The next installment! I would have done it sooner but I have been amazingly
busy and even more so than that amazingly lazy. So here's a little
something for everyone who reviewed, wanted more.and.ultimately fed Damon's
muses. This is pure fluff right here, hell, I don't care if you don't want
it cause it's plot-less, but I'm a shipper to the bone, so just leave and
find something more action/adventure if that's what you prefer.
Disclaimer: I own none of this except the specific plot for this fic. The
characters aren't mine. I love them but don't own them. A/N: Please let me
know if Syd and Vaughn get out of character too much. I try to stay away
from that. AND REVIEW!!!!!
BTW: the last lyrics used were from counting crows & saliva songs. this
time they are from modest mouse songs. It's about cyclical things. Go
sin(x), yeah fedirko!
***
BEING LIARS
***
"well the universe is shaped exactly like the earth,
if you go straight long enough you'll end up where you were."
Sydney was translating some notes a few people of interest had written that SD-6 had intercepted. She had taken care that morning to compartmentalize better than a robot would, only allowing her happiness about finally getting Vaughn translate into being a chirpy witty individual in front of Dixon, Marshall and Sloane. They welcomed this improvement unquestioningly. Going from Russian to English had never really been a challenge, and so she thought about other things while staring at the neat handwritten script and typing up her translation of it on the computer.
The first thing was, of course, Vaughn. From now on that would probably be the order of the day. It was like a big cycle. She had loved Danny so much she could have tasted it, and then went through anger and grief and action and blandness and had fallen back into that love with Vaughn, the type of love that she not only looked forward to but also could taste anytime she wanted. She could do the same thing with Danny a few years back, when they first started dating. Call up his scent, his eyes, and his smile, whenever she needed it, or when there was nothing else to do. Did that make Danny void, if Vaughn gave her the same thing? Or it did it make her fickle? Or did it make the two men equal?
Hard to tell, really. Then she thought about the future, always second up now that Vaughn had a permanent brain cell all to himself. The future. Such a tantalizing prospect. But only if it was the future with a dead Sloane and no SD-6, with a vacation from being an agent and a trip out somewhere for fun instead of thievery and violence. A trip with Vaughn. Um, okay, so maybe he took up the number two spot as well.
But she still had to figure out how to meet Vaughn regularly without drawing any attention from anyone high up on either side. Perhaps start submitting various wordy reports on SD-6 activity that she would dictate to him in the warehouse, so as not to waste any time at work? Yeah, that sounded about right. She remembered that Vaughn and herself were being called in to Devlin's office tomorrow, and winced painfully. They would have to work something out. Make up some more crap. She'd have to be very vocal and extravagant describing her sickness. Not necessarily a problem.
The problem would be refraining from grabbing Vaughn the moment she saw him that morning. He had that effect. And now all his looks had no suppressed longing in them. They spoke more to his 'get over here, we only have a few minutes and I haven't seen you for a day' side. That was usually what they ended up doing. Waiting for the hall to clear or stepping into someone's empty office with the blinds turned, kissing each other senseless, and coming out with mock angry expressions as if there had been hushed arguing, just to fool everyone, arms crossed, false surly expressions or looks of fake bored distaste on display. Work had become like a big game. This time it was fun, though, not painful, as it had been before.
Sydney had often considered using one of Marshall's fun little hidden cameras to get a few pictures of Vaughn, having the irrational fear that she would suddenly be taken from him and they'd never see each other again, or that something would happen to her. If she was to die on assignment, God forbid, she'd feel better leaving some signs of devotion hidden amongst her things for Vaughn to find when they gathered up her stuff. And to keep pictures of him would make everything concrete, too, more so than it already was. Pictures smacked of a normal relationship, which was exactly what each wanted and could not have.
Pictures she didn't have. Writing she did.
***
The next at work in the CIA building, Sydney quietly told Vaughn he should bring an empty bag of some sort to the warehouse if he was going to call Joey's Pizza that night, that she had something for him.
"What's that?" He'd asked, a rare half smile directed her way in the empty corridor.
"It's a surprise. It has to do with leaving for Goa next week," she had responded. The Agency was planning to send her to Goa, India, in seven days, to infiltrate a club, and then assassinate a free agent who had held jobs and gotten material for Khasinau, SD-6, and the Man, Sydney's mother. This free agent in particular was very talented. And very elusive, which is why both Vaughn and Sydney were very worried that Sydney could be badly hurt, captured, discovered, tortured or killed. This mission was far more dangerous than others, since it involved killing without trace instead of just getting information or objects.
