Set during "Better Halves," Season 5, Episode 11 (it starts halfway through the episode, during the dinner scene where Michael pitches Kevin)
"You have five seconds."
Michael maintained a toothy smile as he scraped the steak knife along the edge of his fork and focused on the wet, frightened eyes of Kevin Skyler, aka Cheshire, aka the American bioweapons engineer he and Fiona had been sent to extract from the Copa de Oro couples retreat in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela. Kevin glanced nervously at his wife, Nikki, before glancing over his shoulder in the direction of the couple registered as Serge and Karina, aka the Russian bodyguards employed as Kevin and Nikki's protectors. Sensing trouble in the nervous energy accompanying the use of low voices, Serge and Karina had risen from their table in the corner and were currently making their way across the dining room, their already dour faces becoming unmistakably grim.
"Kevin," Nikki whispered urgently, hands tightening around her cloth napkin. "Please."
Michael saw a Makarov edge its way out of Karina's handbag while Serge reached into the hollow of his back. Testing his grip on his own improvised weapon, Michael evaluated his tactical options; thrown properly, the knife could take out Karina, giving Fiona an opening to retrieve the Beretta strapped to her thigh beneath her cocktail dress. Fiona would enjoy that plan; Michael could feel her gun leg tense against him under the table, and could practically taste the eager adrenaline on her close breath.
"Fine," Kevin hissed. "I'm in."
"Laugh," Fiona ordered. "Now. As loud as you can."
She immediately obeyed her own command, mouth opening wide to unleash a boisterous, echoing laugh. Michael joined her, and Kevin and Nikki did their best to follow along.
"Now you know why I make him tell all his stories in his inside voice!" Fiona enthused, loud enough for Serge and Karina to hear. "You are so bad."
Michael smiled a faux apology as he watched Serge and Karina back away, and return to their seats.
"To new friends," said Fiona, lifting high her glass of rosé.
"New friends," Michael agreed, raising his glass to meet Fiona's and the more reluctant glasses of Kevin and Nikki.
For the sake of appearances, Michael and Fiona kept Kevin and Nikki at the table as long as possible, maintaining a steady stream of inane dialogue in their guises of Brenden and Christina Jenson. According to the dossier prepared by the CIA, Brenden and Christina were both descendants of old money New England families who were currently pursuing the typical jobs and hobbies of the idle rich; Brendan was a hereditary board of directors type who dabbled in travel writing, while Christina was a former model and ostensible jewelry designer. As Brenden and Christina, Michael and Fiona complained about the New York real estate market and compared the Copa de Oro to other vacation spots in the Caribbean, Italy, and the south of France. For Michael, producing large quantities of fake, meaningless conversation was a virtually effortless task; he'd always been gifted with words, as long as those words were lies.
It took approximately fifteen minutes for the risks of keeping Kevin and Nikki at the table to outweigh the rewards. While Fiona concocted a winding and impressively detailed story about her months-long battle with a duplicitous maid, Kevin was visibly sweating, and no longer even pretending to nod in the right places. Nikki, for her part, had become almost zombie-like, her small, giddy smile frozen in place below her increasingly glassy eyes.
In Brenden's slightly nasal accent, Michael gave Kevin the out he so badly wanted. "You look just about done, Kev. Must be the heat."
Kevin swallowed, and offered a stiff nod. "Must be."
"Why don't you and Nikki call it a night? Christina and I can meet up with you again tomorrow—say around 10? By the pool?"
"Sure," Kevin managed, pushing his chair away from the table. "Sounds good."
Michael and Fiona remained at the table as they watched Kevin and Nikki walk a bit too quickly through the dining room toward the main lobby, followed, not especially discretely, by Serge and Karina.
"Do you think they're really married?" Fiona asked, keeping her voice low.
"Kevin and Nikki?" Michael asked.
"No—Serge and Karina."
Michael eyed the Russian operatives as they rounded the corner and then disappeared from view. It was difficult to imagine either of them being married to anyone. Yet if they were going to partner off, it might as well be with each other.
"I honestly have no idea," he said.
Fiona downed her last swallow of wine, and asked, "I suppose you'll want to go back upstairs and see how our new friends felt about the evening's entertainment."
"I do, but I also don't want to follow too closely—in case Serge and Karina start asking around."
"So what did you have in mind?"
Michael flashed his Brenden smile as he suggested, in a louder voice, "How about another drink?"
"At the bar?"
Michael resumed a low tone to reply, "Plenty of witnesses, at least three exits, and lots of potential incendiaries."
Fiona gazed up at him from under the fringe of her coquettishly lowered eyelids. "That's the man I married."
Michael stood, and offered his hand. "Shall we?"
Playing the role of a proud and dutiful wife, Fiona held the arm of Michael's cream-coloured seersucker suit as he led the way through the dining room to the bar. It was darker inside the bar than in the dining room, but the style was similar. Like the rest of the hotel, the bar was actually from the colonial era, but had been renovated to look "contemporary," and then renovated again in an effort to restore its colonial glory. The end result was somewhat uncanny—like being inside a too-clean version of the past, where everyone was a wealthy adventurer, but without any of the messiness that conquering the jungle usually entailed.
