A/N- I just had to do another Burn Notice. Get used to it.
As a spy you learn to deal with stress. You eat, you sleep, you review the past, present, and future tense of every verb in every language you know. You pay constant attention to your surroundings. Like your life depends on it. Because sometimes, it does.
I spun around quickly. Footsteps followed me into the dark alley. I was being followed. I wasn't even on an op. I cursed Dan. He had just been assigned my new handler. Not something I was completely happy about. But then, I hadn't been happy about anything in a while. Leaving Fi in Dublin hadn't been easy. It was harder than leaving Sam in Belfast.
Spying is covert. And illegal. That's why you turn assets. Like Sam. She was a thief and things moved fast between us. But no matter what, I knew deep down that she was just an asset. Fiona was trigger happy. Fiona was IRA. Fiona was dangerous. Fiona was more than an asset and she knew it. But you can't bring baggage like that with you. You have to leave it all behind, no matter what the cost.
"Calm down, Michael!" The irish accent fell on my ears. It was Fiona.
"Damn it, Fiona!" I said, not bothering with my own accent.
"What, are you in the middle of a mission?" She asked, like she didn't know that I had been out to get dinner. Like she didn't know that I worked alone and now was the perfect time to talk.
When you can't tell the truth, when the truth isn't working for you, when you don't like the truth, you can always lie. It has worked for ages. Not telling the truth also works pretty well for getting rid of the woman who is stalking you...
"Yes, Fiona. I am in the middle of something!" She didn't believe me.
"Can I help?" She asked.
"No."
"Please?"
"No." I started to walk away.
Most of the time. Sometimes they know better and just keep stalking you.
She continued to follow me, knowing that, as a spy, I was vastly unable to stand still and let people follow me. I spun around quickly and without warning, my fist hitting her arm in a warning shot. She backed out of the range of my limbs a, happy to nimbly avoid my blows all night, though it was not what she had planned. A smile graced her face and I was shocked to find a similar one on mine. I couldn't remember the last time that I smiled.
Sometimes your own actions surprise you. You could have the best training and have the best poker face, but when a pretty woman with an obsession for explosives wants to follow you around town and then to your bedroom, you smile. And you do what you shouldn't, like let her get a foothold in your psyche.
"Was that so hard, Michael?" She demanded walking closer to me, trailing her fingers over my chest and around my back as she skipped in circles around me. She stopped moving when she was in front of me again. Fiona wrapped her arms around my neck an stood on the tips of her toes. Even with her four inch wedges, I was still almost a foot taller than Fiona.
"Maybe." I said, leading down and kissing her.
Loving someone is an action of trust. Trust that you should only extend to a certain few people. Family, friends, no one else. Love is the most perfect action of trust and when it happens, you never want to let it go.
"We should not stay outside in an alley if we are going to do this." Fiona told me, pulling me by the hand to the apartment over a small shop, where I was staying.
By the time we made it to the bed, there we very few articles of clothing on our bodies.
By midnight, only a few hours later, the thin white sheet was on the floor.
We had fallen asleep. I was woken by a sharp pain in my thigh. Fiona was woken by my surprised scream.
"What the bloody hell?" Fiona demanded. Looking at me. I swing my leg over the edge of the bed and smiled.
"I think I just got shot." I said, looking at the small hole in the window pain.