Sydney had come to terms with leaving Vaughn alone perhaps, and she wanted to give him a piece of herself.
"What do you think will happen with that?" Vaughn asked.
"I don't know. I could be killed, Vaughn," Sydney said, and they turned into his office. He looked at her a long time, standing facing her from behind his desk, and glanced quickly out into the hall. Then he reached out and grabbed her into a compulsive hug, his eyes squeezed shut. Smiling into the curve of his shoulder, she hugged him back.
"Look, I know, and you know.HELL no. That won't happen," he said into her ear, feather-kissed her on the left side of her neck, pulled back. They sat down, trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism. Sydney crossed her hands, let her knees bump against the wall of Vaughn's desk, studied the tabletop, and tried to form some coherent thoughts.
"And if it did? Look, this is going to keep you up all night. You didn't sleep before, and you sure won't now," Sydney said, quietly and with feeling. Vaughn didn't meet her eyes. "Call Joey's Pizza tonight at seven. I want to make sure nothing happens to you. You should have something to keep while I'm gone." she said.
Vaughn's expression belied his attempt to stop from showing worry. "Okay, okay," he murmured, looking quickly out the window, "but it'll never be the real thing."
"I know," Sydney replied, "I know." And she hurried out of his office to her mission briefing.
***
"Joey's Pizza," came his voice that night at the prearranged time, the epitome of bored menial worker. She had a fleeting thought of him lining up pepperonis on someone's dinner in a Domino's commercial, suppressed a grin, forced the interest out of her tone.
"Wrong number," she said affably, hung up, and went to change into some slightly nicer clothes than her faded t-shirt and pajama bottoms. She decided on a pair of the famous low-low-rider jeans from that first encounter at his house and a blue sleeveless shirt. It was warm outside, after all, a nice sort of unstifling evening heat. She grabbed a messenger bag from the hall closet, put her gift inside, and hopped into her car for a windows-down drive to the docks and the warehouse.
She came early. Going inside, no one was around, so she pulled a crate against the wall and sat down, securing another crate to prop up her feet. It was in this way he found her five or ten minutes later when he arrived, bag resting her lap, gaze somewhere out the window.
"Boo," he said teasingly, seeing her zoned out. She jumped a little, then laughed, and gave him a long hug. He got another crate and sat down next to her. He had a business-like black attaché with him, empty of course, lying on the dusty floor next to his feet.
"In one week, you'll stop sleeping. And effectively so will I, but me.I'll be doing something. You'll be staring at your ceiling paint at two am wondering if I'm still alive and just what it is I'm doing. So I have something I don't have a use for anymore that could benefit you," she said, and pulled a black notebook out of her bag. It was unassuming. Just a thick wire spiral on the side and a slightly faded black, fake velvet upholstered cover.
"This is my journal. I started it the day Danny was killed and I became a double agent. So, if you can't sleep, get to reading," she said quietly. Vaughn's mouth had fallen open, he was speechless. The fact that she would even consider giving him something this personal and amazingly what he'd always wanted to lay eyes on since meeting her was shocking and delightful, quite simultaneously.
"Oh my.God." Vaughn began, completely at a loss for words. His hands felt number as he accepted the book from her, proceeded to numbly thumbed through the pages. There was scrawled handwriting, and also neat script, little designs and pictures in the margins, doodles in all different colors. Photographs, in black and white, and color. Little ones from mall photo booths, pictures of her father and mother and Danny and Will and Francie and Dixon.
Pictures of him.
"Do you know.what you're doing here." Vaughn started to say, tilted up his gaze to meet hers. Had the emotional moats all dried up this fast? All he had to do was read a book to understand her?
"Yes," she replied, unequivocally, straight-faced. "You always take care of me, so I wanted to return the favor."
"And this.this is everything? Everything with your parents, and mine, and being a double agent and hiding what we have and getting sick and lying to your friends and everything about Danny and all your trips and all your past." Vaughn stuttered and spoke fast, struggling to understand her openness.
"You want this to last, then keep no secrets. God, you look like a catatonic mental patient," she muttered, inched closer. "Um," was his only reply. Sydney threw an arm around his waist. Vaughn settled limply against the wooden boards of the wall, cradled the book in two loose palms. "Wow," he added dimly a couple long moments later, which made Sydney laugh deep in her throat and lean closer. Their heads bumped gently together.