At they waited for the bartender at the dark counter in front of a glittering wall of alcohol, Michael took a moment to survey the scene. The bar was only half-full, but buzzing with the energy of people who'd drunk enough to be talkative. The guests were mostly clustered around the room's smattering of booths and tables, many of them holding brightly coloured cocktails decorated with tiny umbrellas, limes, and wedges of pineapple. To Michael's eyes, the brightest drinks seemed to belong to the dimmest faces, which in turn seemed to belong to those couples who were his own age or older; at least two such couples were staring at the bar's younger, louder couples and friends with expressions that were either envious or mournful.
Michael remembered most of the faces in the bar from his hack of the hotel registry. Out of habit, he quickly starting matching faces to names, occupations, and countries of origin.
"Relax."
He glanced at Fiona, and knew she was right; as he'd concentrated, his back had stiffened, and his smile had fallen. For a moment, he hadn't been Brenden Jenson anymore; he'd been himself. Ironically, his ability to drop his cover proved that he was relaxed. Somehow, while still on the job, in a bar filled with couples who were either drunkly happy or darkly miserable, with a wedding ring on his finger and Fiona's warm body resting on his hip, he'd become calm to the point of carelessness.
He reassured Fiona with another flash of Brenden's smile and trailed his fingers down her back, feeling every notch of her spine through the thin fabric of her dress. The gesture felt easy, and familiar. It even felt good, especially when Fiona dropped her weight against his pelvis, and casually twisted.
When he was himself—the self who always put the job first, and certainly wasn't married—Michael had rules about touching Fiona in public, or allowing her to touch him. There were some simple reasons for his rules, such as the fact that he didn't like the distraction or attention that public displays of affection tended to cause. But the reasons he didn't like to be distracted or watched were more complicated, buried deep in his experience and those pockets of his psyche that he couldn't fully grasp outside of dreams and moments of crisis.
He told himself that the current press and twist of Fiona's body felt good because of his cover. He liked it because he was supposed to—because it was linked to the job. And in part, that was true. But on this particular mission, and in these particular IDs, the boundaries between the personal and the professional were inescapably blurred. Michael had very little in common with Brenden Jenson. But they did share at least one defining interest in the form of the auburn haired, hazel eyed woman at his side, who was currently bobbing subtly up and down to an electronically infused calypso song, everything but the pulsing baseline of which was lost in the louder noise of the room's voices and bodies. And that woman had always been capable of making Michael forget his own name, or whatever name he happened to be using on the day or hour in question.
Michael was acutely aware that he'd come dangerously close to forgetting himself the previous evening, when he'd danced with Fiona for the first time since the very first time, more than a decade before. He'd been Brenden Jenson when he'd agreed to dance with her, but he'd ceased being Brenden when Fiona had lifted herself into his arms and wrapped her thigh around his waist, her very red, very high heel reaching up past his shoulder. In that moment, the smile he'd cast into Fiona's close face had been his own, his eyes glinting a challenge she'd been only too happy to accept. Fiona had been spectacular bending and twirling in her reams of crimson silk, and breathtaking when she'd finally come to a rest draped across his bent knee. Holding her there, Michael had badly wanted to kiss her, inflamed as much by her closeness as the recklessness of his desire. He'd felt that recklessness before, but it had been a very long time since he'd acted on it, at least publicly. He hadn't done that since Ireland, after which he'd promised himself, absolutely and definitively, to never again mix the personal and the professional, with Fiona, or anyone else.
Recent events had made that promise increasingly difficult to keep. During the past several months, Fiona had helped him with his CIA work more than once; she'd also moved in with him, at his urging. Both things would have been unimaginable a year before, when they were still fighting regularly about his work, and only sleeping together sporadically, usually in the immediate aftermath of cheating death. Yet old habits died hard, and long-cherished rules died harder. The dance the night before had felt good while it lasted. But the moment he'd felt the hotel's other guests watching them, evaluating their passionate display with various degrees of appreciation and disdain, Michael had been disturbed by what he'd actually and nearly done. Each and every time he'd forgotten himself in the context of his job, the consequences had been severe; on one such occasion, the consequence had been losing Fiona.
It was for Fiona's sake that Michael needed the current mission to be not only successful, but unimpeachable—perfectly planned, executed, and by-the-book. If it wasn't, Fiona wouldn't be asked back as a CIA asset, which would mean more arguing about his work, and, eventually, a re-staging of the same impossible choice he'd faced back in Ireland, when he'd been forced to flee her Dublin flat in the middle of the night, never to return. And so, after the dance floor and the escape from Kevin and Nikki's room, Michael had fallen back on his well-worn strategy of preserving Fiona by pushing her away, rejecting her invitation to the whirlpool bath in favour of constructing an immaculate report on the day's activities.
Finally, the bartender arrived, and Michael ordered what he thought Christina and Brenden would drink: Tanqueray and tonic for her, Johnnie Walker on the rocks for himself.
