A/N: The next chapter, as promised. :)
022. He picked up his shears and exhibited them as evidence.
This time, when Sophie appeared on his doorstep, he was expecting her. He went through all of the polite nonsense of having a guest - taking her coat, offering her a drink, showing her into the living room and giving her the choice of where she wanted to sit. She chose the chair rather than the couch, and with some relief he flopped down onto the couch alone. He wasn't sure how he felt about having her next to him on the couch tonight, not with what she had planned.
"Working on a project?" she asked, noticing the scraps of wire and plastic scattered on the coffee table.
"Rewiring one of the vidcomsets." He picked up his shears and exhibited them as evidence. "It got a little messy. The video pickup is improved, though, and I think I'll be able to boost the audio as well."
"That's fantastic." She sounded like she meant it, which didn't surprise him. As a mission coordinator, sometimes the only method of contact she had with her team was through the vidcomset, so if there was any glitch in the technology, it could mean that her team would be stranded without any way for her to reach them. "Will you submit the improvements to R and D, or are you planning to do this all under the table?"
"I'll do whatever you think is better," he replied, having found that to be the best dodge of all the methods he'd tried so far with her. It was infinitely preferable to choosing a plan and hoping she didn't disagree with it. When Sophie disagreed, things could get sticky, and he quite frankly didn't care enough one way or another about what happened to the improved vidcomset design to argue with her about it. Choosing his battles wisely was something he'd learned early in life, and it was part of why his partnership with Sophie had gone smoothly so far. "Did you bring the stuff?"
In response, she reached into her bag and produced a syringe and a vial of medication.
"G161," she identified for him, rising from the chair as she shook the vial to mix it and uncapped the syringe to draw up the clear liquid. "The most widely used truth serum on the market. Once you've developed a tolerance to it, I'll feel better about you being in the field with me."
She set the empty vial back down on the table and gestured for him to stand up. He rolled up his sleeve, sure that he wasn't going to enjoy this.
"How many times will we have to do this?"
"A couple," she admitted. "The effects are always strongest at the first exposure, though, so the experience should be more pleasant the second time around. The effects will last about three hours. At the end of it, you'll probably start feeling sedated; that's normal, and you'll be safe to sleep it off. I'm just here to make sure you don't have a bad reaction to it."
"What would you do if I did?" he asked, his voice full of dry humor. "The sum total of your medical training appears to be the knowledge of where to hit, stab, or shoot someone to cause the most pain. I can't imagine you'd do me a lot of good if I had an allergic reaction."
"I could put you out of your misery," she pointed out thoughtfully, her free hand dropping to the small of her back, and he cursed his big mouth for putting the idea into her head. She didn't pull out a gun, though; instead, she produced a little device that resembled a pen. "Or I could inject you with this."
"Epinephrine?" he guessed, and she rolled her eyes.
"Please. That's for the uninformed. This -" She held up the pen, eyeing it speculatively. "This is the antidote for G-161."
"I thought there wasn't an antidote. That's why they make us become desensitized to this stuff."
She eyed him with that now-familiar expression of mingled uncertainty and amusement, the one that told him he was doing or saying something that reminded her how unsuited to the spy game he really was.
"I suppose you want me to tell you the truth." Her intonation of the word suggested that she found it distasteful. "The antidote isn't widely available, and it's not guaranteed that it would be available in every situation where you might be exposed to G-161. You need the desensitization in case of long-term capture and/or imprisonment by the enemy."
"Charming," he muttered. As usual, he was sorry he'd asked.
He turned his head away when she injected him with the truth serum. He didn't have any particular phobia about needles, but he also had no interest in watching her jab him with one. It wasn't any more painful than a vaccination, and after the injection he didn't feel particularly different.
Sophie instructed him to remain on the couch for the first several minutes, in case he had a reaction to the drug. She moved back to the chair across from him, reaching into her bag to produce a bottle of water and, of all things, a fashion magazine. She took a swig of the water and then set the bottle down on the coffee table, and for all intents and purposes appeared to lose herself in the glossy pages of her magazine.
Lucas watched her silently for at least fifteen minutes, but she didn't once attempt to engage him in conversation or even look up to catch his eye. Eventually, he got tired of waiting for her to start the interrogation. Sophie Sutton would never pass up the opportunity that this situation presented; he just had to figure out what her angle was.
"Don't you want to ask me anything?"
Sophie glanced up from her magazine, the picture of polite disinterest. "What would I want to ask you?"
"Oh, I can think of a dozen things," he replied, ignoring her mildly insulting tone. "Troop movements? Long-term Macronesian strike plans? Other little intelligence tidbits I might not have disclosed to you?"
"You're my partner," she said, returning her attention to the magazine. "Either you're doing your job and giving me the information I need, or it's only a matter of time until you get us both killed. I think it's the former, and if it's the latter, I prefer to be surprised."
He considered that in silence, watching as she turned the page and became engrossed in another article.
"What are you reading?"
She raised her eyebrows at him. "Wolenczak, are you bored, or does the truth serum just turn you into a bigger pain in my ass than usual?"