"This is more than I wanted from you, ever, Syd. Thank you-" Vaughn began, but her found he couldn't add his operative phrase, 'so much', because Sydney was kissing him. Naturally he kissed her back, and before long, the famous black book was sitting neatly in Vaughn's lap, his hands busy tangling in her thick curly hair and snaking their way around her waist and up her neck.
Minutes, long minutes of this, was followed by Sydney telling him she had to go, insistently pressing the journal into his hands a final time, then giving him a quick kiss and telling him to save it for when she'd leave, because he'd need it.
After she had already started on her way home, Vaughn was still sitting with his head against the wall, pleasantly shocked. Then he put the book into his attaché and mechanically walked out of the warehouse, into his car, onto the roads.
***
**Well,** Vaughn thought, **I have it. Perhaps this is why having her picture on my desk would not help my problems whenever she goes on assignment. Screw pictures, I have her.***
Over the following weeks, Vaughn read a bit each night to put himself to sleep, conspicuously like a little kid. If he woke up from sheer anxiety, which was often, he'd read again, despite the hour, until he felt drowsy. Having no roommate was proving valuable, sometimes he left the book tangled in his sheets. Pictures and scraps of paper would fall out, and he'd tape them back in blank margins. Sitting cross-legged on his rumpled sheets at a quarter to four with half-moons of blue beneath his squinting eyes, he realized how much he had missed watching from afar all this time. Like.her childhood, or what she remembered of it. There were pictures of Mrs. Bristow, so shockingly typical in the American family format, real happiness all that time, a group of lies forming it.
So whenever Sydney left, he would read and smile and laugh along with her. It didn't decrease the heat of their first kiss after she got back from wherever, to have 'Imaginary Sydney' talking to him at night.and it sure as hell helped with insomnia.
In this way he managed to trap her magnetic smile and big dimples, her sparkling eyes and great kissing skills, and smoldering comments and heartwarming hugs, and potent familial grief and constant falsehood and awesome style and other such things essential to her being.
She had spent a few years making herself into another form waiting for the recipient to come along, he liked to think, and he was the lucky man.
FIN.
A/N: This is all there will be, two measly chapters. I have nothing left. Damon's muses moved on. ;) So you should review and look out for coming fics, probably Harry Potter, if I have time to write them. God knows I suffered through finals week and AP course material on this one, as well as my mum screaming bloody murder about getting in bed before ten!
***
BEING LIARS
***
"well the universe is shaped exactly like the earth,
if you go straight long enough you'll end up where you were."
Sydney was translating some notes a few people of interest had written that SD-6 had intercepted. She had taken care that morning to compartmentalize better than a robot would, only allowing her happiness about finally getting Vaughn translate into being a chirpy witty individual in front of Dixon, Marshall and Sloane. They welcomed this improvement unquestioningly. Going from Russian to English had never really been a challenge, and so she thought about other things while staring at the neat handwritten script and typing up her translation of it on the computer.
The first thing was, of course, Vaughn. From now on that would probably be the order of the day. It was like a big cycle. She had loved Danny so much she could have tasted it, and then went through anger and grief and action and blandness and had fallen back into that love with Vaughn, the type of love that she not only looked forward to but also could taste anytime she wanted. She could do the same thing with Danny a few years back, when they first started dating. Call up his scent, his eyes, and his smile, whenever she needed it, or when there was nothing else to do. Did that make Danny void, if Vaughn gave her the same thing? Or it did it make her fickle? Or did it make the two men equal?
Hard to tell, really. Then she thought about the future, always second up now that Vaughn had a permanent brain cell all to himself. The future. Such a tantalizing prospect. But only if it was the future with a dead Sloane and no SD-6, with a vacation from being an agent and a trip out somewhere for fun instead of thievery and violence. A trip with Vaughn. Um, okay, so maybe he took up the number two spot as well.
But she still had to figure out how to meet Vaughn regularly without drawing any attention from anyone high up on either side. Perhaps start submitting various wordy reports on SD-6 activity that she would dictate to him in the warehouse, so as not to waste any time at work? Yeah, that sounded about right. She remembered that Vaughn and herself were being called in to Devlin's office tomorrow, and winced painfully. They would have to work something out. Make up some more crap. She'd have to be very vocal and extravagant describing her sickness. Not necessarily a problem.