The bartender was still pouring their drinks when a cloud of boozy breath assaulted Michael's cheek, followed by a male arm landing heavily on his shoulders. Restraining his instinctual urge to violently extricate himself from the intruder's grip, Michael turned to confront a man he immediately recognized as Jason Wainthrop, aka one half of one of the couples that he and Fiona had been scouting the night before. His girlfriend, Rebecca, was close at hand, flashing a grin that was almost as bright as the diamonds studding her ears and neck. Jason, with his short dark hair and narrow build, looked something like a younger version of himself. Yet Rebecca looked nothing like Fiona; tall, blonde, and generically beautiful, she was younger than Jason, but trying, through her excessive jewelry and heavy makeup, to look older—or, as she likely saw it, more "sophisticated." Michael guessed that Jason hailed from a rich family and Rebecca was trying to join that family, as quickly and securely as possible.
"I'm buying!" Jason declared loudly, speaking directly into Michael's ear. Still holding Michael's shoulders, he turned to the rest of the bar to exclaim, "Drinks are on me! It's not every day you get engaged!"
There was a smattering of applause and cheers as the crowd absorbed the meaning of Jason's words.
"Congratulations," Michael offered, infusing the word with as much enthusiasm as he could muster while counting down the seconds until he could reasonably start fighting his way out of the younger man's embrace.
"You guys gotta have a drink with us," Jason insisted, gesturing clumsily to his fiancée, who was still standing and smiling attentively behind him. "You need to show us the ropes of this whole marriage thing. I swear, you guys look like the only happy couple here."
"Besides us of course!" Rebecca added brightly.
Michael exchanged a look with Fiona, his face wearing an expression he'd perfected—smiling at the front, while gritting his teeth at the back. Celebrating Jason and Rebecca's engagement wasn't high on his list preferred activities, but he also knew they couldn't afford to refuse the invitation.
Fiona's own smile was flawless as she pronounced, "Shall we get a table?"
Michael and Fiona collected their drinks and repaired to a standing table; Jason and Rebecca met them there a moment later, followed by a waiter carrying a freshly opened bottle of Dom. Jason performed introductions as the waiter poured champagne for himself and Rebecca, unaware that Michael and Fiona didn't need to be introduced.
"I'm Jason, and this is Rebecca—my fiancée."
Rebecca's cheeks darkened with appreciation at Jason's intonation, her interestingly naked left hand springing to her chest.
"I'm Brenden," Michael returned, "and this is my wife, Christina."
"After last night," said Rebecca, "I feel like we've already met. Anytime I wasn't lost in Jason's eyes, I was looking at the two of you—I think everyone was."
Michael exchanged another look with Fiona, his smile getting tighter while hers fairly beamed.
"I'm sure you're exaggerating," Fiona scoffed.
"You looked like a couple of movie stars," Rebecca gushed, undeterred.
"So, Jason," Michael began, eager to redirect the conversation, even if it meant feigning interest in the couple's impending marriage. "How'd you pop the question?"
Jason took his time swallowing, eyes wandering sideways. "Well, I didn't quite—"
"He needed a bit of encouragement," Rebecca interrupted, smiling more widely than ever.
That explained Rebecca's naked left hand. Visions of Samantha flitted quickly through Michael's mind, but were thankfully batted away by the glass Fiona thrust into his field of vision.
"A toast!" Fiona exclaimed. "To the happy couple."
Following the toast, the conversation turned toward more benign topics, including some of the same trials of the idle rich they'd discussed with Kevin and Nikki. Thankfully, though, Jason and Rebecca were more animated conversationalists than Kevin and Nikki had been. That allowed Michael to listen with half an ear, mind wandering as he watched and catalogued all the large and small signs of discord between the supposedly happy couple. He noted Jason's too-eager consumption of his champagne, and the tiny hitch in Rebecca's smile whenever she was embarrassed by Jason's jokes.
For a while, Michael was comforted by the discord, which reassured him of his own beliefs about marriage. But by the time he and Fiona had finished their drinks and had them replaced with flutes of champagne, he was increasingly distracted by a far more captivating spectacle: Fiona, in her impressive performance as Christina Jenson. She was standing across from him at the narrow table, talking and laughing close to Rebecca's powered cheek, her champagne flute dangling from her fingers with seeming negligence and actual skill.
Fiona had never been the natural liar that he was. Whenever possible, she preferred the direct approach. Fiona liked to say what she meant and take what she wanted—to go in and out guns blazing. But when she did commit to a cover ID, she was routinely brilliant. Her performance as Christina Jenson was no exception. Fiona had been responsible for most of their success so far, and Michael had loved every minute of it. Watching her on the dance floor, by the pool, at the dinner table, and now, sipping champagne between eruptions of audacious laughter, he was deep in the thrall of her performance, loving the way she reeled in and massaged the hapless marks, seducing them with her real warmth and false frivolity. Fiona was completely, beautifully in control, and he was the only one who knew it—the only person who could see through her performance to the heart of her.
Michael found himself remembering the first time he'd watched Fiona, in another, very different bar so many years ago. Then, too, he'd been enthralled by her performance as she'd knocked back whiskey with a revolver tucked in her skin-tight jeans, and made a whole room of men both want and fear her. Then, her performance had reminded him of himself. Not the self he was, but the one he sometimes wanted to be—someone who could take joy and pride in their skills and passions, and not be ashamed of that joy in the light of day.