Lucas shifted in his seat. "I just can't believe there's nothing you want to ask me while I'm under the influence of this stuff. It's a one-shot deal; the more exposure I have to it, the less likely it is that I'll answer your questions. Tonight is the best opportunity you're going to have. If our roles were reversed, I'd have a million questions for you."
"I'm not you," she pointed out. "That's one way you can tell the difference. Another way you can tell the difference is that I'm not annoying you."
He let her return to her magazine, waiting several minutes before interrupting her again. He wasn't sure if it was the truth serum making him chatty, but he suspected his surprise had more to do with it. He'd really been expecting a rapid-fire interrogation from her tonight, and her disinterest had him stumped.
"Isn't there anything you want to ask about?"
"Now that you mention it, there is." She held up the magazine, pointing to the model on the left-hand page. "Do you think I'd look good in this?"
"You look good in everything." It wasn't even a compliment, really, just a statement of fact. He studied the picture more closely. "Although I wouldn't recommend running in it. It looks like it'd constrict your movements…and if you wore those shoes, you'd be risking a broken ankle."
"If I wore those shoes, I'd deserve the broken ankle," she retorted, shaking her head at the six-inch heels the model wore. "They're probably so uncomfortable that I'd wind up wanting to chop off my own feet anyway."
"Sophie?"
She dropped the magazine onto the table, exhaling sharply. "What, Wolenczak?"
"Don't you want to know why I asked you to marry me?"
That was the real reason he was so antsy. He'd known that question would be coming tonight, had prepared and discarded a dozen different answers in preparation. Waiting for her to bring it up was torture; better just to broach the subject himself and take the chance that she hadn't planned to ask.
She contemplated him for a long moment. "No," she said finally, turning her gaze back to the magazine and leaving him gaping at her.
He stayed silent for several minutes. He tried to speak, but every time he opened him mouth, his thoughts scattered again. He literally could not wrap his mind around the concept that Sutton didn't care why he'd put that bizarre stipulation on his agreement to their partnership. He wasn't even sure that he knew why he'd done it, although the amount of time he'd spent thinking about it in the past day had given him some insight that he hadn't had before.
"You're staring at me." She flipped another page in the magazine. "It's obnoxious. Stop."
"You…" He shook his head in disbelief. "I think I'm offended."
For some reason, that seemed to strike Sutton as funny. She snickered, then started to giggle, and eventually dissolved into full-blown laughter. He was torn between feeling insulted and enjoying the rare sight of Sophie Sutton in a fit of good humor.
"Glad I could amuse you," he said finally as her laughter started to trail off, and he was relieved that his tone didn't reveal that her smile left a tight feeling in his chest.
Sophie leaned forward, elbows propped on her knees, bright eyes sparkling with glee.
"Wolenczak, I have a feeling you're going to be amusing me for the rest of our lives, however short they may be, so you should probably get used to it."
"I don't understand." He knew he sounded plaintive, but he couldn't help it. "If things were different and it was you who'd made the condition, the curiosity would be eating me alive."
"Maybe I'm not as curious as you are." Her gaze was penetrating, and he squirmed uncomfortably beneath it. "We all have our secrets, Lucas. Maybe I'm just willing to let you keep yours. Or maybe I already know the reason."
"Then enlighten me, by all means," he told her, huffing out a sharp breath. "Because I can't seem to figure it out."
"Can't you?"
Truth serum couldn't actually force someone to tell the truth, Lucas knew. That was why people could be trained to resist it. It could lower their inhibitions, making them susceptible to suggestion and clouding their judgment, allowing the truth to slip out unchecked. It couldn't make his brain sift through the hundred theories he'd come up with to explain his own behavior and pick out the one that disguised the kernel of truth he'd been hiding even from himself.
"I can't be alone again."
Or maybe it could. He'd have to do a little more reading on truth serum, apparently.
Sutton's expression had gone carefully blank, hiding…something. He could never be sure with her. He wasn't as concerned with her reaction anymore, anyway. He was too busy trying to figure out why he'd said what he'd said.
"I guess - I guess maybe it's because of losing seaQuest. Or because of my parents, or my lousy childhood, or alienation from my peers because I was so far ahead of everyone else my age. Take your pick. But over the years, I've lost everyone I ever cared about. Everything that ever meant anything to me is gone." He looked down at his hands, studying the familiar topography of his fingers; anything to keep from meeting Sutton's unreadable gaze. "If I'm going to let you in, to start caring about what happens to you, I need - something. A guarantee that you won't leave me like everyone else has."
There was silence again. Lucas kept his eyes on the back of his left hand, studying a small cut on one knuckle that he couldn't remember acquiring. He wondered what Sophie was thinking, but resolved that this time she would have to be the one to break the silence.
"Why trust me?" She sounded curious. "You knew right from the beginning that I was a professional liar, a spy to the core. Jack warned you about me specifically. Why believe any guarantee I would offer you?"
He thought of the picture she'd shown him, of the flaxen-haired little girl held securely in her father's arms, and smiled wryly.
"You keep your promises." He finally looked up, catching the ghost of surprise on her face before she could hide it. "The important ones, anyway. You'll keep this one."