The problem would be refraining from grabbing Vaughn the moment she saw him that morning. He had that effect. And now all his looks had no suppressed longing in them. They spoke more to his 'get over here, we only have a few minutes and I haven't seen you for a day' side. That was usually what they ended up doing. Waiting for the hall to clear or stepping into someone's empty office with the blinds turned, kissing each other senseless, and coming out with mock angry expressions as if there had been hushed arguing, just to fool everyone, arms crossed, false surly expressions or looks of fake bored distaste on display. Work had become like a big game. This time it was fun, though, not painful, as it had been before.
Sydney had often considered using one of Marshall's fun little hidden cameras to get a few pictures of Vaughn, having the irrational fear that she would suddenly be taken from him and they'd never see each other again, or that something would happen to her. If she was to die on assignment, God forbid, she'd feel better leaving some signs of devotion hidden amongst her things for Vaughn to find when they gathered up her stuff. And to keep pictures of him would make everything concrete, too, more so than it already was. Pictures smacked of a normal relationship, which was exactly what each wanted and could not have.
Pictures she didn't have. Writing she did.
***
The next at work in the CIA building, Sydney quietly told Vaughn he should bring an empty bag of some sort to the warehouse if he was going to call Joey's Pizza that night, that she had something for him.
"What's that?" He'd asked, a rare half smile directed her way in the empty corridor.
"It's a surprise. It has to do with leaving for Goa next week," she had responded. The Agency was planning to send her to Goa, India, in seven days, to infiltrate a club, and then assassinate a free agent who had held jobs and gotten material for Khasinau, SD-6, and the Man, Sydney's mother. This free agent in particular was very talented. And very elusive, which is why both Vaughn and Sydney were very worried that Sydney could be badly hurt, captured, discovered, tortured or killed. This mission was far more dangerous than others, since it involved killing without trace instead of just getting information or objects.
Sydney had come to terms with leaving Vaughn alone perhaps, and she wanted to give him a piece of herself.
"What do you think will happen with that?" Vaughn asked.
"I don't know. I could be killed, Vaughn," Sydney said, and they turned into his office. He looked at her a long time, standing facing her from behind his desk, and glanced quickly out into the hall. Then he reached out and grabbed her into a compulsive hug, his eyes squeezed shut. Smiling into the curve of his shoulder, she hugged him back.
"Look, I know, and you know.HELL no. That won't happen," he said into her ear, feather-kissed her on the left side of her neck, pulled back. They sat down, trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism. Sydney crossed her hands, let her knees bump against the wall of Vaughn's desk, studied the tabletop, and tried to form some coherent thoughts.
"And if it did? Look, this is going to keep you up all night. You didn't sleep before, and you sure won't now," Sydney said, quietly and with feeling. Vaughn didn't meet her eyes. "Call Joey's Pizza tonight at seven. I want to make sure nothing happens to you. You should have something to keep while I'm gone." she said.
Vaughn's expression belied his attempt to stop from showing worry. "Okay, okay," he murmured, looking quickly out the window, "but it'll never be the real thing."
"I know," Sydney replied, "I know." And she hurried out of his office to her mission briefing.
***
"Joey's Pizza," came his voice that night at the prearranged time, the epitome of bored menial worker. She had a fleeting thought of him lining up pepperonis on someone's dinner in a Domino's commercial, suppressed a grin, forced the interest out of her tone.
"Wrong number," she said affably, hung up, and went to change into some slightly nicer clothes than her faded t-shirt and pajama bottoms. She decided on a pair of the famous low-low-rider jeans from that first encounter at his house and a blue sleeveless shirt. It was warm outside, after all, a nice sort of unstifling evening heat. She grabbed a messenger bag from the hall closet, put her gift inside, and hopped into her car for a windows-down drive to the docks and the warehouse.
She came early. Going inside, no one was around, so she pulled a crate against the wall and sat down, securing another crate to prop up her feet. It was in this way he found her five or ten minutes later when he arrived, bag resting her lap, gaze somewhere out the window.
"Boo," he said teasingly, seeing her zoned out. She jumped a little, then laughed, and gave him a long hug. He got another crate and sat down next to her. He had a business-like black attaché with him, empty of course, lying on the dusty floor next to his feet.