Fiona sensed his gaze and greeted it across the table, hazel eyes dark and sparkling above the fizz and pop of her champagne. As she met his eyes, Michael smiled. Not his Brenden Jenson smile, but his real smile—the one he rarely used, but liked himself when he did. In response, Fiona's own Christina Jenson smile transformed into something subtler, and more intimate, becoming knowing, rather than broad. Michael felt the warmth of her smile on his skin, competing with the warmth of the wine, whiskey, and champagne. There was plenty to regret about the long months he'd once spent sleeping in Fiona's bed while pretending to be someone else. But there was at least one happy consequence of that experience; afterwards, Fiona could always tell his real smile from his fake one.
"So how long have you guys been hitched?"
Michael turned toward the intrusion of Jason's voice.
"Seven wonderful years," he answered easily, reciting from the dossier.
"How did you meet?" asked Rebecca.
"At a bar," Fiona replied. "He asked me to dance."
That part wasn't from the dossier.
"Oooohhh…" Rebecca cooed. "How romantic."
"And how long did it take?" Jason asked, directing the question at Michael.
At Michael's slight hesitation, Rebecca added, "When did you know she was the one?"
Michael glanced from Rebecca to Jason, then returned his gaze to Fiona. Her warmth seemed closer than the noise of the bar or Jason's boozy breath. The past also seemed very near, and very warm; the recent memory of Fiona's thigh clutching his chest amid a swath of crimson silk merged with a much older memory, in which he knew he should be worried about the snub nosed revolver pressed in his midsection, but wasn't.
Michael said, "I knew it the first time we danced."
Fiona's sparkling eyes blinked clear a moment before Michael was forced to part with them, starting as Jason slapped him vigorously on his back.
"You slick-tongued bastard," Jason congratulated. "Guess that's the secret to making it work, huh? You gotta know the right lines."
Michael flashed his teeth at the supposed compliment; it was a protective gesture, concealing a flush of embarrassment.
"Isn't that what every woman wants?" Fiona chimed in. "We all deserve a smooth liar."
Jason laughed while Rebecca giddily sputtered her champagne; Fiona laughed too, loudly and recklessly. Michael forced himself to join their mirth while struggling to gauge the seriousness of Fiona's words. Suddenly, he was on the wrong side of her performance, helpless and blind in the company of the other marks. In a heartbeat, his embarrassment became regret, which in turn became anger, directed at himself. It was another familiar feeling, attending a far too familiar mistake; it wasn't the first time he'd been honest about the wrong things at the wrong moment, with little chance of being believed for reasons that were entirely his own fault.
The conversation continued, but Michael was progressively disengaged. Moment by moment, he retreated further and further into his training, walling off the tactical threat of his emotions. He kept smiling, talking, and sipping his champagne, but he no longer enjoyed the performance, his appearance of happiness becoming coolly professional. As he pretended to appreciate Jason's ingenuity in setting up a shell company to write off property taxes on his family's summer home in the Hamptons, he was running through a checklist of the things he'd need to do when he returned to the suite. First, he'd need to check the seals around each of the seven windows. Then, he'd need to check each of the twelve electrical outlets for tampering, followed by the two hotel phones and each piece of his own equipment, not to mention the nine lamp shades, three tables, two closets... After that, he'd need to listen to whatever he'd recorded from the bug in Kevin and Nikki's room, and finally summarize everything for his daily report.
When the champagne stopped flowing, Jason and Rebecca excused themselves to find a refill, only to be swept up by another gaggle of guests. Michael remained where he was as Fiona slipped around the table to rejoin him. Her hip once more touched his, but lightly, with a gentle pressure that somehow bothered him more than the heavy press of her body from an hour before.
"This might be a good time for a strategic retreat," Fiona suggested.
Michael nodded, and led the way. Decades of practice allowed him to smile cordially at the other guests and the deferential hotel employees as he and Fiona wove their way through the bar to the bank of elevators off the lobby. Fiona held his arm throughout the journey, but Michael barely noticed, no longer willing to court the distraction of her touch.
When they reached their 10th floor suite, Fiona entered first. Michael locked and dead-bolted the door after them, and then turned to Fiona, preparing to remind her of the work that needed to be done before he could call it a day. But Fiona didn't need reminding; she was already heading into the bedroom to check their bags. Michael tried to be grateful for Fiona's unusual adherence to protocol, but part of him was disappointed; when the soft folds of her dress slipped through his fingers, he found himself missing the warmth he'd willed himself to ignore.
Michael kept one eye on Fiona as they worked, appreciating her thoroughness and skill as she reached up to run her hands along the window ledges, and crouched down to check under the tables. He also appreciated the movement of her body inside her dress. Since returning to the privacy of the suite, he'd gotten tighter, while Fiona had gotten looser; as she moved through the suite, her spine swung freely and languorously, her wavy hair bouncing on her bare shoulders.
At last, they shared a nod, confirming the room was clean. With a long, weary sigh, Fiona collapsed heavily into the long sofa facing the dormant marble fireplace, kicking her platform wedges up over the armrest. Michael dropped his white jacket on a chair before sitting down on the opposite sofa and opening the laptop that rested on the glass coffee table between them. The bug in Kevin and Nikki's room was still transmitting, but it was currently silent. Michael backed up the recording to just after they'd left the dining room, and played it over the computer's speakers.
After a shuffle of feet and the thud of a closing door, Serge's Russian-accented voice asked, "Who are your new friends?"
