run.
"I'm willing to go there, are you?"
It was more than a question, but instead a declaration with not so many words or specifications. And yet he sat there dodging her questions, avoiding giving her real answers, not telling her the complete truth because it scared him. Those few words, so simple, fell from her lips and meant nothing and everything at once.
And like an idiot he let her walk out of his apartment.
He attempts to imagine what the disappointment on her face must have looked like, if her blue eyes became icy and cold. What would she look like if her shoulders slumped with the deep breath she let out, if her heart seemed to settle heavy and empty in her chest, and her whole body melted into an indiscernible shadow of despair? What if she faded into the darkness where he would not be able to see her? Would she lose her glow?
He will never know though, and now as he sits alone at the kitchen bar the air he sucks into his own lungs is flat and stale except for the last remnants of Annie's perfume. And he realizes, for the first time in a long time, that he is not ok with this hopeless, worthless feeling of being completely alone.
He should have stopped her.
He takes another unceremonious swig from the bottle of beer he had opened earlier, no longer cold, but still clutched in his hand.
This thing they had, this unexplainable thing that had been there from the very first moment he had met her was turning into something terrifying. Terrifying because there was an uncanny familiarity her presence gave him, a feeling of permanence that would not allow his brain to function properly without knowing for certain that she was his entirely.
Then why was telling her the truth so hard?
Because even entertaining the idea that he could not have all of Annie Walker, that in the blink of an eye he could lose her forever, was the most terrifying thing of all.
Secrets within their line of work were a given. All the lies, stories and aliases were a part of the job. The CIA trained their operatives accordingly to compartmentalize all the faces and places, the facts and fiction. They were masters of deception, king and queens of games and riddles. The line begins to blur when what you do is no longer just about yourself, and the black and white turns shades of gray. Auggie finds himself floundering, drowning in the darkness like he never has before.
No one else had ever mattered.
His desperate need to protect Annie from the demons that have surfaced with Teo and Henry Wilcox is quickly pushing him to the breaking point, driving him to the proverbial edge, and chasing Annie in the complete opposite direction in the process despite his best efforts not to.
"You have to make a choice…"
Truer words have never been spoken.
But was he willing to go there? Was he ready to take that final step, the plunge of no return, no looking back? Could he tell her everything, lay aside all the skeletons in his closet and the ghosts that haunted his past, all for her?
He laughs at himself then, at how stupid he sounds, at how ridiculous it is to have any doubt after everything. The sound bounces off the walls of his apartment, as empty and hollow as he felt sitting there alone without her. In that moment of realization any hint of uncertainty that might have clawed its way into his resolve is immediately forgotten.
As long as Annie Walker had his hand, he was willing to go anywhere she asked.
Even if it meant to the ends of the earth.
Forgiveness is bliss.
He tells her everything. He tells her about the mission, the gap in his file, about Teo, about Hellen and how she had died. His words are broken, his voice forced, and he wishes more than anything in the world that he could see her then. He wishes he could see the reassurance in her eyes, a softness of understanding in her face, but the only thing he can see is endless black like always.
Annie always manages to surprise him though, and when he finally falls silent, her touch tells him everything his eyes cannot show him.
She is the light at the end of the tunnel.
Her hands on his cheeks are warm, comforting and soft, and he leans into her touch and breathes in the smell of her hair as she leans her forehead against his own. He would never get tired of this sensation; of the way her fingers trace the lines of his face in curious contemplation, the radiating glow of her body being so close that it is almost unbearable. She is a drug, a very, very dangerous drug, and he is addicted. They stay like that for seconds, but it feels like hours, days, and if he could freeze this moment in time – this perfect, silent stillness – he would.
"You will never lose me by telling me the truth."
Her words, an answer to his pleas and prayers, sweep all his fears away. He exhales, suddenly winded, as if he has been holding his breath in wait for her final judgment. Afraid that she would feel betrayed, that his past would chase her away, that this wonderful, beautiful disaster they had stumbled upon after months and months of dancing around one another would crumble before it even had a chance to start.
"Then let's keep talking, because I never want to lose you."
"I need you Annie. I never need anyone, but I need you."
He always would.