"In one week, you'll stop sleeping. And effectively so will I, but me.I'll be doing something. You'll be staring at your ceiling paint at two am wondering if I'm still alive and just what it is I'm doing. So I have something I don't have a use for anymore that could benefit you," she said, and pulled a black notebook out of her bag. It was unassuming. Just a thick wire spiral on the side and a slightly faded black, fake velvet upholstered cover.
"This is my journal. I started it the day Danny was killed and I became a double agent. So, if you can't sleep, get to reading," she said quietly. Vaughn's mouth had fallen open, he was speechless. The fact that she would even consider giving him something this personal and amazingly what he'd always wanted to lay eyes on since meeting her was shocking and delightful, quite simultaneously.
"Oh my.God." Vaughn began, completely at a loss for words. His hands felt number as he accepted the book from her, proceeded to numbly thumbed through the pages. There was scrawled handwriting, and also neat script, little designs and pictures in the margins, doodles in all different colors. Photographs, in black and white, and color. Little ones from mall photo booths, pictures of her father and mother and Danny and Will and Francie and Dixon.
Pictures of him.
"Do you know.what you're doing here." Vaughn started to say, tilted up his gaze to meet hers. Had the emotional moats all dried up this fast? All he had to do was read a book to understand her?
"Yes," she replied, unequivocally, straight-faced. "You always take care of me, so I wanted to return the favor."
"And this.this is everything? Everything with your parents, and mine, and being a double agent and hiding what we have and getting sick and lying to your friends and everything about Danny and all your trips and all your past." Vaughn stuttered and spoke fast, struggling to understand her openness.
"You want this to last, then keep no secrets. God, you look like a catatonic mental patient," she muttered, inched closer. "Um," was his only reply. Sydney threw an arm around his waist. Vaughn settled limply against the wooden boards of the wall, cradled the book in two loose palms. "Wow," he added dimly a couple long moments later, which made Sydney laugh deep in her throat and lean closer. Their heads bumped gently together.
"This is more than I wanted from you, ever, Syd. Thank you-" Vaughn began, but her found he couldn't add his operative phrase, 'so much', because Sydney was kissing him. Naturally he kissed her back, and before long, the famous black book was sitting neatly in Vaughn's lap, his hands busy tangling in her thick curly hair and snaking their way around her waist and up her neck.
Minutes, long minutes of this, was followed by Sydney telling him she had to go, insistently pressing the journal into his hands a final time, then giving him a quick kiss and telling him to save it for when she'd leave, because he'd need it.
After she had already started on her way home, Vaughn was still sitting with his head against the wall, pleasantly shocked. Then he put the book into his attaché and mechanically walked out of the warehouse, into his car, onto the roads.
***
**Well,** Vaughn thought, **I have it. Perhaps this is why having her picture on my desk would not help my problems whenever she goes on assignment. Screw pictures, I have her.***
Over the following weeks, Vaughn read a bit each night to put himself to sleep, conspicuously like a little kid. If he woke up from sheer anxiety, which was often, he'd read again, despite the hour, until he felt drowsy. Having no roommate was proving valuable, sometimes he left the book tangled in his sheets. Pictures and scraps of paper would fall out, and he'd tape them back in blank margins. Sitting cross-legged on his rumpled sheets at a quarter to four with half-moons of blue beneath his squinting eyes, he realized how much he had missed watching from afar all this time. Like.her childhood, or what she remembered of it. There were pictures of Mrs. Bristow, so shockingly typical in the American family format, real happiness all that time, a group of lies forming it.
So whenever Sydney left, he would read and smile and laugh along with her. It didn't decrease the heat of their first kiss after she got back from wherever, to have 'Imaginary Sydney' talking to him at night.and it sure as hell helped with insomnia.
In this way he managed to trap her magnetic smile and big dimples, her sparkling eyes and great kissing skills, and smoldering comments and heartwarming hugs, and potent familial grief and constant falsehood and awesome style and other such things essential to her being.
She had spent a few years making herself into another form waiting for the recipient to come along, he liked to think, and he was the lucky man.
FIN.
A/N: This is all there will be, two measly chapters. I have nothing left. Damon's muses moved on. ;) So you should review and look out for coming fics, probably Harry Potter, if I have time to write them. God knows I suffered through finals week and AP course material on this one, as well as my mum screaming bloody murder about getting in bed before ten!