"They're nobody," Kevin replied. "Some travel writer and his wife. The wife shared some champagne with Nikki at the pool, so we bought them dinner."
There was a long pause, as Serge and Karina evaluated Kevin's explanation. Karina broke the silence to say, "We must search the room."
"Go ahead," said Kevin.
When the search was over, Serge's voice returned.
"Be careful of your new friends," he warned. "Spies can take many forms."
"Spies?" Kevin scoffed. "At a couples' retreat?"
Serge and Karina didn't respond; a few moments later, the sound of the door opening and closing signaled the Russians' departure.
Once Serge and Karina were gone, Kevin's tension fairly exploded.
"What the fuck was that?" he demanded.
"I don't—" Nikki started.
"You could have backed me up," Kevin interrupted. "But you just sat there and made me clean up your mess—like you always do."
"My mess?" Nikki shot back. "Christina and Brenden are going to get us out of the mess you made."
"And how are they gonna do that, huh? Magic?"
"I trust them," Nikki insisted.
"Oh, well, that makes all the difference…"
The couples' heated exchange continued, though they moved swiftly onto seemingly unrelated topics; Nikki seemed to think that Kevin's poor judgement had something to do with his first wife, while Kevin thought that Nikki's too-easy trust had something to do with her father.
Fiona expelled another sigh.
"This show is getting repetitive," she observed.
"It could use some better writing," Michael agreed.
"Are you going to keep listening?"
"I have to," he said. "For the report."
Fiona nodded slowly as she pushed herself upright.
"Do you need help?" she asked.
"Are you offering to do paperwork?"
Fiona gave a small, nonchalant shrug. "If it means you joining me in bed before dawn."
Michael looked at her. Her strapless dress hung dangerously low on her breasts, and her lipstick had faded to a stain on her lips.
"I can manage," he said. "I know how they want these things to sound."
He experienced another pang of disappointment at Fiona's easy acceptance of his parry.
"Okay," she agreed, rising to her feet. "I'm going to have a shower, and call it a night."
"Sure," he replied.
After Fiona disappeared into the bedroom, Michael did his best to get comfortable. He wanted to change out of his Brenden Jenson clothes, but rejected the idea, concerned it might reveal too much about his mental state. Instead, he tried to make Brenden's clothes more his own, kicking off his white loafers and pink socks, and rolling up the sleeves of his orange and grey striped shirt.
When the conversation from Kevin and Nikki's room became sporadic, he turned his attention to his report, recording their progress and fleshing out his profile of Kevin and Nikki.
Hie paused when he heard the start of the shower in the bedroom's ensuite bath. Michael knew it was a fabulous shower. It had a waterfall head with multiple, adjustable side jets, enclosed by clear glass walls that frosted with heat, turning showering bodies into dark silhouettes. Concentrating, he could hear the subtle disruption of the water as Fiona stepped under it, followed by the varying hiss of the jets as they caressed her shifting body. The sounds got louder the longer he listened, echoing in his wandering mind. The same thing had happened the night before, after he'd declined Fiona's offer of a bath. Then, each drip and slosh of Fiona's body in the tub had sent Kevin and Nikki's voices fading further into the background and made his hand get stiffer against the inseam of his black tuxedo pants, his fingers feeling at once heavy and too far away.
Michael didn't realize how intensely he was listening to Fiona's shower until Nikki's voice returned to the tape, and he tensed at the sudden loudness of the sound.
"Keeevin…" Nikki crooned.
"What is it, Nikki?" Kevin replied brusquely.
"Come to bed, Kevin…"
"Nikki, I'm busy."
From the bedroom of his own suite, Michael heard the shower shut off, followed by a shuffle of movement that was Fiona reaching for a towel. There was a competing shuffle on the tape, as Nikki stepped up her seduction. In his mind's eye, Michael could see Nikki climbing onto the couch next to her husband; there, she'd kiss his cheek, or perhaps run her hands over the contours of his chest, much like Fiona had done to him the night before while inviting him to the bath.
"Nikki," Kevin protested. "Please. I have work to do."
Kevin's rejection was angry, and forceful. It was also effective; within seconds, the tape picked up the sound of Nikki slamming the bedroom door. A few seconds after that, the bedroom light clicked off over Michael's own shoulder.
Michael noted the exchange in his report; the specifics of Nikki and Kevin's marital strife could be useful, though that strife was also, like Jason and Rebecca's discord from earlier in the night, boringly typical. Michael had overheard versions of the same fight many times before, both on the job and before it, through the too-thin walls of his childhood bedroom. Yet in the house he'd grown up in, the discord had usually taken the opposite form; then, it had been his father wanting more, while his mother bent over backwards just trying to stay out of his way.
Michael leaned back, massaging his eyes against the beginning of a headache that was aggravated by the evening's unholy mixture of alcohols and the too-bright, too-close computer screen. As he lowered his hands, he stared for the second time in as many days at the gold wedding band on his finger, wondering at its strange power. He and Samantha had never exchanged rings. At the time, he'd used work as an excuse, engagement rings being impractical accessories for spies and thieves. In retrospect, though, Michael knew work wasn't the only reason he'd declined to wear a ring. Michael had liked Samantha; for a time, he'd even thought he loved her. But Fiona wasn't the first beautiful, reckless woman he'd sometimes struggled to read. When Samantha had proposed, he'd actually thought she was joking. The reality had dawned on him slowly, and guiltily; eventually, he'd realized that Samantha had mistaken him for someone else.
From his fake wedding ring, Michael looked toward the darkened door of the suite's bedroom. He rubbed his neck as he shifted in his seat, trying, and failing, to ignore the fact that his head wasn't the only part of his body that ached. Fiona had been asleep when he'd joined her in bed the night before, breathing deeply against the luxurious white pillows. She hadn't stirred when he'd pressed his naked chest against her back, or even when he'd tucked his hand under her breasts, lips tickling her bare shoulder. The next morning, Fiona had risen before him, and they'd showered separately.
In the silence of the suite, Michael faced the computer screen and the difficult truth that in the very moment he was supposed to be making plans, he had no idea what he was doing, or why. Part of him—the same part that had been dominant when he'd asked Fiona to move into the loft—knew that distancing himself from Fiona rarely made anything better. At the moment, the ache of her distance was actually keeping him from his work. It was also threatening to fulfill one of his worst fears—to turn him into a Jason Wainthrop or Kevin Skyler.
With sudden determination, Michael closed his laptop, and got to his feet, heading in the direction of the bedroom. He stopped in the doorway, watching. Fiona was curled into the upper left corner of the king-size bed, reading the latest copy of SWAT magazine under a lamp on the side table. Her face was bare, but her hair was dry, spilling over her shoulders and the edge of the duvet. Something about the relative domesticity of the scene aggravated Michael's already anxious thoughts; he was suddenly intensely nostalgic for the version of Fiona's he'd once spent so much effort rejecting, who'd rarely taken no for an answer.
"Fi."
At the sound of his voice, Fiona looked up from her magazine, arching an expectant, slightly suspicious eyebrow.
"Yes, Michael?"
"I need your help with something."
"With work?"
"No."
Her suspicion dissolved into a close-lipped smile as she said, "I thought you'd never ask."
In one motion, Fiona dropped her magazine and threw back both the bed sheets and the heavy white duvet. Michael released a small, relieved sigh, and returned her smile. Absent the sheets and the duvet, Fiona was completely naked.
Michael closed the distance slowly, savouring the view. In the past, he'd been with women who'd seemed embarrassed of their own anatomy, who hadn't wanted certain body parts to be seen until they had to be, and even then, only under the cover of darkness or the protection of blankets. Fiona had never been like that. As always, Fiona was shameless and beautiful in that shamelessness, letting her breasts loll and her thighs hang open.
When he stepped into her pool of light, he paused again, contemplating their contrasting states of undress and the best way to breach the impasse. Abruptly, Fiona kicked her legs over the side of the bed to sit facing him, her bare breasts level with his hips. She didn't touch him, because she didn't need to; her roving eyes dissolved the standoff, reminding him, in no uncertain terms, that he was always already naked under her gaze.
Michael unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it toward the chair. But when he moved on to his pants, Fiona covered his hands with hers.
"Allow me."
Michael looked down at his own body as Fiona ran a delicate finger along his belt. She slid the leather smoothly out of the loops before jerking open the buckle, pulling him deeper into her hands. He continued to watch her hands as she opened his pants and lifted them over his hips, accompanied by his boxers. Then he watched her reach between his legs and indulge her own fantasies, fondling his balls while threatening to squeeze. Finally, he watched through flickering eyelids as she handled him in earnest—roughly and thoroughly, in between flashes of frustrating, intoxicating tenderness.
He swallowed the sound he wanted to make and flexed his hands at his sides, pondering the closeness of Fiona's wet, idle mouth. Part of him wondered what would happen if he seized the back of her head and put himself there—whether Fiona would accept his need or punish it, and what form those things would take. But Michael also knew, with as much certainty as he'd ever known anything, that if he truly wanted to challenge her control, force wasn't the answer; Fiona Glenanne would only really surrender to one person, and that person was herself.
Michael freed himself by dropping to his knees at Fiona's feet. From between her thighs, he looked up, meeting her gaze above the pert curves of her breasts. Still meeting her eyes, he wet his lips and watched her fight not to crumble, nostrils flaring as her jaw clenched. Her stiff mouth trembled when he slid his hands up her thighs, and dropped open when he massaged the perfect handfuls of her breasts, thumbs circling to the hard spires of her nipples. When his hands slid down her back to pull her tight against his mouth, he was rewarded with the only piece of sex talk he routinely craved.
"Michael."
It was the last coherent thing she'd say for some time.
Fiona moaned and writhed as he nipped and licked her, teasing her before beginning a rhythm. Then she spoke through her body, fingers scraping through his hair to mark her pleasure against his skull. At last, even her hands were beyond her control; with another gasping moan, she threw her arms behind her, fingers twisting in the sheets as she held him with her legs, toes clenching down his ribs to his ass.
Warmth surged through his own body as she came unglued, his skin shivering in sympathy with the shudder of her thighs. He was still swollen with pleasure and pride when she pulled her legs back and lashed out, kicking him squarely in the chest.
The kick surprised him more than it hurt. But he still coughed as he lost his balance, landing on his shoulder before rolling onto his back. Within a moment, Fiona was on him, her still-pulsing thighs contracting around his own. It was a position Michael had always liked, but Fiona had made him love; he loved to watch her take and lose control, swaying and moaning in her moment of triumph. But it wasn't what he wanted—not now. Now, aching against Fiona's weight, Michael wanted something simpler—to be grounded as deeply as possible inside her reckless, shameless body.
As she leaned forward to kiss him, he knocked out her arms at the elbow, then used his legs to flip her. Fiona hissed as she fell, but when he pinned her, her eyes gleamed; and when he kissed her, she opened her mouth wide, unafraid to taste herself on his lips and tongue. Impatient and too nearly desperate, Michael pulled back quickly, straddling her on his knees. Then he dipped his hands under her thighs, and lifted. Realizing his goal, Fiona's eyes gleamed brighter. Her taut legs sliced upwards, ankles locking behind his neck as his shoulders slid under her calves.
Michael held her cheek as their bodies came together, feeling her jaw yawn beneath his palm. His grip and gaze faltered when Fiona's calves closed like a vise around his neck. He sputtered and almost fell, hands grasping for the carpet. Bracing himself on either side of Fiona's shoulders, he met the power of her legs and dove deeper, stretching her thighs further and further into the liquid motion of her flattened breasts. All the while, Fiona climbed and hung from the scaffolding of his body, fingers clutching his arms while her legs continued to wrench his neck, pulling him down as she threw herself up. Michael struggled to breathe until it no longer mattered; until he couldn't feel his knees scratching and burning in the thick carpet; until he didn't notice the painful tension of his biceps under her clawing fingers; until he couldn't even hear his balls slapping her ass to the rhythm of her short, breathless cries; until all that mattered was the perfection of belonging inside her pulse.
If he'd had the capacity to care, Michael might have been embarrassed by the desperate sounds that escaped his own lips a moment before his brain was slammed gloriously, stupidly numb. But for once, he didn't care; his sounds dissolved in the echoes of hers, as lost as he was, and just as happy.
Operating on fumes and instinct, he managed to pull back before collapsing in a heavy pile at Fiona's side. There, he closed his eyes against the dim but blinding light, and focused on what was still the only thing in the world that mattered: the panting, trembling closeness of Fiona's warmth.
Fiona's voice vibrated against his shoulder as she said, "An entire suite to play in—and we end up on the floor."
Eyes still closed, Michael smiled a dreamy, lopsided smile. "Because you kicked me."
He could hear and feel a reciprocal smile in Fiona's voice as she agreed, "Yes I did…"
More heartbeats passed before Michael could convince himself to move. When he finally raised his shoulders to turn onto his side, a brief spasm of pain shot up his back, causing him to wince into the dim light. Fiona shifted onto her side to face him, propping up her head on her bent arm. Her cheeks were pink, and a thin strand of hair clung to her damp forehead. She looked happy, and she looked beautiful. But there was something else—something mysterious—in the way her hazel eyes flickered under the fringe of her lashes.
Michael reached across the close distance to smooth her hair from her forehead, amused by the uncharacteristically demure blush that darkened her already flushed cheeks.
"Is something wrong?" he asked softly.
"I was just thinking, we haven't done that since…"
"I know."
"How's your back?"
"Older than the last time we did that."
Fiona uttered a tiny snort of amusement, and kicked him—gently—in the ankle.
Her tone was more serious as she said, "It's been weird, hasn't it—this job."
"Define weird."
"We don't do couple IDs very often."
"You know there's a reason for that."
"Do I?" She raised her eyes to add, "Sometimes, it's hard to read your mind."
She was repeating his words from two days before, when they'd been sitting together on the bed at the loft, preparing to leave for the mission. Michael wanted to respond, but couldn't, still struggling to read his own mind.
Fiona saved him by changing tacks.
"At the bar," she began, "something Rebecca said reminded me of my mother. The first time she met you, back when I still thought you were…"
She paused to swallow, then started again. "After supper, we were in the kitchen doing dishes, and my mother used that same phrase—asked me if you were 'the one.'"
Michael's lingering bliss aided the credibility of his casualness as he asked, "And what did you say?"
"I told her what I always told her," Fiona replied. "To stop trying to marry me off."
Michael offered a small smile, but it was halfhearted; something in her cadence and the shape of her mouth told him she was trying a bit too hard to be funny.
Still, Michael kept his own voice light as he said, "I had a high school girlfriend who broke up with me because she said I wasn't 'marriage material.'"
"Poor baby," Fiona teased.
"She wasn't wrong."
"And yet, you almost did get married once—to Samantha."
Michael's face fell along with his eyes.
"Not really," he said.
"You weren't really engaged?"
"I mean—I didn't really come close to marrying Samantha."
"Because of me?"
"Mostly."
"Mostly?" Fiona echoed, less than pleased.
Michael ground his teeth, frustrated, as he so often was, by the inadequacy of his words when he was trying to tell the truth.
"I didn't mean it like… What I meant was, I don't think it would have worked out. Regardless."
"Why?" she pressed.
The answer to that question was easy.
"I didn't want to get married."
"Then why did you get engaged?"
Michael sighed. That question was harder.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I guess… I was sort of flattered she asked."
The confession surprised him, in both its ease and obviousness. He'd been struggling for more than a decade with the question of why he'd agreed to marry Samantha and hadn't expected to solve it lying next to Fiona on a cream coloured carpet, wearing nothing but a fake wedding ring.
For a long moment, Fiona looked at him. There were more questions in her eyes. Michael didn't care about the questions; he knew he'd already given the best answer he had to give. But he did care about whether Fiona believed what he'd said; as surely as he'd needed to lose and find himself inside her pulse, he needed her to believe him.
Finally, Fiona's lips bent with the ghost of a smile, accompanied by a barely perceptible nod. It wasn't much, but it was enough; as Michael absorbed her subtle affirmation, he released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
Fiona broke the moment by gathering her limbs and pushing herself to her feet.
"You still have work?" she asked.
"A little," he replied, getting up slowly after her.
"I'll help you."
"You don't—"
"I'll help you," she repeated, more forcefully. "Just give me a minute."
Fiona ducked into the ensuite bath, then poked her head out again, long enough to toss him a thick white bathrobe. Michael caught the robe as she closed the door, slipping it on while he walked through the sitting area to the suite's second bathroom. After the bathroom, he returned to his laptop. The bug in Kevin and Nikki's suite was quiet, so he pulled up some maps of the area, wanting to commit to memory the side roads around the resort and the restaurant where Fiona would be taking Nikki for lunch the following afternoon.
He looked up from the screen just in time to see Fiona, clothed in her own white robe, aim a cup of blueberry yogurt in the direction of his head. He caught the yogurt in front of his face and stared at it, blinking.
"Where did this come from?" he asked.
"I ordered a bunch of them from room service this afternoon," Fiona explained, handing off a plastic spoon as she dropped into the couch cushions next to him. "They cost about $12 each."
"That's gonna look great in my expense report."
"Your bosses should know by now—yogurt's an operational necessity."
Michael conceded a smirk of amusement as he pushed the laptop across the table toward her.
"Here—take a look at the layout around the restaurant. Might come in useful if you run into trouble tomorrow."
"I think I can handle a simple extraction, Michael."
"It's not you I'm worried about. Nikki's a bit…"
"Ditzy?"
"For lack of a better word."
"But she likes you so much…"
"Uh huh."
Michael leaned back in his seat and peeled open his yogurt, hoping she'd drop the subject if he ignored it. Yet dropping the subject very nearly came at the cost of dropping his yogurt, as Fiona suddenly hoisted the laptop into her arms and jutted her legs into his lap.
"Did Nikki and Kevin get up to anything interesting after I left?" she asked.
"Not really," Michael replied, resting his forearms against her bare legs as he proceeded with his thankfully intact yogurt.
"No makeup sex?"
"She tried—he said no."
"Thank god for small miracles."
Fiona's eyes narrowed at the screen as she scrolled through the maps. After a few minutes, she asked, "Have you decided what you're going to do with Kevin?"
"I was thinking of taking him to the steam room."
Fiona's head jerked up. "Wait—you're telling me, you're planning to have a sweaty, half-naked wrestling match with an FSB agent who has the pecs of a Calvin Klein underwear model, and I'm going to be miles away for the entire show?"
Michael eyed her as he swallowed his last spoonful of yogurt, unsure whether to be flattered, jealous, or disturbed. "I guess…?"
Fiona shook her head, and returned her attention to the screen. Michael tried to let her comment slide, but his resolve was short-lived. As usual, Fiona knew just how to get a rise out of him.
"Serge's pecs?" he questioned. "Really?"
"They were kinda hard to miss…" Fiona mumbled.
"Like your questionable taste?"
"Campbell wasn't questionable."
"He also wasn't exactly your type."
"And what do you know about my type?"
"Nothing. Apparently."
He turned away, but when he turned back, she was smiling, that same playful, close-lipped smile that she'd flashed when she'd thrown off the duvet, and which had gotten him into trouble so many times before—the kind of trouble that was always wonderful before it became anything else. As his own lips twitched, the heel of her foot began tapping lightly against his thigh.
"You were saying?" she prompted. "About my questionable taste...?"
"Maybe I overspoke," he conceded, returning her close-lipped smile.
"And here I thought you were a slick-tongued bastard..."
The remark warmed Michael's face for the second time that day, but in the right way, exorcising the first. All at once, the familiarity of her touch and teasing washed over him, wrapping him in an easy comfort that he let himself enjoy. It felt good to let go—as good as the calmness of knowing exactly who he was.
Later, Michael fell asleep swaddled in the goose down duvet at the centre of the huge bed, smelling lavender bubble bath in Fiona's damp hair.
~END~ (for now...)
A/N: Whew—that ended up being longer than anticipated! But I'm sure you guys probably don't mind ;) This one was for beejed and AuntyNoxie, who both requested it—thank you! Just in case anyone wonders: I made up the names for Jason and Rebecca; as far as I can tell, they weren't given names within the episode.
Also, thank you very, very much for all your kind words on the last chapter. I was so grateful to hear how much it resonated with so many of you. Heart=warmed.
As for what's next... As usual, I'm not too sure. I know it's going to be something from Fiona's perspective, set earlier in the series... I'm considering a few different options, but I'm always open to persuasion :)
